THE GREAT CLIMATE SWOOP

The Great Climate Swoop....

There are less than three weeks to go until our day of action!
Just imagine… It's the morning of Saturday 17th October. You receive a
message telling you to move into position at the south side of
Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. The helicopter blades cut through the
noise of the cars zipping up and down the M1. Your mission is clear
and you're ready to swoop. To the station!!!!!

http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/actions/climate-swoop-2009

"SPECIAL EDITION" NEW YORK POST

"SPECIAL EDITION" NEW YORK POST from The Yes Men on Vimeo.

Star Wars – The Environmentalists Version

"WE'RE SCREWED": TABLOID HEIST BLANKETS NEW YORK WITH TRUTH ON CLIMATE CHANGE

"WE'RE SCREWED": MEDIA HEIST BLANKETS CITY WITH "SPECIAL EDITION" NEW
YORK POST
Tabloid Tells Truth About Climate Change and How It Will Affect City,
World

Fake New York Post: http://www.nypost-se.com/
Video News Release: http://www.nypost-se.com/video
City report on climate change: http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/pdf/2009/NPCC_CRI.pdf
Wake-up call: http://www.tcktcktck.org/wakeup

Early this morning, nearly a million New Yorkers were stunned by the
appearance of a "special edition" New York Post blaring headlines that
their city could face deadly heat waves, extreme flooding, and other
lethal effects of global warming within the next few decades. The most
alarming thing about it: the news came from an official City report.

Distributed by over 2000 volunteers throughout New York City, the
paper has been created by The Yes Men and a coalition of activists as
a wake-up call to action on climate change. It appears one day before
a UN summit where Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will push 100 world
leaders to make serious commitments to reduce carbon emissions in the
lead-up to the Copenhagen climate conference in December. Ban has said
that the world has "less than 10 years to halt (the) global rise in
greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences
for people and the planet," adding that Copenhagen is a "once-in-a-
generation opportunity."

Although the 32-page New York Post is a fake, everything in it is 100%
true, with all facts carefully checked by a team of editors and
climate change experts.

"This could be, and should be, a real New York Post," said Andy
Bichlbaum of the Yes Men. "Climate change is the biggest threat
civilization has ever faced, and it should be in the headlines of
every paper, every day until we solve the problem."

The fake Post's cover story ("We're Screwed") reports the frightening
conclusions of a blue-ribbon panel of scientists commissioned by the
mayor's office to determine the potential effects of climate change on
the City. That report was
released in February of this year, but received very little press at
the time. Other lead articles describe the Pentagon's alarmed response
to global warming ("Clear & Present Disaster"), the U.S. government's
sadly minuscule response to
the crisis ("Congress Cops Out on Climate"), China's alternative
energy program ("ChinaÕs Green Leap Forward Overtakes U.S."), and how
if the US doesn't quickly pass a strong climate bill, the crucial
Copenhagen climate talks this December could be a "Flopenhagen."

The paper includes original investigative reporting as well. One
article ("Carbon counter counts New Yorkers as fools") reveals that
Deutsche Bank - which erected a seven-story "carbon counter" in
central Manhattan - not only invests heavily incoal-mining companies
worldwide, but has recently entered the business of coal trading itself.

The paper has the world's gloomiest weather page, covering the next 70
years rather than just 7 days. The "Around the World" section
describes the disproportionate effects of climate change on poorer
parts of the world, including
extreme droughts, floods, famines, water shortages, mass migrations
and conflicts. Developing countries will bear the brunt of climate
change effects even though they have done very little to cause the
problem.

But the paper isn't all doom and gloom. An article called "New York
Fights Back" notes that the carbon emissions of Big Apple residents
are only one third the national average, and that the city is building
1800 miles of bike paths, planting one million trees, and replacing
its fleet of police cars with hybrids. There's also a page of black-
humor cartoons (in one, Charlie Brown finds Snoopy drowned), a gossip
section that takes no prisoners, and a number of truly cheerful ads -
for sex ("Awesome. No carbon emissions."), tote bags, bicycles, and
tap water ("Literally comes right out of your faucet!").

Another ad promotes civil disobedience, encouraging readers to visit http://BeyondTalk.net
and pledge to risk arrest in a planned global action November 30,
just before the conference in Copenhagen.

"We need strong action on climate change," said David Solnit of
Mobilization for Climate Justice West, one of the partners in
BeyondTalk.net. "But history shows that leaders act only when people
take to the streets to demand it. That's whatneeds to happen now."

This paper is one of 2500 initiatives taking place in more than 130
countries as a response to the "Global Wake-up Call" on climate
change. For more information, visit www.tcktcktck.org/wakeup

Destroy the binary universe

Nice badge

Precarious United for Climate Action in Copenhagen (COP15)

PRECARIOUS UNITED for CLIMATE ACTION (PUCA)
www.euromayday.org

Fighting for Social and Climate Justice. Because Climate Change Makes
All Precarious.

The economic crisis has heavily hit the precariat -- the sum of those
working non-standard, temporary, part-time contracts in services and
industry -- worse than any other social class. Millions of precarious
youth, women, immigrants are being made redundant by the Great
Recession. Unemployment has skyrocketed from the US to the EU, from
Iceland to Japan. Those responsible for the crisis -- big banks,
investment funds, free-market economists and policy-makers --
whitewash and greenwash without shame as if nothing happened and go on
with business as usual. Governments are giving trillions to the
bankers and peanuts to the permatemps. Riots and protests are
spreading as a result, also targeting a new wave of racism and
xenophobia, but the pressure against political and economic power
hasn't yet been enough, although an Autumn of Rage lies in store and
this could change the equation.

Yet on the horizon of this historic capitalist crisis, an even larger
crisis looms: global heating and climate change due to fossil-burning
capital accumulation. Humankind is in danger, and by mid-century
millions and millions could be wiped out from Earth if overdeveloped
economies don't cut emissions, i.e. if we don't bring into line the
major carbon emitters (oil, coal, energy conglomerates, manufacturing
corporations and their logistics, the aviation industry, fast food and
agribusiness, luxury tourism etc.). Copenhagen in December is an
excellent opportunity to do so. On Dec 7-18, the UN Climate Summit --
COP15 -- will take place in the Danish capital, a city with strong
radical traditions and a current history of rebellious agitation. All
the state and economic élites from all the countries of the world will
convene at Bella Center in Copenhagen to seek a successor to the Kyoto
Treaty, including those powers like the US, China, India who hadn't
signed it.

The solution to the precarious question is not going to be found in
the return to the old speculative, overindebted, overdeveloped,
ecocidal, supremely unequal consumer economy of yore, the very same
that has been responsible for the lion's share of greenhouse emissions
deposited in the atmosphere over the last three decades, but in the
fight for a new economic and welfare system built around the social
and environmental needs of the precarious strata of society, ensuring
that each human being on Earth is entitled to the same share of carbon
emissions. To achieve this, we demand fiscal distribution via capital,
corporate and carbon taxation to pay for: basic income for all adults
and finance a reduction in worktime such as the 4-day week, universal
free access to online knowledge, publicly assisted p2p social
production and sharing, free public health and higher education for
all, subsidized green housing and green jobs for all unemployed
wishing to work, socialized banking funding renewable energy and
sustainable living community projects, urban and labor rights of self-
organization and self-unionization, the end of discrimination and
persecution of immigrants and asylum-seekers, right to solidarity
strike and statutory minimum wage of €10/$10/¥1500 per hour, and any
measure geared to giving back power and the possibility of making
power to the people. Redistribution of wealth and power toward the
precarious, growth of immaterial knowledge, cultural enrichment of
society and massive expansion of leisure are fundamental social
conditions for the horizontal, open-source design of a resilient
postcapitalist society, freeing the time to pursue ecohacktive and
permacultural activities, giving the time back to precarized and
frightened people to think collectively about their own future, also
cutting the need for quick consumption and instant satisfaction among
precarious service and knowledge workers in the currently time-starved
global society.

A strongly relational and solidaristic economy would fulfill many of
the needs today obviated by individualized market consumption. We
reject carbon trading (the cap&trade approach) as a non-solution to
the problem of emission cuts, as proved by the complete failure of the
EU emissions trading system. We expect adequate climate reparations
from the old industrial powers of the North to the underdeveloped
economies of the South. We hope the multigendered and multiethnic
precariat can be the social driver for local economies of cooperation,
exchange and mutual aid, food and energy production, just as the
immaterial precariat has been at the core of the climate camp
movement, to which we have participated enthusiastically.

The power of markets and corporations over our lives is backed by
petromilitarism. Fossil capitalism destroys environments as it
precarizes peoples. We must fight it in Copenhagen, all together, to
unmask Barroso's (let's hope the Irish manage to finally sack him) and
Obama's carbon trading and government bailouts for the rich. They'd
better spend that money in social transfers, green jobs and renewable
energy, because the Recession doesn't do discounts and the Earth
doesn't do bailouts: act for social change to avert climate disaster!

Climate Justice Action (CJA, www.climate-justice-action.org, follow
@actforclimate), the global movement network that for a year has been
organizing the December 12-16 protests, is calling all movements to
direct action in Copenhagen in the days from Dec12 (demonstration from
Parliament) to Dec16 (mass action at Bella Center).

On December 12, the precarious organizing the postcapitalist mayday of
precarious and migrants in many cities of Europe and Japan (and
Canada: no border, no precarity! www.euromayday.org) call onto all
friends and accomplices across europe+world to join forces behind the
"Precarious United for Climate Action" banner, joining the
anticapitalist block (http://nevertrustacop.org/Main/SecondCall) at
the big demonstration that will gather every single environmental
organization and activist group on the planet voicing the need for
climate justice and the responsibility of global capitalism for
environmental disaster, marching from Parliament to Summit.

And on December 16, we ask all noprecarity activists to join the
pink'n'black PUCA block to push for climate justice at the RECLAIM
POWER! mass action painstakingly organized by the CJA Movement Network
around the Bella Center on that Wednesday. We will produce
postcapitalist subverts, crisis fortundising, ecohacking, climate
slogans, posters, wotnot, and exhort you to do the same. On Dec 13,
14, 15 look out for actions on production, borders, banks,
agriculture, north-south equity.

Movment Call for Mass Action on December 16:
www.climatecamp.org.uk/actions/copenhagen-2009
Climate Action Calendar and Guide Toward Copenhagen:
http://www.climate-justice-action.org/news/2009/09/13/climate-action-calendar-and-guide-toward-copenhagen/
Twitter: @actforclimate
CJA site: www.climate-justice-action.org

FIGHT FOR SOCIAL EQUALITY: PUSH FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE!

Imperceptible Strategies, Unidentified Autonomous Organizations : A Drifting Seminar

Imperceptible Strategies, Unidentified Autonomous Organizations
:: A Drifting Seminar :: London, September 24 ::

Anarchist and autonomous politics are often associated, in a kneejerk
way, with a celebration of chaos and disorder: a rejection of all
forms of organization. The reduction of radical politics to a cheap
joke ('anarchist organization, what's that?') comes to substitute for
an actual understanding of autonomous organizational practices. Far
from rejecting organization all together, the history of autonomous
politics contains a wealth of different modes of organizing, from the
formation of temporary autonomous zones to affinity group models,
maroon communities to networks and collectives.

These are forms of organizing that not always acknowledged as being
organizations because they do not conform to what it is assumed
organizations necessarily are: durable, static, and hierarchical. This
understanding of organization obscures and makes difficult an actual
engagement with the merits and weaknesses of different forms of
organizing. But what would be found if rather than working from a
fixed and unchanging concept of organization, one that excludes
temporary forms of organization from consideration, it was attempted
to tease out the organizational dynamics from all the temporary
alliances and alliances that appear and disappear?

Might it be possible that we are already enmeshed in a world of
unidentified autonomous organizations, a milieu of potential
liberation that has remained imperceptible because of a narrow
understanding of what organizations are? And might it not be that this
imperceptibly, rather than being a condition to be addressed as a
problem, could rather be part of building of what Robin D.G. Kelley
calls an infrapolitical sphere: a space for politics coming out of
people's everyday experiences that do not express themselves as
radical political organization at all.

The aim of this encounter is to explore the connections between
anarchism, autonomism, and the revolutions of everyday life, drawing
out conceptual tools useful to developing and deepening the politics
of these infrapolitical spaces and organization. How can we strategize
and build from the connections and movements of the undercommons,
working from everyday encounters to compose new forms of social
movement? How can we connect and work between spontaneous forms of
resistance without forcing them into some larger form that ossifies
them?

This event will not be based around formal presentations, but rather
will rather take the form of a drifting seminar. Participants will be
asked to read several pieces of text that will form the basis of
discussion and exploration.

Registration for the event will be approximately 10 quid. There will
be some limited travel funding available. If you wish to be considered
forthis funding indicate this when you register.

For registration and information contact: stevphen@autonomedia.org /
http://www.minorcompositions.info.

Sponsored by the Anarchist Studies Network
(www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk) & Minor Compositions
(www.minorcompositions.info).

NEXT MONDAY: Huge NYC shenanigans - PARTICIPANTS NEEDED!

From The Yes Men...

If you live in New York, please visit http://newyorkbigevent.com/ to
sign up for some GIANT, extremely FUN, potentially WORLD-FIXING
shenanigans on MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21. (Even if you don't, you can sign
up to participate in our "digital fun squad" by clicking the option on
your profile. And if you know any New Yorkers or big Facebook
hobbyists, please forward this email to them!)

Everyone who shows up Monday morning will get a FREE GIFT you can
SHOCK your friends with for years. Even just a few minutes Monday
morning will help. Sign up
now! http://newyorkbigevent.com/

We can't tell you much about what we'll be doing, as the element of
surprise here is crucial. But we can tell you that it'll be huge and
absurdly fun, and when a hundred world honchos meet the next morning
to discuss climate change at the UN, you may have helped set the tone
for progress.

Then, that evening (Monday, Sept. 21), we'll unwind from the action by
dressing up in our very best, er, suits and heading to the global mega-
premiere of climate blockbuster The Age of Stupid (http://www.ageofstupid.net/
). Like us, they've got no advertising budget, but if enough people
see this film, fixing the world could be a bit easier. (LA Times:
"Think An Inconvenient Truth, but with a personality"; News of the
World: "You won't see a more important film this year.") The premiere
will be linked by satellite to 444 cinemas across America and 300 more
worldwide, with special guests Kofi Annan, Radiohead's Thom Yorke
(singing live), Gillian Anderson, Heather Graham, Moby, James Hansen,
Mary Robinson, and the film's star Pete Postlethwaite. As for us, if
you make it to your local theatre that day, you'll see us live on the
satellite feed. Visit the film's website to buy tickets now!

Our own film (http://theyesmenfixtheworld.com/) will be in US theaters
starting OCTOBER 7! It'll be at New York's Film Forum Theater for two
weeks (Oct. 7-20), and then spread out to 23 cities and counting.
Visit our screenings page
(http://theyesmenfixtheworld.com/screenings.htm) to see if your town
is listed.
Check back often for updates!

See you soon!
The Yes Men and a whole lot of friends

p.s. The Sept. 21 events (http://newyorkbigevent.com/ and Age of
Stupid premiere) are part of Climate Action Week in New York. A good
way to warm up is to join an "international photo opportunity"
coordinated by Oxfam on Sunday afternoon, Sept. 20 in Central Park:
the Human Countdown. To register, send your name, email and phone to mailto:jdantas@oxfamamerica.org

Knife Show Outrage

The Space Hijackers hit do it again. http://www.theknifeshow.co.uk

Reclaim Power! Pushing for Climate Justice – a Call to Action

Reclaim Power!

Pushing for Climate Justice – a Call to Action

From the 7th to 18th of December 2009, the largest 'climate summit'
ever to be held will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark. This summit
has been billed as our 'last, best hope' to do something about climate
change. But the UN talks will not solve the climate crisis. We are no
closer to reducing greenhouse gas emissions than we were when
negotiations began fifteen years ago: emissions continue to rise at
ever faster rates, while carbon trading allows climate criminals to
pollute and profit. It is time to say enough! No more business as
usual, no more false solutions!

Reclaiming power from below

On the 16th of December, at the start of the high-level 'ministerial'
phase of the two-week summit, we, the movements for global justice,
will take over the conference for one day and transform it into a
People's Summit for Climate Justice. Using only the force of our
bodies to achieve our goal, our Reclaim Power! march will push into
the conference area and enter the building, disrupt the sessions and
use the space to talk about our agenda, an agenda from below, an
agenda of climate justice, of real solutions against their false ones.
Our action is one of civil disobedience: we will overcome any physical
barriers that stand in our way – but we will not respond with violence
if the police try to escalate the situation.

Change the system, not the climate!

Our goal is not to shut down the entire summit. But this day will be
ours, it will be the day we speak for ourselves and set the agenda:
climate justice now! We cannot trust the market with our future, nor
put our faith in unsafe, unproven and unsustainable technologies. We
know that on a finite planet, it is impossible to have infinite
economic growth – 'green' or otherwise. Instead of trying to fix a
destructive system, we are advancing alternatives that provide real
and just solutions to the climate crisis: leaving fossil fuels in the
ground; reasserting peoples' and community control over resources;
relocalising food production; reducing overconsumption, particularly
in the North; recognising the ecological and climate debt owed to the
peoples of the South and making reparations; and respecting indigenous
and forest peoples' rights.

Global movements for climate justice

Ten years ago at the protests against the WTO in Seattle, a global
movement emerged to proclaim that another world was possible. Today,
this world is not just possible – it is necessary. In Copenhagen, we
will come together from many different backgrounds and movements,
experiences and struggles. We are indigenous peoples and farmers,
workers and environmentalists, feminists and anticapitalists. Now, our
diverse struggles for social and ecological justice are finding common
ground in the struggle for climate justice, and in our desire to
reclaim power over our own future.

Get involved – join our climate justice action!

- Join the Reclaim Power! action in Copenhagen – and spread the
word! We want to generate a sense of excitement, we want our actions
to resonate around the world, and the way to do that is through
countless individuals, groups and movements declaring their intention
to take part.
- Organise events where you live. Get in touch if you want to
invite someone to report on the Reclaim Power! action and the issues
at the heart of our protest

Reclaim Power! Pushing for Climate Justice is organised by Climate
Justice Action. For more information, regular updates on our meetings
and actions, and for news about the global struggles for climate
justice, go to http://www.climate-justice-action.org/

NATO Welcoming Committee website live - Nov 13th day of action

In November the NATO Parliamentary Assembly will meet in Edinburgh. As
anti-militarists we aim to shut it down.

We are calling for a mass demo to try and shut down NATO on Friday the
13th of November, the first day of the assembly.

The NATO Welcoming Committee will provide a convergence space for
activists to converge and stay in throughout the Assembly, as well as
providing food, medical services in terms of street medics and a well-
stocked medics space, legal support through the Scottish Activist
Legal Project, trauma support and other forms of support to activists.
The NATO Welcoming Committee has signed up to the AMN's principles.
These are:

* We embrace a diversity of tactics
* We will not publicly condemn other peoples actions
* We have a respect for life

See you on the streets!

http://natowc.noflag.org.uk

Death From Above

DSEI 2009 - Death From Above

Tomorrow, Thursday 10th September, delegates (arms dealers) from the
DSEi (the worlds largest arms fair) will be sitting down to dinner in
an exclusive hotel in central London to toast their success.

Protecting them will be dozens of UK Police, paid for by the tax
payer, whilst they wine and dine with arms buyers from Libya, China
and other dubious regimes.

We feel the time has come that these arms dealers get to see the other
side of their business, and begin to realize what it feels like to be
on the receiving end of an aerial attack.

As such, the Space Hijackers have managed to 'acquire' a helicopter
and intend to land it bang in the middle of their cushy little dinner,
scattering the foie gras and caviar, and generally spoiling the
carefully polite atmosphere. Let's watch with glee as arms dealers and
dictators see an upfront and personal demonstration of their equipment
in use.

We invite all fellow activists and press to come along to the dinner
in order to give these warmongers and profiteers the welcome they
deserve.

Alas for security reasons we can't release the location just yet,
however details of the secret location will be published tomorrow...

Space Hijackers Over and Out...

http://www.spacehijackers.org/

Artivistic 2009 Call for participation: infracrews

TURN*ON - Artivistic 2009 - October 15.16.17
Call for participation in infracrews

http://artivistic.org/en/content/infracrews

Artivistic is a gathering around the interPlay between art, activism,
and information. This year we're bringing together people who have
thought about sex, social relations, and technology to exchange their
thoughts in various engaging ways. Because power, politics, and social
change operate at every level, all the way down to our mind and
practice. Sex illustrates this perfectly, for it speaks to our manner
of acting out how we see the world, and how thus it moves. And it
moves, irresistibly.

Think about it.

* What kind of world is worth fantasizing about? How do you use
your imagination beyond the body and how does it use you? Fantasy
always plays a role in political projects when we imagine the "world
we want", but how does that fantasy become reality? What feedback
loops are created between what we desire and the lives we live everyday?

* What actually makes resistance irresistible? The different
notions of sex, gender and sexuality draw our attention to the task of
naming. That task can be appropriated in liberating ways. How do we
move away from tired and troublesome terminology in order to create
different relationships that unleash new ways of thinking (and
relating) and new strategies for political action? How can reimagining
sex contribute to a process of decolonization in every sense of the
word?

* What are the alternative infrastructures of sex? How we address
sex might get us somewhere more, say... stimulating, by welcoming the
critical analysis of the production and consumption of sex, and an
exploration of self-organized, even intimate, initiatives.

In line with the self-organized aspect of the upcoming gathering, the
Artivistic collective seeks proposals that intervene in the very
(infra)structure of the event, welcoming proposals that involve food,
space, venue, communications, hardware, software, skill sharing,
documentation, dissemination and so on. The gathering further
encourages submissions that take on the challenge of collective
participation and collaboration, opening onto unconventional praxes
and theses of knowledge production.

In order to contribute to the unfolding of history and the advent of
sexy occurrences, we are looking for people to participate in a
variety of exciting ways. Currently developing "infracrews" to work
with include:

Documentation (infoCrew)

* Documenting the event and TURN*ON more widely or more
parochially with the CKUT radio collective AudioSmut.

* Gathering and sharing TURN*ON information and documentation,
interfacing with Dyke Rivers collective and others.

Food & eating (infraBouffe)

* Promoting a TURN*ON relationship between people and their socio-
natural environment. Plants and animals are people too!
Activities might include gleaning urban herbs and fruits, preparing
meals and decadencies, discussions about sexy food and eating as social.

Space / set-design + material (infraStudio)

* Creating a TURN*ON space conducive to consciousness and
political arousal.

Live blogging + net participation (infraInformationsuperhighway)

* Promoting a variety of corporeal participation. "Detouring" and
taking back virtual participation and blurring the boundaries between
real and virtual. Addressing the corporeality of agency. TURN*ON
internet style!

Reading circle & other nerdisms / autonomous analysis (infraNerd)

* Discussion group on TURN*ON - Live!

Welcome centre (infraTheatrics)

* Welcoming people, communicating "safe space" principles and
encouraging participation over spectatorship (that's why we call
Artivistic a gathering, because it is ostensibly not a spectacle to
witness, but a process to TURN*ON through action or various kinds
(including consensual voyeurism)).

Look-out / safe space area / sexual harassment vibe watching (infraVibe)

* Looking out for non-consensual solicitation, and informing
participants of resources and safe spaces at the event. Offering such
resources and safe spaces. Promoting "sex-positive" engagement and
rendering the gathering as accessible as possible.

Translation (inFranglish)

* Montreal style.

Communications / ideologico-(sub)cultural translation (infraOutreach)

* Talking to all kinds of people about TURN*ON in order to
encourage their participation in their own language of analysis and
practice. Activating TURN*ON in popular parlance and manners.
Outreach. Public
Private Partnerships Baby!

Technology / Geek / projection (infraWires)

* Toyz

These are merely the basic components of the gathering. Many more are
desired. Interested participants are encouraged to propose their own
infracrews and projects. Let's talk about it and take it from there.

If you build it, they will cum.

---> Contact : infra @ artivistic . org

http://artivistic.org

Jim'll Mix It

To right i will

Beautiful Trailer for a new fixed gear film

BOIKZMOIND Trailer from Xynthetic on Vimeo.

Open letter to the Istanbul Biennial

Conceptual Framework of Direnal-Istanbul Resistance Days: What Keeps
Us Not-Alive?

An open letter to the curators, artists, participants of the 11th
International Istanbul Biennial and to all artists and art-lovers.

"We have to stop pretending that the popularity of politically engaged
art within the museums, and markets over the last few years has
anything to do with really changing the world. We have to stop
pretending that taking risks in the space of art, pushing boundaries
of form, and disobeying the conventions of culture, making art about
politics makes any difference. We have to stop pretending that art is
a free space, autonomous from webs of capital and power.
It'€™s time for the artist to become invisible. To dissolve back into
life."[1]

We have read the conceptual framework of the 11th International
Istanbul Biennial with great interest and a grin on our faces. We have
long understood that the Istanbul Biennial aims at being one of the
most politically engaged transnational art events. And what a
coincidence! This year the Biennial is quoting comrade Brecht,
dropping notions such as neolibreal hegemony, and riding high against
global capitalism. We kindly appreciate the stance but we recognize
that art should have never existed as a separate category from life.
Therefore we are writing you to stop collaborating with arm dealers
such as the Koç Holding which white wash themselves in warm waters of
the global art scene and invite you to the life, the life of resistance.

The curators wonder whether Brecht's question '€˜What Keeps Mankind
Alive'€™ is equally urgent today for us living under the neoliberal
hegemony. We add the question: '€˜What Keeps Mankind Not-Alive?'€™.
We acknowledge the urgency in these times when we do not have the
right to work, we do not get free healthcare and education, our right
to our cities our squares and streets are taken by corporations, our
land, our seeds and water are stolen, we are driven into precarity and
a life without security, when we are killed crossing their borders and
left alone to live an uncertain future with their potential crises.
But we fight. And we resist in the streets not in corporate spaces
reserved for tolerated institutional critique so as to help them clear
their conscience. We fought when they wanted to kick us out of our
neighborhoods, from our houses in Sulukule, Gülensu and Ayazma, we
also fought against those who would smear the land with cyanide to
search for gold in Bergama and the Kaz Mountains, those who aggrieved
hazelnut producers in Giresun and cotton producers in Cukurova, those
who blackened the lives of jeans sandblasting workers with the
silicosis disease, making them work for 12 hours a day in unhealthy
conditions in workshops, those who turned the docks into a death camp
at Tuzla by not providing the workers safe working conditions, those
who endanger the lives of the people in the region in Sinop and Akkuyu
by wishing to construct nuclear power plants, and those who caused
workers in Desa and Yorsan to be fired for registering with trade
unions. And our fight and hope keep us alive.

The curators also point out that the one of the crucial questions of
this Biennial is '€œhow to 'set pleasure free,' how to regain
revolutionary role of enjoyment€. We set pleasure free in the
streets, in our streets. We were in Prague, Hong Kong, Athens,
Seattle, Heilegendamm, Genoa, Chiapas and Oaxaca, Washington, Gaza and
Istanbul…. Revolutionary role of enjoyment is out there and we
cherish it everywhere because we need to survive and we know that we
are changing the world with our words, with our acts, with our
laughter. And our life itself is the source of all sorts of pleasure.

And we are in Ä°stanbul and preparing ourselves to welcome 13.000
delegates of the IMF and the World Bank as we do wherever they go. We
declared that we are not hospitable. We will take it to the streets in
the carnival of resistance (1-8 October) and shut their meetings down
down.

Join the resistance and the insurgence of imagination! Evacuate
corporate spaces, liberate your works. Let’s prepare works and
visuals (poster, sticker, stencil etc.) for the streets of the
resistance days. Let’s produce together, not within the white cube,
but in the streets and squares during the resistance week!
Creativity belongs to each and every of us and can’t be sponsored.

Long live global insurrection!

Resistanbul Commissariat of Culture

http://resistanbul.wordpress.com/
http://direnistanbul.wordpress.com/

Resistanbul-Resistance Days Coordination Against IMF and World Bank
will work in September for the preparation and mobilization of
Resistance Days activities and actions. The exact date of the Visuals
Workshop can be followed from the website. For your participation,
suggestions, and more revolutionary information:
direnal@gmail.com

[1] John Jordan, "€œDeserting the Culture Bunker"€, Journal of
Aesthetics and Protest, no 3 www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/
new3/jordan.html

The Best Capitalist Drug

Quote for today...

"The problem of psychoanalysis is the problem of the revolutionary
movement, the problem of the revolutionary movement is the problem of
madness, the problem of madness is the problem of artistic creation."

From - The Best Capitalist Drug - Felix Guattari

Your heart

Abandoned vacuum cleaner

Good for nothing, on the streets.

Crisis Of Credit

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

We've already twitted about this, but watching it again thought it deserved another plug.

What is Radical Imagination: Horizons beyond

CFP Affinities #4 – What is Radical Imagination: Horizons beyond

"The Crisis"

Edited by Alex Khasnabish and Max Haiven

The social crises of neoliberalism, so evident and provocative
throughout the rest of the world, have finally come "home" to the
global North in the form of a cataclysmic financial crisis wreaking
havoc on the lives of people, workers and communities, intensifying
already intolerable injustices and inequalities and justifying the
intensification of surveillance, policing and militarization.

However, we have yet to see here the rise of radical mass political
activity that has marked the landscape of political contention and
alternative-building in the global South. From the Zapatista uprising
to water and AIDS activism in sub-Saharan and southern Africa to
general strikes in Korea to the Bolivarian revolution, the last 15
years has seen radical mass mobilizations animated (if not caused) by
concrete and radical hope for a globalization from below. Yet in the
North the question that has plagued Left scholars since the 60s has
taken on new salience and urgency: why, in the face of increasing
inequality, precariousness and exploitation, in the face, even, of
imminent ecological collapse, do North American elites and governments
enjoy reckless accumulation untroubled by mass movements demanding
radical social and political change?

This issue of Affinities focuses on the importance of radical
imagination to radical social change. On the one hand, imagination
brings to mind utopian fancy, a dangerous and demobilizing escapism,
and forms of collective or subjective delusion which perpetuate the
status-quo. Yet on the other, the ability to imagine the world, social
institutions and human (and non-human) relationships otherwise is
vital to any radical project. Indeed, as numerous commentators and
theorists point out, we can't do without the radical imagination, both
on the level of our movements and on the level of our everyday lives.

This issue approaches imagination as a process by which we
collectively map "what is," narrate it as the result of "what was,"
and speculate on what "might be." And while it is a terrain of
political struggle it is not merely "ideology," a term haunted by its
dubious political legacies. Rather imagination represents a more
rich, agentful, complex and ongoing working-out of affinity, of the
fundamentally political and always collective (though rarely
autonomous) labour of reweaving the social world. This issue, then
takes up the question of the radical imagination as horizons of socio-
political possibility, dynamic and shared visions animating and
animated by individuals and collectives in struggle which guide their
movements toward and create new social worlds..

In a moment where the neoliberal doctrine of "the end of history" and
the mantra "there is no alternative" stumble over massive financial
crisis (over the chasm of even more profound social and ecological
crises), what are the possibilities and perils of the radical
imagination? What is this mysterious thing, so often spoken of or
gestured towards but so seldom analyzed? What is the relation of
radical imagination to radical practice? To radical thought and
criticism? To radical forms of and experiments in affinity,
solidarity and activism? How and where is the radical imagination
manifest? Are there criteria by which we can evaluate acts and
expressions of the radical imagination? (i.e. is it always a good
thing? What makes it "radical"? When? Where? How?) In a moment when
elites have turned to hollow invocations of hope, imagination, and
possibility, how is the (radical) imagination being colonized by the
cultural and everyday matrixes of power relations? By the media? By
racism? By patriarchy? By colonialism? By capitalism? How can this
colonization be fought? At a time when most of the Left seems all too
eager to sacrifice it on the altar of a ubiquitous and tepid neo-
Keynesianism, how can radical imagination be shared, taught, learned
or written? Is radical imagination worth talking about at all?

At risk of demystifying a term whose mystique may be worth defending
this themed issue asks contributors to grapple with the radical
imagination by bringing the concept into dialogue with struggles (or
their absences), past or present primarily though not exclusively in
the global "North." More than just an itinerary of examples of radical
imagination, this issue asks contributors to reflect critically on
these examples towards a better understanding of what radical
imagination might be.

We invite contributions which contribute to the discussion of "what is
the radical imagination" by focusing on concrete sites of struggle,
particularly (but not exclusively) in the global North. Of particular
interest are:

Indigenous and anti-colonial struggles

Migrant and migrant workers' struggles

New forms and spaces of affinity and autonomy, temporary or permanent

New directions in peace, anti-war, anti-militarism and anti-Empire
organizing

New forms of labour organizing (Workers' centres, radical workers'
networks, the IWW resurgence, etc.)

New forms of feminist (anti-)globalization

Emergent or resurgent anti-capitalist tendencies

New anarchist(ic) initiatives

New forms of Queer and trans- organizing

Radical cultural, social or literary practices/interventions

We encourage and anticipate a wide variety of disciplinary,
theoretical and methodological approaches and especially encourages
contributions from those outside academe. In this vein, the editors
look forward to receiving

Essays of 8,000 words or less (to be forwarded for blind peer review -
please remove all identifying marks and include a 150 word abstract)

Interviews with activists, writers or others of between 1,000-8,000
words

750-1,500 word pungent interventions

Creative and non-traditional offerings (please keep in mind the limits
of Affinities' web-based format)

Contributors should consult the Affinities style guide at

http://affinitiesjournal.org/index.php/affinities/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

The deadline for submissions is December 1, 2009. Submissions can be
made via the journal website at www.affinitiesjournal.org.

Information on the submission process and formatting requirements is
available on the site.

Please do not hesitate to direct inquires or pitch ideas to the issue
editors at:

Alex Khasnabish: Alex.Khasnabish@msvu.ca and

Max Haiven: haivenmf@mcmaster.ca

For more information about Affinities, visit http://affinitiesjournal.org/