the vacuum cleaner's day to day dirt

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noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:52:00 +0000

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Kittens and ponies

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:38:00 +0000

By hannah.

Downloading workshop - This Saturday 6th March @ 12.30

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:31:00 +0000

I'm going to be running a BitTorrent & Downloading workshop @ the london freeschool 195 Mare Street - more details http://londonfreeschool.wordpress.com/downloading-workshop/

Blurb:
Downloading files from the internet can be very rewarding but it can also be very dangerous. This workshop will show you the very best ways to get the things you want online – without the risk. We will explore the popular filesharing network bittorrent and also look into the old school method of newsgroups. We will also look into media players, cracking, virtual DVD drives and anything else you want. The demonstration will be on a PC but with guidance points for the Mac. Please bring your laptop along but if you aren't able to – everyone will receive a fact-email at the end.

Please come along & bring your laptop - if you can't I'll be emailing a worksheet to everyone at the end anyway - please forward this to anyone you think might be interested, ta

Falafel Road

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:19:00 +0000

Great project about falafel and palestine. Read about it at falafelroad.blogspot.com.

Scrap Club

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 16:38:00 +0000

Scrap Club was simply amazing. We can't get enough of your love baby. Last night was a pleasure beyond words.

See you next time - http://www.scrapclub.co.uk/

Tina, we salute you.

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:43:00 +0000

Make a very good cup of coffee.

Work Is A Four Letter Word - A workshop by the vacuum cleaner

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:05:00 +0000

Creating a better world can seem like a lot of work, but its often the small things that create the biggest change. Join artist activist the vacuum cleaner for a 6 hour session investigating how we can study our everyday environments, find where the cracks for intervention are, and how to best exploit them.

Throughout the session we will work hands on to produce a short, sharp, shocking intervention of our own. And to disprove that "there is no suchthing as a free meal" a slap up vegan feast is on us.

2pm - 8pm - Thursday 25th March
Stanley Picker Gallery
Open to All
Places limited to 16
FREE but booking essential (on a first come first served basis)

To book your place email - picker@kingston.ac.uk

The Slave

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:32:00 +0000

From the wave to the Slave. Social change not climate change, or lifestyle change either. We're off to get our hair cut.

2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:30:00 +0000

Saturday is the opening day of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. That‚s right, it‚s time for the Oil-ympics, and you can participate!

All you need to bring is Œsports clothing‚ (winter if possible) and a
sense of mischief and fun. Attendees will be divided into three oily teams: ŒBP‚, ŒShell‚ and ŒRBS', all ready to ŒRace to the Tar Sands‚

Ever tried curling? Come along and and help sweep out BP, Shell, and RBS as they all race headlong into the Tar Sands.

There is currently a global „race to the tar sands‰ and the main competitors Shell, RBS and BP are all racing ahead to extract unconventional oil from the Canadian Tar Sands, regardless of the environmental and social costs of extraction and opposition from local communities affected by the extraction.The Canadian Tar Sands in Alberta is one of the single biggest industrial projects on earth, the environmental and social nightmare that is the Tar Sands ˆ is currently producing the dirtiest oil on the planet.

Although the oil is being extracted in Canada, there are direct links to the UK. Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC and Barclays are all invested in the tar sands. Britain‚s very own BP are about to reverse their decision to stay away from the destructive project, making ŒBeyond Petroleum‚ nothing more than a Broken Promise.

This action is in solidarity with Canadian First Nations groups whose lands and communities are being devastated in the name of corporate profit, and who have called for a moratorium on the tar sands.

For more info about the Canadian Tar Sands and the Oil-ympics

http://olympicresistance.net/
http://oilsandstruth.org/controversy-rocks-leadup-2010-olympics

UK Tar Sands Network and IEN

www,tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com
http://www.ienearth.org/cits
Facebook Event:

http://www.facebook.com/?sk=messages&tid=1300895037359#!/event.php?eid=289288529354&ref=mf#wall

CONTACT tarsandsinfocus@googlemail.com IF YOU ARE HAVING YOUR OWN OIL-YMPICS SOMEWHERE ELSE. FEEL FREE TO POST PICS AND VIDEOS FROM YOUR OWN OILY GAMES.

Move on

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:01:00 +0000

No turd runway

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:50:00 +0000

Have in a lovely weekend out with the Heathrow lot. Amazing folk

All charges against the Hijacker 11 have been dropped!

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:24:00 +0000

Space Hijackers - 1
Police & CPS - 0
All charges have been dropped against the Hijacker 11

In the months leading up to London's G20 Summit in April 2009, the British press hyped up police warnings of an impending Summer Of Rage when public anger would erupt over the government's bank bailout. The streets would burn and anarchists would turn the newly unemployed into foot soldiers of the revolution. Thankfully the police calmed the situation by saying whatever happened they were 'up for it'.

Following on from previous projects where we parodied the police, the Space Hijackers decided to take our DSEi-busting tank out for another spin and ridicule the expectations of violence from the Police. We would tart her up as a Mad Max-styled mobile oppression vehicle and don fancy dress on April Fools Day (the date when the G20 summit and accompanying demonstrations were taking place). With Ride of the Valkyries blasting from the sound system, we drove into the city with our bicycle outriders to thrust the sword of satire at the State.

What's all this then? It seems the Police failed to see the humour in a 6-wheeled behemoth manned by the laughing cavaliers of anti-capitalism, arrested 11 Hijackers wearing blue boiler suits and started one of the most bizarre prosecutions mounted in a British court in recent years. In an utter waste of taxpayers' money, we were charged and scheduled for a four day trial facing charges of impersonating police officers, with the intent of decieving the public into thinking we were the real fuzz.

We always refuted these ridiculous claims on the part of the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service and invited people to look over the past 10 years of our work, which the police were well aware of, to see that we have a long history of parody, dressing up and winding up the powers that be.

Thankfully, after finally seeing sense, the CPS have now decided to drop all charges against the Space Hijackers and return our vehicle and belongings.

We would like to thank the Metropolitan Police for this amazing team building exercise they have put us through. As the cost of tens of thousands of pounds to the tax payer, the Space Hijackers as a group are now much more numerous, organised, brave, focussed and optimistic in what we can get away with. We look forward to their continued, if slightly fanatically eager interest in our work; getting our tank back, our compensation and using our new found team skills, to take our forms of protest up to the next more outrageous and cunning level.

We can only assume that the CPS bottled what was heading to be a very very expensive, complete circus of a trial ending in their inevitable humiliation at the hands of the Hijackers, Hodge Jones & Allen Solicitors and our QC.

Michael Wolkind QC, who was briefed on behalf of all the defendants, commented " it was a great surprise when Keir Starmer, the DPP, took time off from the investigation of the death of Ian Tomlinson, personally to confirm the absurd decision to pursue this prosecution. His judgement has been exposed by the late decision to discontinue the case".

In other news, the Space Hijackers now have a whole free week which we’ve all booked off work and therefore intend to spend it causing as much chaos as possible.

“LOUDER THAN BOMBS”: Art, Action & Activism

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:44:00 +0000

“LOUDER THAN BOMBS”: Art, Action & Activism

9 February - 27 March 2010

“Art that cannot shape society and therefore also cannot penetrate the heart questions of society, [and] in the end influence the question of capital, is no art.” Joseph Beuys 1985

7 Weeks, 7 Residencies, 7 Ways to Activate Change

In collaboration with the Live Art Development Agency

STEVEN LEVON OUNANIAN & THOMAS THWAITES / ÁINE PHILLIPS / SEAN BURN / ANSUMAN BISWAS /

STACY MAKISHI & YOSHIKO SHIMADA / PRICK YOUR FINGER / THE VACUUM CLEANER

Programme

Visit our special project Facebook page for updates and further information of public events and activities taking place during each residency.

Week 1

9-13 February

Steven Levon Ounanian & Thomas Thwaites “Honey Trap”

The black-market operates alongside an open economy of security products and theft insurance. It benefits the open market to hype the risks, as goods that are stolen will need to be replaced. Honey Trap is a bicycle designed to be stolen and able to record its own surroundings: relaying sound, images and other information about its subsequent whereabouts. Making a spectacle of the crime, this sensational 'gaze' is certainly uncomfortable, but allows an examination of rights to surveillance and the treatment of crime in the media. “Is our use of someone else’s misfortune or opportunism, in our art project, justified because they stole our bike?”

www.stevenlevon.com

www.thomasthwaites.com

Week 2

16-20 February

Áine Phillips “The Lost Runway”

Using the conventions of the fashion show format, Áine Phillips’ The Lost Runway is a collection of specially created sculptural costumes each dedicated to a ‘lost girl’ as a living personal monument embodying the story of her life. The Lost Runway is an ideological space invested with beauty, desire, loss and longing. The work is a sensitive, poetic and challenging testimonial to missing persons, and the lifelong searches of their friends and families, giving public form to private memory in the service of human freedom and the right to the protection of life.

www.ainephillips.com

Week 3

23-27 February

Sean Burn “Napalm Perceptible: A Dictionary for the BNP”

“Words are weapons. And I’m in a war!” Andrew Vachss

Racism is on the rise and made worse by the recession. We are all defined by language, yet too often our own voices are educated, socialised, classed, gendered, ethnicised, medicated or otherwise removed. Sean Burn - writer, performer and outsider artist actively involved in disability arts - will create a “Dictionary for the BNP”, by interrogating the roots of each entry of a standard English dictionary. Physically deleting all “non-indigenous” words, language will act as the ‘lightning-conductor’ to deconstruct the absurdities of extremist hate.

www.gobscure.info

Week 4

2-6 March

Ansuman Biswas “Present”

“What is there left to give? What do we share now? My gift is the present.” Ansuman Biswas

Gifts can be powerful social binders, but today aid is big business and can be a balm for post-colonial guilt and a lubricant for a post-industrial economy, where poverty and luxury have shifting definitions. Charity can be highly performative; played out in Live Aid, Red Nose Day, Children in Need, and the adoption of third-world babies by Hollywood A-listers. For his residency, Ansuman Biswas will enter the gallery with nothing - no food, no water, no clothing - and remain for one week, throughout which anyone is welcome to bring to him whatever they think he might need or want.

www.manchesterhermit.wordpress.com

Week 5

9-13 March

Stacy Makishi & Yoshiko Shimada

“When I Fell For You I Fell Like The Bomb” / “Sleeping With Your Enemy”

Hawaii-born artist Stacy Makishi and Japanese artist Yoshiko Shimada work independently across a wide variety of media, investigating perspectives on cultural identity, sexual politics, and personal and private memory. Taking two previously instigated projects as their starting point, the artists are collaborating for the very first time. With the legacies of Hiroshima and Pearl Harbour as unavoidable counterpoints - “the bomb has landed in much of my work” says Makishi - they will develop a live project reflecting their shared fascinations with the parallels, ironies and complex histories of political, cultural and sexual relations between Japan and the U.S.

www.stacymakishi.com

Week 6

16-20 March

Prick Your Finger “Murder at the Wool Hall”

Prick Your Finger is a yarn shop and textile gallery in Bethnal Green London that’s putting the rock 'n' roll back into textile and fashion production. Run by Rachael Matthews and Louise Harries, Prick Your Finger is concerned that British textile production has been lost to unethical manufacturing of disposable fashion. By constructing the world's first bicycle powered wool mill, they will turn unwanted sheep fleeces from within the M25 into a range of seductive yarns, good enough for the Queen. “We’re asking the world to listen to sensible ways of profiting from nature without exploitation.”

www.prickyourfinger.com

Week 7

23-27 March

The Vacuum Cleaner “What Difference Does it Make?”

Fighting consumer culture, climate change, authority and injustice (“wherever it hides its filthy face”) are the vacuum cleaner’s bread and butter causes; Creative Resistance, Civil Disobedience, Corporate Interventions, Pranks, Hacktivism and Subvertising, their tools of choice. But with crisis dictating the agenda there has been little time to ask “What Difference Does It Make?” So for the first time the semi-notorious artist-activist will present some of the projects, actions and battles never clearly presented or documented before. Expect Resistance! Expect Anarchy! Expect Something!

www.thevacuumcleaner.co.uk

Louder Than Bombs is a collaboration between Stanley Picker Gallery, the Live Art Development Agency and The Art of Intervention: The Intersections of Public and Private Memory, a research partnership between Kingston University and Kyoto Seika University supported by The British Council.

Cuff My Arse

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:25:00 +0000

Can't see it so clear. But some blessed soul has tagged the Cuff My Arse.

Labor/Liberal "Get a Mac" Parody

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:08:00 +0000

replace Liberal with Tory

Military Intelligence

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:41:00 +0000

Is a contradiction in terms

Cigarettes and Self-harm

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 23:55:00 +0000

Is not an evening wasted. Specially on a Saturday.

Oh Fuck Off

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 13:03:00 +0000

When ad companies scrap the barrel, it often leaves me feeling we deserve the mass misery that ideology is leading to. Or, at least advertising 'creatives' do. Bill Hicks was right, kill yourselves, do us all a favour.

Helpful Wanking?

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 10:56:00 +0000

Does that include a boycott of Natwest/RBS? Or does that include a funding for a my project Wanker Banker, in which a group of people who have lost there jobs during the credit crunch, masterbate from a bridge onto the heads of RBS traders?

Smile

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:19:00 +0000

It wasn't me

Kim Noble's Sperm

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:52:00 +0000

I've got two.

I'm now an art collector

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:19:00 +0000

I've got my very own franko b. Offers over £2000 considered.

The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:21:00 +0000

CJN Statement

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:58:00 +0000

Call for "system change not climate change" unites global movement

Corrupt Copenhagen 'accord' exposes gulf between peoples demands and elite interests

The highly anticipated UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen ended with a fraudulent agreement, engineered by the United States and dropped into the conference at the last moment. The "agreement" was not adopted. Instead, it was "noted" in an absurd parliamentary invention designed to accommodate the United States and permit Ban Ki-moon to utter the ridiculous pronouncement "We have a deal."

The UN conference was unable to deliver solutions to the climate crisis, or even minimal progress toward them. Instead, the talks were a complete betrayal of impoverished nations and island states, producing embarrassment for the United Nations and the Danish government. In a conference designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions there was very little talk of emission reductions. Rich, developed countries continued to delay any talk of deep and binding cuts, instead shifting the burden to less developed countries and showing no willingness to make reparations for the damage they have caused.

The Climate Justice Now! coalition, alongside other networks, was united here at COP15 in the call for System Change, Not Climate Change. In contrast, the Copenhagen climate conference itself demonstrated that real solutions, as opposed to false, market-based solutions, will not be adopted until we overcome the existing unjust political and economic system.

Government and corporate elites here in Copenhagen made no attempt to satisfy the expectations of the world. False solutions and corporations completely co-opted the United Nations process. The global elite would like to privatize the atmosphere through carbon markets; carve up the remaining forests, bush and grasslands of the world through the violation of indigenous rights and land-grabbing; promote high-risk technologies to restructure the climate; convert real forests into monoculture tree plantations and agricultural soils into carbon sinks; and complete the enclosure and privatisation of the commons. Virtually every proposal discussed in Copenhagen was based on a desire to create opportunities for profit rather than to reduce emissions, and even the small amounts of financing promised could end up paying for the transfer of risky technologies.

The only discussions of real solutions in Copenhagen took place in social movements. Climate Justice Now!, Climate Justice Action and Klimaforum09 articulated many creative ideas and attempted to deliver those ideas to the UN Climate Change Conference through the Klimaforum09 People's Declaration and the Reclaim Power People's Assembly. Among nations, the ALBA countries, many African nations and AOSIS often echoed the messages of the climate justice movement, speaking of the need to repay climate debt, create mitigation and adaptation funds outside of neoliberal institutions such as the World Bank and IMF, and keep global temperature increase below 1.5 degrees.

The UN and the Danish government served the interests of the rich, industrialized countries, excluding our voices and the voices of the least powerful throughout the world, and attempting to silence our demands to talk about real solutions. Nevertheless, our voices grew stronger and more united day by day during the two-week conference. As we grew stronger, the mechanisms implemented by the UN and the Danish authorities for the participation of civil society grew more dysfunctional, repressive and undemocratic, very much like the WTO and Davos.

Social movement participation was limited throughout the conference, drastically curtailed in week two, and several civil society organizations even had their admission credentials revoked midway through the second week. At the same time, corporations continued lobbying inside the Bella Center.

Outside the conference,the Danish police extended the repressive framework, launching a massive clampdown on the right to free expression and arresting and beating thousands, including civil society delegates to the climate conference. Our movement overcame this repression to raise our voices in protest over and over again. Our demonstrations mobilized more than 100,000 people in Denmark to press for climate justice, while social movements around the world mobilized hundreds of thousands more in local climate justice demonstrations. In spite of repression by the Danish government and exclusion by the United Nations, the movement for system change not climate change is now stronger than when we arrived in Denmark.

While Copenhagen has been a disaster for just and equitable climate solutions, it has been an inspiring watershed moment in the battle for climate justice. The governments of the elite have no solutions to offer, but the climate justice movement has provided strong vision and clear alternatives. Copenhagen will be remembered as an historic event for global social movements. It will be remembered, along with Seattle and Cancun, as a critical moment when the diverse agendas of many social movements coalesced and became stronger, asking in one voice for system change, not climate change.

The Climate Justice Now! coalition calls for social movements around the world to mobilize in support of climate justice.

We will take our struggle forward not just in climate talks, but on the ground and in the streets, to promote genuine solutions that include:

- leaving fossil fuels in the ground and investing instead in appropriate energy-efficiency and safe, clean and community-led renewable energy - radically reducing wasteful consumption, first and foremost in the North, but also by Southern elites - huge financial transfers from North to South, based on the repayment of climate debts and subject to democratic control. The costs of adaptation and mitigation should be paid for by redirecting military budgets, progressive and innovative taxes, and debt cancellation - rights-based resource conservation that enforces Indigenous land rights and promotes peoples' sovereignty over energy, forests, land and water - sustainable family farming and fishing, and peoples' food sovereignty.

We are committed to building a diverse movement – locally and globally – for a better world.

Climate Justice Now! Copenhagen 19 December 2009 www.climate-justice-now.org

Incredible Edible

noreply@blogger.com (thevacuumcleaner) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 12:45:00 +0000

The famous incredible edible Todmorden, but in snow. So, frozen veg then.