For almost one year now I’ve been roasting coffee as a way to learn a new skill and raise a little income on the side. I have finally committed to a name and a logo for my coffee “Blvd Blend” named for the three boulevards which run through our neighborhood in Chicago. I am still unsure where all this is going, but I am at least confident that the coffee is good, my ordering and delivering systems are in place, and if I ever needed to raise some money fast – that I would be able to do so. This kind of ability to raise cash quickly helps to provide confidence and a sense of stability in precarious times. In the fall and new year I will branch into making nut butter (most likely peanut), the second product in the Misctreats family of yummy. I’m still thinking of names…maybe Naughty Nuts, Blvd Butter, or Nothing But Nut butter?

(2) On Sunday September 12th at 10am I will give a preview presentation of my almost-released/currently being printed book about activist farmers across the US at Mess Hall (http://messhall.org/).

(3) Also, October 1st is the release of the 10th issue of AREA Chicago and the last one which I will edit; Please come by the Chicago Cultural Center from 5-8pm that evening.

(4) And then finally, December 1st at 530pm is the release party for my book Farm Together Now (http://farmtogethernow.org/) at the Chicago Farmstand (across the street from the Chicago Cultural Center. Info will be posted at www.chicagofarmstand.com).

TRANSDUCTORES

Details in english:

TRANSDUCTORES. PEDAGOGIAS COLECTIVAS Y POLITICAS ESPACIALES
. AA.VV

Editorial: DIPUTACION PROV. GRANADA

Año de edición: 2010

Páginas: 287

Formato: RÚSTICA

ISBN: 978-84-7807-496-9

Idioma: Castellano/Inglés

Precio: 10€

This book represents an open document or guide whose aim, in the first part, is to show the theoretical framework of the project’s work, while the second part contains in a summarised form the various projects compiled in the archive.
Regarding the first part of the book, we should first of all like to underline the interrelation of the theoretical texts offered here, due to the complexity of the projects and their multiple dimensions, so that several approaches are possible, whether from artistic and collaborative practice, from political practice or from pedagogy. Grant Kester gives us a general view of collaborative artistic practices, understood outside a mere contrast between reformists or radicals in their manners of political organisation. To this end, his text introduces the distinction between theological and dialogic action, demonstrating how the latter emerges and contributes to contextual collaborations promoting a participative agency. For her part, Aida Sánchez de Serdio presents us with the problematics of specific politics in collaboration projects, based on a redefinition of the political and institutional dimension of culture and art as a specific, complex mode of action, riddle with power relations and operating under several specific forms of organisation and political structures. Finally, Javier Rodrigo’s text attempts to pinpoint the elements making up a possible collective network pedagogy, providing keys and lines of work that can be located in several examples of the projects analysed, that may serve for reconsideration and learning from the practices and the politics of the projects in TRANSDUCERS.

The second part of this publication consists of a number of analytical summaries of the first projects contained in the TRANSDUCERS archive. These summaries were done using each group’s answers to commonly asked questions, to which we later gave structure, unifying the descriptors of each of the projects included. The summaries this show the elements making up the practices and most relevant aspects of the processes carried our (introduction to the group; origin and development of the project; relation with the context and collaborators; methodologies and results; links, networks and dissemination; references and learning; challenges and difficulties). Each summary is also illustrated with a number of photographs showing both the processes, and the contexts and results. At the beginning of each summary, we provide a sociogram, i.e., a map of the social agents brought into play. This diagram also shows the resulting products, the impacts and expansions in each context, attempting to reveal the structural complexity of each practice and, therefore, their collective pedagogies and spatial politics in action.

UCIRA’s State of the Arts (SOTA) has launched! Visit http://ucsota.wordpress.com

24 Hour Master Plan Reading @ UCI

• An introduction to the SOTA project by our guest editor Daniel Tucker (UCIRA);
  
• Teaching the Crisis from Pat Morton (UCR) about her in-class experiences on March 4;
• A reflection on the performance protest Mark Yudof’s Thriller by project organizer Christina Nobel (UCD);
• Eric Morrill (UCI) on the 24 hour reading of the Master Plan of California he co-organized at Irvine;
• Dayanita Ramesh and Lucille (Lucy) Potter are interviewed about their participation in a UCD curatorial class taught by Susette Min where a “Meet the Regents” was organized to coincide with March 4 protests.  Photos by Jane Oh (UCD).

July 28 · 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Location    The Design Studio for Social Intervention 1946 Washington Street, 2nd Floor Roxbury, MA

Groundswell and the Design Studio for Social Intervention present a discussion of mapmaking as an activist practice with Daniel Tucker.

Join us on July 28th at 7:ooPM at the Design Studio! The location is on public transit, is wheelchair accessible, and doesn’t cost a thing.  (Download the poster and see more details here: http://ow.ly/2aktj)

The presentation will focus on Daniel’s involvement with the Experimental Geography exhibit (2009) and his organizing of the We Are Here map archive. We will provide blank maps with the political border of the Greater Boston Area so that we can craft submissions for Notes for a People’s Atlas, to be published in a forthcoming book. We’ll also explore ongoing mapping projects by attendees.  Artists, activists, cartographers, and everyday experimentalists encouraged to attend!

About Daniel:  Daniel has worked as a cultural and political organizer in Chicago for the last ten years. From 2005-2010 he edited AREA Chicago – the print/online publication dedicated to researching and networking local social and cultural movements in Chicago.

Why maps? Because maps are a visual tool for sharing information with others. Because they can be produced by many people and combined together to tell stories about complex relationships. Because maps are never finished and only tell part of a story that can constantly be expanded upon. Because power exists in space, struggle exists in space and we exist in space. Because we cannot know where we are going if we do not know where we are from.

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NYC: 3 WAYS TO DOCUMENT CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

August 2 · 7:00pm – 9:30pm

Location    Bluestockings Books – Worker-Owned Bookstore, Fair-Trade Café, Activist Center 172 Allen Street New York, NY

In the last 5 years Daniel Tucker has co-initiated 3 different large-scale documentary efforts to celebrate and critically understand the development of contemporary social movements. The first and largest effort is AREA Chicago, a publication and event series about art, research, education and activism in Chicago. The second was Town Hall Meetings, a group interview with over 100 socially engaged artists in Baltimore, New York,… Chicago, New Orleans and Los Angeles. And finally, his upcoming book Farm Together Now interviews 20 activist-farmers across the US. For this presentation he will compare and contrast these 3 efforts in an attempt to explain each approach, outcome and challenges encountered along the way.

This event should be of interest to anyone interested in writing, filming, curating, photographing or otherwise documenting contemporary social movements in the US.

Relevant links: http://www.areachicago.com/ http://www.creativetime.org/programs/archive/2008/democracy/townhall.php http://farmtogethernow.org/

Daniel Tucker is an organizer from Chicago. more information is at miscprojects.com

Directions: Bluestockings is located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan at 172 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington – which means that we are 1 block south of Houston and 1st Avenue.

By train: F train to 2nd Ave, exit at the 1st Ave, and walk one block south.  By car: If you take the Houston exit off of the FDR, then turn left onto Essex (aka Avenue A), then right on Rivington, and finally right on Allen, you will be very, very close.  More info www.bluestockings.com 212 777 6028

Throughout the counter-globalization movement and into the era of the Bush Administration, I tried to wrap my head around a way to simply explain what is meant by the term “Neoliberalism”. I would say to classes, friends, and fellow activists that my take was that “Neoliberalism is characterized by privatization, deregulation of labor and trade and the commodification of more intimate and complex aspects of life than previous eras of capitalism had produced.” But then there was the hassle of explaining the “Neo” part, the confused definitions of “liberal” popularly used in the U.S.,the difference between its theory and its practice (often involving a much deeper and more integral role for government than my simple summary could capture). And then comes the “Great Recession”, also known as the financial crisis of 2007-2010, and everything changes.

It is no longer difficult to plainly see the contradictions of the Neoliberal policies of the last thirty years. Especially the role of the United States government in facilitating the maintenance and consolidation of industrial and financial power despite rhetoric of “deregulation and privatization.” The bail-out plan alone makes it hard to deny and easy to understand that the U.S. State is integral and necessary to the recovery and perpetuation of this global financial mess. Canadian political economists Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, and Greg Albo explain this in wonderfully clear terms in their latest book In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives out last spring on PM Press/Spectre Imprint (the imprint is coordinated by Sasha Lilley of the wonderfully insightful podcast Against the Grain).

This short book compiles several essays, many of which were developed for or inspired by the work of the Socialist Project, an independent socialist network based in Ontario. It is easy to tell that all three authors are educators (they all teach at York University in Toronto) because of their methodical approach to communicating their ideas. Key passages from the book are broken down in the final chapter as “Ten Thesis on the Crisis” which reviews and simplifies the history and analysis presented in chapters like “Surveying the Crisis: Is Neoliberalism Over?”; “Crisis Management from Bush to Obama”; and “Labor’s Impasse and the Left” to name a few. It was written as an educational and organizing tool.

What makes this book stand out besides it’s post-crisis analysis of Neoliberalism is its belief in the renewal of the Left and its deep connection to actually existing social movements. So many Marxist historians and philosophers write as if there is no social movement worth engaging or if there is a shout-out to an organizing effort, it reads as if it was pulled from a hat. These authors have put time and energy through the years in supporting organized labor throughout North America, particularly with the Canadian Auto Workers Union where Gindin was research director. The book presents the clearest explanation of the “Defeat of Labor” which has occurred in recent decades, going beyond simplistic descriptions of deindustrialization to elaborate on the interconnectedness between off-shoring, automation, free-trade policies like NAFTA, stagnant wages, and the integration of workers into the financial sector through pensions and real-estate investments. The trio’s focus is not limited to an exclusively Union way forward, and they repeatedly call for the need to connect organized labor to other social movements to renew working class culture and politics as a step towards creating Left political alternatives to capitalism.

The short 129 pages of In and Out of the Crisis make it a useful tool that could be directed towards busy organizers and activists who literally don’t have the time to dig into anything else. And it’s clearly articulated descriptions of the crisis and possible ways forward make it the most generally useful book to come out of this economic crisis. I hope that it can get used to its fullest potential.

- Daniel Tucker, Chicago 7/19/2010

Community-Supported Publishing: Print Media Strategies for Movement Building
AK Press & friends

Friday, June 25 * 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon * Woodward Academy: 1443

For centuries, print media has been an essential part of movement building. From the hand-produced leaflets, pamphlets, and newspapers of our past to todays more widely distributed magazines and books, the ability to print and distribute information plays an integral role in developing and sustaining community structures. What are the ways in which Left and community-oriented publishers both sustain and are sustained by the movements from which they grew? We will also look at strategic ways in which collaborations between the radical print media and like-minded organizations and political projects can strengthen movements for social change.

Research for the Revolution: Radical Research Strategies for Movement Building
Fri, 06/25/2010 – 1:00pm – 5:00pm
Cobo Hall: D2-10

“Research for the Revolution: Radical Research Strategies for Movement Building” will explore research techniques to strengthen our movements, campaigns and organizations. The first half of this four-hour workshop will consist of short presentations on different approaches to research; the second half will consist of small group discussions and practical skills development. While coordinated by the Midnight Notes Collective and Team Colors Collective, numerous other organizations will be participating. Panelists will include radical theorists and scholars, community organizers, academics and public intellectuals, geographers and cartographers, research librarians, and artists. Topics include: co-research, community listening sessions, class composition, radical cartography, interventionist and radical art practices, and the importance of theory. Here the workshop incorporates both strategies as well as nuts-and-bolts skills, and offers various strategies to produce knowledge about and from our movements and the communities of which they are a part of.
With Team Colors and Midnight Notes members, Institute of Anarchist Studies, Radical Reference, Daniel Tucker and Robin Hewlett of AREA Chicago, Julie Perini, Chris Carlsson, and others.

These workshops are part of the A New World from Below block!

By Daniel Tucker

Published in H-Art Magazine (Belgium), June 2010

Das Kapital, the book that changed the world, is the subject of Alexander Kluge’s 90 minute film contribution to this year’s Bucharest Biennale 4 (BB4). Excerpted from the 570 min original, this version of News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx – Eisenstein – Das Kapital was fittingly installed at the Institute for Political Research at the University of Bucharest, a unique space for critical ideas about regional politics. Like all of the BB4 venues, the IPR is not an art institution and embodies the organizer’s goals of using an exhibition to influence the culture and politics of Romania. Included in interviews between Kluge and a range of philosophers, there is a charming dialogue with Hans Magnus Enzensberger about how capitalist crisis can be represented in art. This soon transitions into Der Mensch Im Ding a small film within the film produced by respected Berlin filmmaker Tom Tykwer who uses Marx’s analysis of capitalism to dissect every manufactured material visible in a short slow-motion film scene of a woman running down the street. From the connection between her skirt and the global textile industry to the surprising story of fasteners uses to hold street signs in place, Tykwer elegantly exposes the inescapable complexity of contemporary capitalism in the materials, which make up our lives.

Kluge’s work is presented at IPR alongside the brilliant Golden Age for Children by Stefan Constantinescu and the simple and highly effective The Only Reason by Fereshteh Toosi which presents a 1970s American white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan membership card reading “The Only Reason You Are WHITE Today is Because Your Ancestors Believed & Practices SEGREGATION” detourned to read “The Only Reason You Are A CITIZEN Today is Because Your Ancestors Believed & Practices IMMIGRATION.” The cards were nonchalantly stacked on one of the building’s radiator, free for visitors to take. This casual display method generally worked well, blending the works into the context in which they were presented, even though sometimes it was cramped and difficult to identify which work was by whom and some of the installations seemed haphazard with audio levels off and video loops failing to loop.

Other works from other venues, which stood out, included the Danish collective Fieldwork’s Workarounds – The Politics of everyday life, Åsa Sonjasdotter’s Small Potatoes Make Big Noise, Judi Werthein’s Brinco, the films by Otolith Group, and Spectral Aerosion by Société Réaliste.

In the basement of the IPR is the Magnus Bärtås video Madame & Little Boy, which skillfully blends scenes of interviews with South Korean actress Choi Eun-Hee (aka Madame), footage of the always-impressive North Korean group choreography, and North Korean monster film clips directed by Choi’s ex-husband Shin Sand-Ok. Choi and Shin had been kidnapped by the North Koreans and coerced into jumpstarting their film industry, and their story is told by popular folk-singer Will Oldham who presents their story assisted by traditional Korean picture cards. His presence is initially odd and out of place, though we later find out he is in the barracks nearby to the Nike Missile Station north of San Francisco at the Marin Headlands artist residency. The atomic war context connects to the climate of North Korea’s paranoid culture with the United States, and Oldham explains “in 1969 people had flowers in their hair [in San Francisco]…little did they know that just a few miles away there were 20 little boys” referring to the nickname given to the first nuclear weapon ever deployed, by the United States on the people of Hiroshima, Japan in 1945. Bärtås uses Oldham to create distance between his project and the traditional documentary format. Initially I was confused (why is this person narrating in this way from this place?), and then as he explains the story, shuffling printed photos correlating to the lives of these two remarkable figures, it becomes apparent that it is not important who narrates and in what fashion, as long as the story is compelling and that it is shared.

Storytelling, truth telling and the documentary form are dominant themes of this exhibition of primarily film, video and photographic installations. Felix Vogel, the BB4 curator who has gotten much hype because of his young age of 23, chose the theme of Handlung, a German word strangely translating into both Action and Narrative. The connection between stories and actions is an appropriate conceptual framework for the mostly well-selected works in this show.  It is not overbearing as a theme, but productively connects all of the work in the exhibit.

“The idea of documentary or what is called the essay film were very important for the research of this exhibition, though I am not so interested in documentary in the classical sense.” Vogel explained to me in an interview following a discussion he facilitated with the artists in the show. “I am interested in documentary if it can involve going beyond mimetic representation of reality. If something else happens, if different narratives evolve, different formal executions occur…I am interested in how artists are changing documentary. I think most of the artists in this show would have something against [being labeled documentary makers]. There is a suspicion of documentary, and this combination of facts and fictions, fictionalization of factual material, is much more important to this exhibit than just [traditional documentary production]. The works in BB4 are intended to introduce action in a way that traditional documentary does not encourage.”

Earlier, during Vogel’s discussion with the artists, he was utterly unprepared to facilitate, awkwardly asking the audience if his discussion prompt was ok: “What role does narrative play in your practice and how are you transforming those narratives in your work?”

And then the drama started.

“Its not about narratives.” Exclaims BB4 participating artist Jean-Baptiste Naudy (member of Société Réaliste from Paris). “I am a professional artist, which means I pay my rent, feed my daughter, buy clothes, Champaign and kebab while practicing art. This event has been produced; there are lots of people involved in putting on such an event. All of the people that work here, the press, the artists. Everyone is a professional. And everyone is being paid. Because it is your work. I know that you fundraised a lot of money to produce this event. I guess you have an agreement with the Hotel Intercontinental in order for me to sleep in a five star hotel. On Monday I was sleeping in a park and tonight I am sleeping in a very nice, good, fancy, expensive bed.

And my question is how is it possible, that in an international event like this one that pretends to raise questions about political economy, possibility to produce differences and open the field of knowledge and consciousness…how is it possible that I don’t even have 20 euro of per diem?…How do you pretend to contest the dominant political economy while you have people working to produce your damn event who are not getting paid! I know there are people in this exhibit who were paid, and I was not. Why!? We can talk about theoretical things, we can talk about abstract things, but this is reality. I am a worker, a proletariat, I am producing works for your context and I am not paid!”

Then people start clapping, as many artists had expressed frustration over having production budgets but no payment for their labor. People were also frustrated by the censorship of one of the pieces in the show by one of the venues, which resulted in a last-minute reshuffling and editing of the show which left some works cut in half, cramped, and poorly installed. There was clearly conflict in the room and around this exhibit.

Vogel tried to deflect and to respond, “I think it’s supposed to be about some other questions but I will answer your question briefly. The pay was based on embassies and sponsors and it’s according to their rules and not ours. We did raise money, but everything is still on a very low [budget]…”

Naudy cuts him off: “Are you paid?”

“Yes…” Vogel replied

“Well I am not!”

Slam! Went the door behind Naudy and everyone was startled. The audience was silent and for the rest of the evening, the conversation never really regrouped.

The other artists I spoke to confirmed they were not paid by BB4 to come to the opening, that they had negotiated that money from their home country’s art councils. Razvan Ion (co-director of the Biennale), stood up and grabbed the microphone from Vogel, furiously reprimanded the audience and the participating artists, “When someone behaves this way and you applaud when you don’t know nothing, that’s perfect – you can follow the same way! I don’t care because I don’t make any money out of the art world. The explanation is this: Jean-Baptist was paid completely and entirely by the French Institute…If he wants to fight with someone then it should be the director of the French Institute and his own embassy and not with me or with him [gesturing to Vogel]. The artists which have a per diem, have it from their own [countrys’s] cultural institutes…this is the real situation, and if you continue on these topics it is really offending. You come to Bucharest from somewhere in the West and try to tell us how rich we are and how poor you are. That is not a topic…and this kind of behavior is not really acceptable.”

Again, the room was silent. People’s concerns not really resolved. Naudy’s outburst and the subsequent applaus represented a clear desire to engage in this subject. Vogel’s lack of preperation and faciliation opened the door for such anger to take hold of the room. As Ion dramatically walks back to his seat, he hears the silence and exclaims “And now you can applaud. I think I deserve an applause, OK?”

I asked Vogel to reflect on how this experience might effect his career in the arts, how it might influence him? “It is my hope that my innocence, lack of legacy and of experience, can benefit the show. Its not like it’s my 12^th biennale. It is important to me to try to retain this fresh outlook somehow, so that I can go into a new context with a very fresh mind from the beginning.”

But I hope that Vogel, Ion and the team who put together the incredibly rich BB4 will not remain innocent in the face of their experiences. This conflict that emerged, however misguided or misplaced, is an important debate to have. In order for BB4 to move from conceptually questioning the dominant narratives that construct reality to really doing it – they have to address the material conditions which Kluge and Tykwer address in exhibited works of art. I have never experienced such palpable tension in a forum for contemporary art. This is exciting and makes the works so much more alive and real.

[Note: I wrote a different review of the same exhibit which focused on different artists for Art-Agenda]

On the Bucharest Biennale 4: Handlung. On Producing Possibilities 21 May – 25 July 2010

Published in Art-Agenda

I have always wanted to show how … your problems are also our problems and vice versa but I also wanted to show the way which our histories are interwoven and dependent on one another. I think we have to continue to place socialism and post-socialism in a larger context, we must continue to ask the difficult questions and search for the complicated answers. There are too many stereotypical narratives.

–Agnes, Stockholm (April 10, 2008)

In Stefan Constantinescu’s The Golden Age for Children, the above excerpt appears in a lengthy letter from a Swedish friend of the artist who shares his concern with the legacy of Communism in Romania. The piece, a colorful pop-up book complete with pull tabs and 3D archival photos jumping out from every page, stands out because of its humor and craft and also as one of the works which best exemplifies the exhibit’s theme. Constantinescu created the work in order to recount his experience – living under the regime of Ceausescu – to his daughter. In the process he encounters the challenge of telling the story and of passing on history to younger generations as he weaves text and photos from his own life with briefly stated historical facts in textbook form.

This year’s Bucharest Biennale is focused on the conceptual framework of “Handlung,” a German word which translates into both plot and action. The curator, Felix Vogel, has brought together 37 works that intersect documentary, contemporary art and storytelling. Vogel also wanted the exhibition to engage the city of Bucharest, the capital of Romania, as a site of Handlung – a place where action might be crafted, and where the audience is forced to navigate the complex urban terrain to simply participate and view the works. This is exemplified through the local relevance of the works that address the Romanian context such as Åsa Sonjasdotter’s Small Potatoes Make Big Noise, which examines the conflict between biologically diverse food grown in small gardens and the narrow-minded regulatory regime imposed on new EU countries. This is further emphasized in works that involve specifically urban and spatial themes like Spectral Aerosion by Société Réaliste which elegantly carves out of a slab of wood the palimpsest of borders imposed on Europe over the last 2000 years.

What is most engaging about this exhibition concept is it’s framing of art as a kind-of storytelling – narrating life and creating it at the same time. The Otolith Group approaches this blurry line in their futuristic video titled Otolith, set in the 22nd century and looking back at the life of group member Anjalika Sagar from the perspective of her future descendent. The beautifully slow (and often slow-motion) film addresses political agency, the influence of the USSR on Indian Socialism, and the Cold War themes of nukes and space exploration. It is at times difficult to follow, but captivating just the same, watching the actress float in zero-gravity while sleeping in a disoriented future reality. Here we all live in zero-gravity chambers because our inner ears (also known as the otolith) have lost proper functioning.

BB4 Handlung is an emerging space for dialogue and debate. The organizers claim to want to use these exhibitions to change culture in their country, and in the process have encountered significant conflict along the way. The Geological Museum, one of the exhibition venues that caters largely to children, censored the work of Kaucyila Brooke for being pornographic, just days before the organizers failed to find another venue. Other participating artists’ works were rearranged and downsized to accommodate the change in layout with no public acknowledgment, leaving some works feeling literally cut in pieces. A local group citing male chauvinism on the part of the organizers announced an action entitled Queer Bucharest Biennale, which would creatively confront the exhibition (though no evidence of this could be found at the opening in late May). A participating artist used a panel discussion to shout his concerns about the economics of the exhibition and a perceived inequality in the artists’ fees before storming out the door and leaving the audience in a haze of confusion. These conflicts and critiques seem productive and useful – they represent “difficult questions.” It is my hope that the organizers can find a way to respond to them and not shy away from the hard work it takes to change peoples minds in the “search for complicated answers.” If this happens, the Bucharest Biennale is sure to write its own narrative, chart its own path, and earn the respect needed to change culture in Romania and perspectives on post-Socialism abroad.