intellectual properties

youwillhavetolearntolookattheskyagain (post #14)

http://www.themorningnews.org/article/the-city-is-wilder-and-kinder-than-you-think (2/9/12):

The poems on Old Street are set in capital white letters on a brushed black background, in a sort of mangled Futura; it’s a type treatment that should send his words running and screaming through the streets but somehow does not. Instead, the words lean calmly against the wall and arouse a kind of subtle and unnoticed reflection. People pass by on their way to or from here or there. They do double-takes and slow down. Intrigue wraps their faces. They stop, read, think, and eventually move on, carrying something with them that maybe wasn’t there before. Something that came free, silent and unexpected, set in capital white letters on a brushed black background.

“I’m an acolyte of Situationist ideas,” Montgomery says, referring to Situationist International, a group of 20th-century European revolutionaries who used public art installations to capture people’s attention, ask questions, and express ideas. “Their influence on me is far reaching. But the key introductory idea is perhaps Guy Debord’s idea of the spectacle, by which he means loosely the coalition of capitalism and the media.”

Debord, a French social theorist, writer and filmmaker, helped to form the SI in 1957. In his influential book, The Society of the Spectacle, he suggests that the combination of capitalism and the mass media will lead to a society dominated by false images, and that these images will act as a spectacle isolating people from reality. Debord eventually shot himself through the heart in 1994 in a small village in Auvergne, France.

“What Debord and the SI really get into,” Montgomery says, “and what sets them apart from much other post-Marxist thought, is questions of what capitalism does to us on the inside; in the inner sphere of life, to our hearts and minds, almost to our karmic sphere. I think those questions have never been more pertinent, especially in this historical moment when it is inarguably clear that capitalism in its current extreme form is not only immoral, but technically flawed.”

…

Montgomery’s poems hang near the vacant Old Street Magistrate’s Court, where, until recently, a group of Occupy London protesters had been squatting. “If you look at what Occupy are doing,” he says, “I think we’re finally seeing a positive international forum for positive change to the global financial system. That’s if we listen to them and don’t marginalize their voice.”

Emma is a 42-year-old Occupy camper and writer. She says she thinks it’s important to see artwork like Montgomery’s in the public realm. “Reclaiming public space is vital,” she says. “Art, music, poetry, performance, debate, conversation—these are the things that bring us together, that lead us out of our isolation, that allow us—the 99%—to connect, to share, and eventually, to mobilize. Every attempt to stimulate conversation regarding how we live now and how we could do it better is valuable.”

love in 2012

“It is essential that we realize once and for all that man is much more of a sex creature than a moral creature. The former is inherent, the other is grafted on.”

–Emma Goldman

.::.

what, you want a love story? read this:

On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning

By Haruki Murakami

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.::.

i will be in the lovesick5 fashion show tonight @ MightySF

life cycle

yoga lessons: balancing tensions

the worst thing you can do for your own karma is to judge someone or an action as right or wrong.  while we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn’t. It’s a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less.

 .::.

the bow and arrow analogy: you need the right amount of tension in the bow for the arrow to hit the mark. not too light. not too hard. find that balance.

 .::.

i generally don’t do hot yoga.  tonight i went to yoga with my friend Faern and sweat more than i have since new york in july. at first i hated it, being all slippery.  but after a while i started to enjoy it. maybe not the slippery, but the feeling of sweat. out of every pore.  in the final savasana, thinking of these two ideas above, i decided to try to change thinking on a few things for myself, things i’ve maybe been holding onto or feeling attached to, tense over, and i left feeling lighter, and not just from all the lost water weight.

QOTD: Behaviour Guide

@occupyoakland: means and ends (post #13)

on the discussion of whether “black bloc” tactics are useful to social movements:

1. Interview with Chris Hedges:

We’re continuing our discussion of wanting to take the influence of money out of politics with Author and Truthout columnist Chris Hedges. Overturning Citizens United is just one step, but for those that have been monitoring the Occupy movement for over the last four months, they know that it’s about much more. But where does public opinion stand on Occupy now that the majority of the camps have been evicted? Now that we’ve seen in some cities, violence come into play, in what’s meant to be a peaceful movement. Hedges pin points the black bloc anarchists, and calls them the cancer within Occupy. And says that if their confrontational tactics begin to shape public opinion, and allow local governments to justify draconian forms of control, the Occupy movement is finished.

UPDATE 2/8/12: REBUTTAL TO HEDGES ET.AL.: THOSE WHO ARE AGAINST BLACK BLOC TACTICS DON’T UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT

Chris Hedges’ “Black Bloc” takedown is only the most recent in a series of critiques bashing anarchists and “diversity of tactics” within the national Occupy movement since January 28th’s fog of tear gas has dissipated. While previous criticisms came from the right or center of the political spectrum, these perspectives are arising from the left and mainly from journalists who have not been in the field to witness these tactics in action and within context…

…Some in Occupy Oakland call a consistent pacifist protest approach a “position of privilege” – a position taken by those who have not been in a situation where they have needed to defend themselves against violence, be it economic, physical or otherwise. –Susie Cagle, Truthout

 

and to add a counterpoint to that, there is the Anonymous statement:

“This issue has been discussed many times during the past several months, and there appears to be a popular consensus that your tactics of chilling and intimidating the citizen press, breaking the windows of small businesses, terrorizing innocent employees and bystanders, and sometimes outright assaulting occupy protesters are unacceptable. You are at best misguided, harmful, and idiotic in your actions.”

the debate goes on and on.

2.  from Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment with Russia (the Afterward):

“The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution–particularly the Socialist idea-is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class. It is the conception of a purely physical change, and as such it involves only political scene shifting and institutional rearrangements….

There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another. This fallacy is a potent menace to social regeneration.  All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim.   The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical…

…Applied in practice it means that the period of the actual revolution must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the new life, the new house of humanity. As such it must be of the same spirit as the new life it wishes to achieve, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.

Today is the parent of tomorrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future.  That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated by the revolutionary activities. The latter can only serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life if they are built of the same material as the life to be achieved. Revolution is the mirror of the coming day; it is the child that is to be the human of tomorrow.

(thx @aB)

i am still all for the Occupy movement and its goals as a whole and support the factions that i think are doing Good, and many groups are!  they are being organized, functional, systematic, collaborative! so this is in NO WAY an indictment of those who have been working hard to put nonviolent principles into place for this movement. but particularly in Oakland, many still feel that black bloc is part of the “diversity of tactics” needed (that is: without some violent pushback, the pacifists will just get walked on).

even though that Susie Cagle update above is a most excellent rebuttal showing the complexity of this issue of “diversity of tactics”, which i was very glad to read and you should too,  I’m with Anonymous and Goldman, and the black bloc tactics of the OccupyOakland movement (not all, but some, and enough) is not being the change i wish to see (and YES I KNOW THE MEDIA IS SKEWING IT HARD).  there is enough violence in oakland that most residents would like it if the “black bloc” would rethink before they provoke an all out riot again. i mean:  THERE ARE PROTESTERS PROTESTING THE PROTEST  (which i think was AWESOME and IMPORTANT). we don’t need self-appointed pseudo-anarchists making it worse, trying to “prove a point” against the OPD.  (+please note that in post #11 i did advocate that the police leave protesters alone, that they are only making it worse and are certainly a huge part of the problem.) we all know how the OPD is. they’ve shown themselves repeatedly. the only point being proven now is that violence begets violence.

3. not to get all hippie on it but didn’t John Lennon teach us anything?

“We’re trying to sell peace, like a product, you know, and sell it like people sell soap or soft drinks. And it’s the only way to get people aware that peace is possible, and it isn’t just inevitable to have violence. Not just war — all forms of violence. People just accept it and think ‘Oh, they did it, or Harold Wilson did it, or Nixon did it,’ they’re always scapegoating people. And it isn’t Nixon’s fault. We’re all responsible for everything that goes on, you know, we’re all responsible for Biafra and Hitler and everything. So we’re just saying “SELL PEACE” — anybody interested in peace just stick it in the window. It’s simple but it lets somebody else know that you want peace too, because you feel alone if you’re the only one thinking ‘wouldn’t it be nice if there was peace and nobody was getting killed.’ So advertise yourself that you’re for peace if you believe in it.”

love fashion music 2/11 + 2/14

i am excited to be in two locally made and produced fashion shows in the next week:

this saturday 2/11, Opel’s 10-year anniversary party @mezzanineSF (aww….so many SF music collectives are entering their tweens!) with a hot fashion show featuring two of my SF faves, Tamo and Silver Lucy .

then 2/14, it’s LoveSick 5 (for which i did the promo, if you haven’t seen).  i don’t know what we’re going to do but it will be twisted.

Alexandria von Bromssen, Jasmin Zorlu, Amy Fink,  Tamo Design, Miranda Caroligne, Kathleen van der Spek, My Dirty Dishes,  Josie Adele,  Benzo Couture, Velvet and Horns, Bradley D. Jordan & Danielle Petty will have their lingerie & fashion show, with live music from the Goldenhearts and a special appearance by performance artist Bad Unkl Sista.

Beyond Aesthetics: Occupy Art (post #12)

following up on my last #occupy post……

the Muppets have taught us so many things since 1976. and this week, they’ve taught us just how well popular Art can be used to call bullshit:

Watch: The Muppets Diss Fox News:

 Miss Piggy was more combative and political; the puppet added that the charge was “almost as laughable as accusing Fox News of being news.”

(this is a response to this)

have the Muppets always been so intense?

anyway, i love it, and this is a great segue for me to post some of that which i recently wrote for my art school application on the subject of the current state and intersection of art vs. politics in America. this is definitively the longest post i’ve ever published, but if you’re interested, read on….

Continue reading »

my Wells Fargo story (every day is bank transfer day)

i closed my large corporate bank accounts and switched banks in November to the New Resource Bank in SF, but hadn’t closed my Wells Fargo acct because I had to resolve some autopay links, etc. The balance has been below $100 since November. Then WF started charging me $12/month to keep the account open. So today I went to the bank to ask them to stop charging me the fee, without mentioning my NRB switch or any threat to close my acct (not antagonistic is my point). And, long story short, they said they couldn’t stop charging me the fees. There was $32 in that account today. And on Feb 10th they are going to take almost 1/3 of that out in fees if the account stays open. I have another bank account, but they don’t know that. What about the single mom, or poor old lady, who really only has $32? WTF Wells Fargo.

It wasn’t that the Rep didn’t try to help me. Because he said he could do nothing about the fees, he tried to open me a new account – a STUDENT account, since it only has $3 monthly fees. But that’s what’s messed up, is that the employee felt the new bank rules were so strict that he had to go that route, that i would have to cancel the account i’ve had since 1998 and open a totally new one instead of just STOP CHARGING ME THE FEES.

Anyway, I’ll be closing my account with them now. And if you still haven’t switched yours, think about it. EVERY DAY IS BANK TRANSFER DAY.

5.6 Million Americans Have Switched Their Banks In The Last 90 Days
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/02/417054/americans-moving-banks-90-days/?mobile=nc

occupy everything. (post #11)

last night at the salon, a nice older woman sitting next to me asked, “so what happened with the Occupy? why did it all go so bad? it makes me so sad, i watch the news and i want to cry. i wanted good things to happen.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/the-first-casualty-of-fairness-is-the-truth/2012/01/30/gIQA2VYneQ_blog.html

“You know what you don’t see much of these days? Those moist-eyed bloggers’ odes to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Gosh, remember the columns telling us these people had a noble political agenda? Seems like just yesterday the lefty bloggers were picking through polls, telling us the American people embraced the OWS gang. But then protest turned to filth, and high-mindedness turned out to be just plain-old stench.

To write such loving tributes to OWS took extraordinary discipline, I suppose. Not to actually look (or smell) and determine who the real Occupiers (as opposed to the Occupiers refashioned for the readers of the New York Times and the Nation) were must have taken real will-power, especially since the encampments in major cities (as in the District) were only a few blocks from the journalists’ offices. Had they taken a peek or inhaled on the way to work they would have discovered the real Occupy movement.

Zack Munson reports: “There are lots of bearded folks (male and female), lots of dirty tents, some college students, the unemployed, the career homeless, some white people dancing out of rhythm to rock music played over a loudspeaker. The ‘movement’ itself is still a jumble of anti-capitalist/police/government rhetoric and pointless noise and pungent smells.” Oh, well, who wants to write about that?”

it’s true.  i haven’t wrttien about OWS/OccupyOakland in over a month, but it is not because i think the shine wore off to reveal a bunch of dirty hippies.  in fact, the opposite is true. i think once the new smell and initial popculture interest wore off, who was left was a bunch of super invested people who have since then been heads-down entrenched in making things happen, not out there in the camps but in smaller working groups, in meetings, behind closed doors. see: the Alternative Banking Working Group, for example.

and despite all the negatives, the movement has been effective — causing democratic change on issues local and global, from healthcare to home evictions to school funding, not only in the higher-profile cities like New York  and D.C. but also in small towns across the U.S. …. not to mentioned having kicked the door open for a lot of other progressive non-Occupy NGOs and social and cultural groups to take a stand. The Media, of course, chooses to only focus on the the bad apples.  this is true for nearly every single aspect of society, not just OWS, and everybody knows it. so why don’t people question what they see on the news more often?

i told the woman at the salon to try to look up other places to read about Occupy, and that while i am not actively involved much  personally, i know many amazing, hardworking people who are and i know, without any question or doubt, that they are doing good things with the right intentions.

“The breadth of this movement is one thing, its depth another. It has rejected not just the particulars of our economic system, but the whole set of moral and emotional assumptions on which it’s based. Take the pair shown in a photograph from Occupy Austin in Texas.  The amiable-looking elderly woman is holding a sign whose computer-printed words say, “Money has stolen our vote.” The older man next to her with the baseball cap is holding a sign handwritten on cardboard that states, “We are our brothers’ keeper.”

The photo of the two of them offers just a peek into a single moment in the remarkable period we’re living through and the astonishing movement that’s drawn in… well, if not 99% of us, then a striking enough percentage: everyone from teen pop superstar Miley Cyrus with her Occupy-homage video to Alaska Yup’ik elder Esther Green ice-fishing and holding a sign that says “Yirqa Kuik” in big letters, with the translation — “occupy the river” — in little ones below.” – Compassion Is Our New Currency

last weekend in Oakland  there was another Occupy vs. OPD clash when Occupy tried to take over an empty building.  before you keep reading,  WATCH THIS VIDEO.

the press and City Hall reported that the Occupiers were breaking into buildings and harrassing police and that, 6 months into the movement, all this is is a temper tantrum on the part of entitled youth and rabblerousers who should find better uses for their time and stop being a public nuisance.  but here is the perspective from Occupy:

http://occupywallst.org/article/regime-change-oakland/

“In Oakland, thousands of active community members chose to engage in true democracy by supporting the real and pressing needs of the people. The state, which supposedly represents these people, exercised extreme police brutality and violence to protect the 1%’s vacant assets. The explicit goal of the action was to build community—to open a desperately needed community center with a library, medical care, free education and emergency housing in a city that has suffered massive budget cuts, high unemployment rates and ravaged public schools. In response, the city government poured hundreds of thousands of dollars, bullets and canisters of tear gas into declaring open war on these parents, students, workers, artists, teachers, children and veterans. These people’s only offense was to believe so deeply in the American tradition of democracy, self-sufficiency, and sacrifice for the next generation that they were willing to put their bodies on the line to make this nation the empowering democracy that we know it can be.”

And here is a journalist’s first hand account of the situation, and being unlawfully arrested: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/journalists-arrested-occupy-oakland

so yeah, there are obvious issues with people taking over public buildings and setting up DIY healthcare units etc.  not up to code, health violations, blah blah blah.  but what i don’t understand is why the City can’t just,……let them try? see what happens?  wouldn’t that cost FEWER CITY DOLLARS AND RESOURCES than hiring an outside army of police to shoot rubber bullets at citizens, people trying to create for their communities what the government has neglected to protect or provide?

which leads me back to reiterate that the main success of this movement has been to get people to WAKE UP.  maybe they’re waking up to an American Dream Turned Nightmare, but if that’s the case then if Occupy stands for anything it’s this: STAND UP AND FIGHT. OCCUPY EVERYTHING that matters to you.

The Ultimate Culture Jam

http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/100/spiritual-insurrection.html

“We awoke one morning to the dark realization that humanity is being dragged into a black hole of ecological, financial and spiritual catastrophe … that our democracy has been seized by a corporatocracy … that every day two hundred species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become forever extinct … that a deluge of advertising is sleepwalking our civilization to the brink of insanity … and that unless we fight back in the most visceral and creative way possible all will be lost.

And yet, what sets our struggle apart in 2012 is that we are not fighting to save a distant future. We are not trying to prevent some terrible event that is still to come. This is not about our unborn grandchildren. Instead, many of us sense that the threshold has already been crossed; the tipping point has already happened and what we are fighting for is our present. We are living in that tragic moment of eerie stillness where the fatal damage has been done, widening cracks can be seen, yet the edifice still stands and business as usual continues … but for how much longer?

Our days may be shadowed by this dark realization, but there is reason to be deeply optimistic for “where danger is, grows the saving power also.” Never before has the tantalizing possibility of a Global Spring, a worldwide people’s insurgency for democracy, seemed as close. For perhaps the first time in human history, we just might be on the edge of an everywhere-at-once revolution against the financial fraudsters, corporate lackeys and the ideology of consumerism that has brought the Earth to the precipice of collapse.

In this, the era of the total and transcendent indignato swarm, we look to each other, not to the masters above, to find out what it will take to pull off the ultimate culture jam: spiritual insurrection.”

this post is to be continued, in the vein of CULTURAL TRANSFIGURATION: OCCUPY ART.