LAST SUNDAYS
Arts & Labor’s Alternative Economies
Monthly Meeting

April 28th –> 11am-2pm

Roebling Tea Room
143 Roebling St [google map]
Williamsburg Brooklyn

open meeting = open agenda
…
artist resource guide booklet
new collaborations
new partners
new projects
…

rsvp-> al.altecon(AT)gmail(DOT)com

http://artsandlabor.org/alternative-economies

Building the Common(s): Social movements, Tools, and Initiatives

Thursday, February 14th
16 Beaver street #6, NYC

facebook invite

6:00 Doors

6:30 – 8:00 Part 1: Intro to the context of today’s commons inquiry w/ discussion on The Great lakes Commons Initiative (Bradley) & Madrid City Commons Charter (Lopez).

8:00 – 9:30 Part 2: Dinner – Revolutionary Love & continuing the inquiry: Reclaiming a common(s) in the city/community kitchen/building meshworks of mutual aid in the city/Citizen’s Rescue Plan.

Making Worlds invites you to a discussion with individuals currently participating in the development of commons charters: Isidro Lopez (Observatorio Metropolitano-Madrid-Spain) and Alexa Bradley (Great Lakes Commons Initiative). We will learn about these two projects, as well as explore the potentialities of Commons Charters, and the concept of the commons in general, as useful tools for social movements.

Essentially commons charters are documents created by communities seeking to take back control of their livelihoods. The most famous is The Magna Carta’s often overlooked Charter of the Forest written in 1066 by the commoners of England demanding their right to use the land for their common needs: grazing, wood for cooking, peat for fuel, and fishing rights to name a few. In recent years, different initiatives throughout the world have recovered this kind of documents, as is the case of the Carta de los Comunes (Madrid, Spain), and the Great Lakes Initiative (US-Canada).

After this first part, we will break for some food. For those who would like to contribute to dinner in some way, you can prepare something to bring and share, or alternatively bring bread, cheese, olives, nuts or vegetables that can be eaten raw, or bring something to drink. It would be good to avoid packaged/processed foods.

The second part of the evening, we will try to resume the discussion focusing on some initiatives or efforts that could potentially address these concerns in New York, Madrid and beyond.

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Guests:
Isidro Lopez will discuss his involvement with Observatorio Metropolitano and the “Carta de los Comunes”, a Commons Charter for the city of Madrid (Spain) elaborated collectively in 2011.

Alexa Bradley will discuss her current work with the Great Lakes Commons Initiative, a broad organizing effort to catalyze a cross border citizen movement to put human need, ecological survival and democratized decision making at the center of the Great Lakes governance.

Related Articles:
Carta de los Comunes (in Spanish; Madrid)
(free download – a donation is recommended – at the bottom of the page)

The Great Lakes Are Declared a Commons (Onthecommons.org)
A diverse group of activists from both sides of the border declares the lakes a common endowment

Further Reading:
On the Commons: A Public Interview with Massimo De Angelis and Stavros Stavrides. by Anarchitecture (two perspectives interweaving theories on the commons, with practical examples, propositions, and analysis.)

Crises, Movements and the Commons. by Massimo De Angelis.

A Tale of Two Conferences: Globalization, the crisis of neoliberalism and question of the commons. by George Caffentzis

Two Charters, Chapter 2 from “The Magna Carta Manifesto” by Peter Linebaugh

Defending, Reclaiming and Reinventing the Commons by Maria Mies & Veronika Benholdt-Thomsen

The Spanish Model by Isidro López & Emmanuel Rodríguez

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Former Conversations

Beyond Good and Evil Commons
A seminar with Silvia Federici, George Caffentzis, & David Graeber
http://www.16beavergroup.org/silvia_george_david/

Making Worlds Commons Coalition is a collaborative effort by OWS and other groups and individuals to explore the utility of the commons in creating a better world.

http://www.makingworlds.org/

“A solidarity economy does not arise from thinkers or ideas; it is the outcome of the concrete historical struggle of the human being to live and to develop as an individual and a collective.”

Marco Arruda, Brazilian Solidarity Economy Network, World Social Forum in 2004 (via solidaritynyc.org)

Is Occupy Wall Street ready for alternative economies? Coupled with solidarity networks, alternative economies is a way of seeing capitalism not as a totalizing external force but something that we are all enmeshed, something that we continue to give strength via our daily existence within this city. These alternatives, plural, are what provides us with the tools to dismantling the web that holds us hostage.

Networks of resistance is key to these alternative systems, but for the most part 2012 has felt as if we were floating in the city, un-rooted in the reality of daily life. Sandy changed that, for many the pain was tangible, visceral, touching all senses -and so maybe this disaster marks a turning point for the movement of marches, signs, and spectacles, a movement that passed in our streets in 2011-2012 but never entered our homes until now.

Any dialogue regarding alternative economies should be open to everyone, inside and outside of the OWS, so that we can collectively create these alternatives, re-affirm our commitments to them, and to begin to build the networks that will sustain them. Until that happens, it will be activism as usual, atomized and fleeting -a benefit to you know who… Then and now the question is, can we work openly to make this dialog happen?

Art & The Commons has compiled a short list of resources for artist and arts organizations affected by Hurricane Sandy that touched down on October 29th and greatly devastated the New York, New Jersey and the Tri-State area.

http://www.artandthecommons.org/resources

Sunday October 28th, 3-6pm. Momenta Art, 56 Bogart in Bushwick.

Calling artists interested in alternatives to the current system! If you are interested in organizing in your community or already doing so, let’s meet-up and talk!

3pm-  Pre-Event Meet-Up:
Building A Network of Alternatives

4-6pm Event:
Alternatives & the Commons*

Momenta Art
56 Bogart Street
Brooklyn, NY 11206

L train to Morgan

*A commons is a resource that is organized and shared by individuals. Art & The Commons is part of coalition of individuals and affinity groups that are investigating ways in which art, culture, and art education can be understood and developed as a commons. Commoning also serves as a guard against private enclosures. more info: artandthecommons.org

Discussion at HK Art 12 w/ Doxa, Womenjia, et al. Image: © Art Radar Asia

Womenjia Youth Autonomy Lab – China

Mai Dian is the founder of Womenjia Youth Autonomy Lab, an anarchist space that promotes open dialogue free of self-censorship. He discussed the municipal government’s recent plan to transform the city into an entertainment and cultural powerhouse, which has resulted in a significant investment in arts infrastructure. With Wuhan’s weakening manufacturing industry, officials hope to use the cultural economy as a financial buffer for the downturn.

However, this development has come at a significant price. Part of the project has called for the reclaiming of a lot previously public lands. In response, artists and activists around Wuhan including Mai Dian participated in the East Lake Project, which stages artistic interventions in spaces around the lake to protest the construction of residential complexes and an amusement park. In response to their reactions against forced demolitions, many of the artist protestors were attacked and threatened.

[...]

read the rest of the article on Art Radar Asia:
ART HK 12: Redefining the space we live in – Asia Art Archive Open Platform speakers

Les Statues meurent aussi/Statues Also Die (Chris Marker & Alain Resnais, 1953)

When this film came out, it was banned in France for 10 yrs. Chris Marker and Alain Resnais must have been on to something that could possibly damage the image of France. But what could a documentary on arts & culture possibly do to country who takes pride in their cultivation of art and culture? Have a look.

The workshop at the Berlin Biennale was attended mostly by artist and occupiers of the occupy space within the KW. We began with an informal presentation on art funding in Europe with a focus on a well know 15th Century Italian artist and the way he went about his business of funding his art, which was mostly through  state sponsorship within warring and opposing states. Military superiority was tied with cultural superiority as each state was vying for the masters of the that time. This is compared to present day Europe where European Biennials are often competing to put on the best show in the region, resulting in commissions that are usually by and from the same international contemporary masters, so to speak. Already, for example, flying to Venice and then to Berlin or New York, you might encounter the same video artist in a major exhibition, as if we are short on artists.

Map of European Biennials by Biennial Foundation

Following the presentation, the group began discussing the current condition for arts funding and arts commoning in Berlin. Information about art rentals, art share programs, and exchanges were brought up. While the options are forming, one participant wondered what would be the next step for all these ideas?

“Except for radio, Samb does not use modern technological devices, which according to him kill the magic of human interaction. So when you want to talk to him, you have to go see him. When you want him to read something, you print it out and take it to him, better still, you write it out by hand.

As an advocate of our responsibility toward one another, Samb embodies the archetype of the humanist. But his personality is otherwise as unclassifiable as his work; the boundary between the modes and disciplines he adopts are as blurred as his randomly changing state of mind.” – The Guide Book, D13 2012, g. 304

Dak’Art 2008 Issa Samb photo © Sabine Vogel

the above diagram expands the area within art that can be developed commons. defined broadly art is shown as a  subsection of culture, not all possible subsections within culture are depicted. -draft V3 july 25, 2012