Social Choreography and Imagination For Southern California

The Llano Del Rio working group’s “Scores For the City” is  available now, free!

This two sided guide maps locations that have supported oddball behavior in LA, including freeway puppet shows, civic dance pageants, riots, and the gatherings of witches. The front of the map is an archive of documents relating to four events. The backside is an exploration of the way non-conformist behavior in LA has helped shape collective consciousness.

There are two ways to get the guide for free if you live in LA County:

1) For county residents simply email us your postal address and we’ll drop one in the mail for you free (till postage $ runs out) 
Contact llanodelrio(at)gmail.com

2) Maps will be dropped of at the following and ever-expanding distribution nodes. Pick up a copy at these locations:
Pieter – Lincoln Heights
Experimental Meditation Station – Lincoln Heights
Machine Project – Echo Park
Materials and Applications – Silverlake
The Bicycle Kitchen – East Hollywood
Dance Garden LA – Atwater Village
Wombleton Records – Highland Park
Southern California Library – South LA
Sweat Womb- Downtown
The Public School – Chinatown
Chucos Justice Center – Inglewood
Mandrake Bar – Culver City
LAXART – Culver City
Highways Performance Space – Santa Monica
Curves – North Hollywood

With the slogan We Are The Crisis, California’s public and private universities, college and community college campuses are experiencing a mass wave of radicalism and revolutionary heat unseen in like forever. With whole academic departments and unions acting in solidarity with occupiers and strikers, the planned actions for tomorrow (March 4th) are gonna be interesting to say the least.

Get hip to the goings on in your area, how you can support the struggle, and the underlying issues at stake here.

Occupy Everything

Anti-Capital Project

In the Golden State with massive public sector cutbacks all ready in effect and more looming, with privatization schemes afoot in many cities and municipalities, with contract labor unemployment and under-employment the norm, with incessant rise in fees and costs, with stagnation and cons in Washington and Sacramento, the future has all ready slipped away. Now’s the time to act.

OCCUPY EVERYTHING

The Llano Del Rio working group’s “Map For An Other LA” (pictured above) is now available free.

The full-color, two-sided map sites and describes locations that support, dream, act and aid in the creation of an other Los Angeles. Beekeepers, greywater operators, hacker spaces, cooperatives, collectives, art spaces, radical places, gardens, swimming holes, cooking collectives, think tanks etc….

Two ways to get the map:

1) If you live in LA County simply email us your postal address and we’ll drop one in the mail for you free (till postage $ runs out)
Contact llanodelrio(at)gmail.com

2) Maps have been delivered to the following and ever-expanding distribution nodes. Pick up a copy or two at these locations around town:
Machine Project
Farmlab
TOW
Bicycle Kitchen
Bike Oven
Echo Park Film Center
Sea and Space
Materials and Applications
Barf Space

We’ll be expanding our distribution universe (to the valley and Westside especially) so keep an eye out.

CALLING ALL GHOSTS
by The Center for Tactical Magic

Originally published in the “Applied Magic(k)” column in Arthur Magazine No. 25/Winter 02006

Ghosts are unwieldy subjects to contend with. It’s as if their ephemeral nature predisposes them to be barely tangible topics of research. The vast majority of evidence used to support the existence of ghosts is subjective: first-hand reports and eyewitness accounts. Despite the fact that forensic science, cultural geography, physics, and parapsychology all suggest that any given area is inscribed with the residue of that area’s history, the hard data on hauntings remains inconclusive.

To make matters hazier, the definitions of ghosts often swirl together with religious beliefs and philosophical assumptions. For example, if we define ghosts as being the spirits of the departed, we are stating clearly that we believe in life-after-death and some notion that separates body and spirit. Whether this notion is Cartesian dualism, Egyptian ka, Polynesian mana, or the yin-world spirits of Taoism, the assertion is that the individual is not indivisible. At the very least we are forced to accept the idea that the self is multiplicitous.

This shouldn’t be such a leap. At any given moment a person can be characterized by many different activities that s/he engages in: mechanic, musician, anarchist, lover, gardener, cyclist, etc. A person doesn’t think of him/herself as a mechanic when s/he’s in the garden, although s/he also doesn’t stop being a mechanic. We are many things to many people in many spheres of activity – simultaneously. But still we remain ourselves. On the most basic level, we live multiplicitous lives every day.

And when we go to sleep at night, it doesn’t end there. Our dreams continue to embroil us in action-adventures that would surely leave us breathless and exhausted if it weren’t for the simple fact that our bodies barely participate in all of the fun. If there is any sort of universal logic that can be applied as a subjective proof for the insubstantiation of the self, it is the simple fact that we all dream, whether we remember it in the morning or not.

To be clear, dreams don’t prove that ghosts are real. Nor does it prove that ghosts are the spirits of dead people. Rather, the travels we undertake when our eyes are closed simply suggest that a meaningful disembodied existence can occur. Even if we dismiss dreams (and ghosts) as immaterial and inconsequential, anyone who has ever experienced a nightmare won’t deny the fact that these visions can cause acute physical and psychological sensations in our waking lives.

But what are ghosts exactly? The incorporeal dead hanging out amongst the living? Reflected light? Psychosis? Atmospheric anomalies? Holographic messages from the future? Alien lifeforms? Osama’s latest WMD (Weapon of Mental Distortion)? Whatever they are, ghosts, like magic(k), pop up, in one form or another, in nearly every culture on the planet, and have been described in legends, myths, and stories throughout history. A popular Chinese attitude towards ghosts is voiced in the age-old expression, “If you believe it, there will be, but if you don’t, there will not.” According to legend, the saying was penned by a scholar named Zhuxi (Song Dynasty, 960 – 1279). Now Zhuxi was such a strict non-believer that he decided to write an essay about the non-existence of ghosts. But, lo and behold!—a ghost showed up to convince him otherwise. The ghost made such a lucid argument, that Zhuxi was forced to reconsider his thesis. In fact, it’s actually the ghost that is credited with authoring the aforementioned expression, and Zhuxi merely wrote it down.

Whether we believe in ghosts as actual paranormal phenomena, or as manifestations of mass cultural imagination, we can agree on some fundamental characteristics of ghosts. For starters, it’s significant to note that many such manifestations consistently take the form of people, or exhibit seemingly conscious behaviors. This could be similar to looking skyward and seeing faces in the clouds; however, there’s one major exception. When we let our minds drift in the cumulo-nimbus we also tend to see things like bears in bathtubs, and inverted Lay-Z-Boys. And we don’t hear ghastly tales of glowing gaseous forms resembling anything quite so banal, or cute and cartoony. Instead, we are most often presented with accounts of haunting encounters that evoke horror, sorrow, fear, anger, remorse, passion, and purpose. Ghosts emerge from the shadows; from dark corners; from forgotten and abandoned recesses. Regardless of whether or not these phantoms are psychological projections or external paranormal phenomena, it’s clear that our collective response to these apparitions is apprehension, angst, and anxiety.

Generally speaking, there are two dominant types of ghost stories: lost love, and grave injustices. The “lost love” category encompasses all of those apparitions who wait endlessly for lovers to return, or visit their living loved ones for comfort, counsel, and last condolences. In the second category, the vast majority of ghost stories hover around a central theme of grave injustices yet to be rectified. Murder. Torture. Betrayal. The plight of this sort of phantom is one of paradox; it seeks to rest in peace, yet refuses to quit the struggle until things have been set right. While the crimes of the past still linger at the site of a haunting, the ghost’s job is to make sure we, the living, don’t ignore it. Their refusal to let injustices be forgotten manifests in a form of spiritual civil disobedience. From silent vigils to shrieks and moans to outright property destruction, these ghosts are paranormal protestors bearing witness to a world gone woefully awry. In their quest for peace, the phantoms that haunt us defy the laws of the material world in acts of otherworldly anarchism. Offering spiritual resistance to the complicit affairs of everyday life, these insurgent souls have little regard for the rules and boundaries that restrict the world of the living.

They defy even gravity itself. Moving through gates and walls, no barrier restricts their attempts to resolve the inequities that torment them—and consequently us. After all, it is the apathy of the living that drives them to disturb the peace, because they cannot rest until the conflict is, once-and-for-all, addressed and resolved. There is no moving on. Not until unsavory events are properly put to rest.

It’s this kind of dissenting spirit that needs to be channeled today. Even Senator Specter (R-PA), whose position on most policies is rather ghoulish, could not sit idly by when faced with the recent legislation surrounding Guantanamo Bay detainees. Like all hauntings, the degree of uncanniness is quite remarkable. It’s only too fitting that the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee be named Specter. And perhaps even more appropriate that he should take issue with the United States’ recent dissolution of habeas corpus (meaning quite literally “(You should) have the body”). Dating back as far as 1305, and included in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, habeas corpus is one of the oldest and most celebrated guarantees of personal liberty. It grants individuals the right to question their detainment and challenge the government on the legality of their imprisonment. By killing habeas corpus, the clock on civil liberties is set back more than seven centuries to a time when judicial courts were simply a king and his dungeons. No wonder Mr. Specter is voicing his disapproval.

The haunting of society by the ghosts of our collective past resonates within a present that continues to manifest grave injustices. Generation after generation, the abuse of power materializes in a reoccurring nightmare, claiming countless victims—collateral damage in a battle to maintain hegemony. Doomed to repeat the tragedies of the ages, these lost souls insinuate their desires and anxieties into the world of the living. Each step of the way, these energies inform our thoughts, our dreams, our actions—indeed, every aspect of our existence. Ghosts are an unsettling reminder that the crimes of the past have not yet been resolved. Refusing to quietly fade from consciousness, they demand that their howls be heeded. The residues of injustice permeate the physical, psychological, and parapsychological landscape, inscribing the present with desperate warnings and demands for reconciliation.

Perhaps it’s time for the living to start paying attention to the stirring in the shadows. These aberrations in space, time, and freedom remain inscribed in mind, spirit, and social body, awaiting their release through the discovery and recovery of our own self-determining forces. Can the righteous spirits of the past truly join forces with the living to achieve peace and justice? If you believe it, there will be, but if you don’t, there will not.

EXERCISES
Through methods of divination, channeling, investigation, experimentation, and active engagement, we can invoke those that seem most experienced in dealing with past inequities—ghosts. Here are a few experiments in magic(k) to get you started. As always, please let us know how it goes by emailing to: goodluck at tacticalmagic dot org

1. Summoning ancestral spirits for guidance and inspiration is an age-old practice re-popularized in the ’70s through Milton Bradley’s mass production of the Ouija board. But you don’t need to jump on eBay to get a piece of the action. Make your own walkie-talkie to the spirit world by covering any smooth surface with the letters of the alphabet, numbers 0-10, and the words, “yes,” “no,” “unclear” and “goodbye.” Use another object that glides easily over the surface as your planchette, or pointer. A shot glass, serving spoon, or cell phone will work okay. A generic board will likely attract a general audience. For the best results, craft your set-up with a righteous spirit in mind using items and symbols that the spirit might find appealing. If, for example, you wanted the counsel of Nathan Hale, draw the board on a copy of the Patriot Act. For Harriet Tubman, try replacing the planchette with a broken handcuff. Grab a few friends, dim the lights, and place your fingertips lightly on the planchette. Then, invite the spirits, and begin your supernatural conspiring.

2. The problem with ghosts is not that they won’t shut up, but rather that it took death to get them to speak up in the first place. Is it fear of death that keeps us from voicing our dissatisfaction with the world of the living? Or fear of life? Fortunately, there’s no need to wait for that last breath to start haunting places. Form your own ghost mob and venture out to haunt sites of known social injustices. Banks, police stations, recruitment centers, and chain stores are but a few potential targets. From large-scale occupations by friends in Halloween gore to quiet insertions of tape recorded whispers and groans, a ghost mob can embody suppressed fears and desires whilst banishing the specters of social control.

3. Encounters with ghosts are said to increase during times of social crises and the post-trauma periods immediately following. Most notably, research suggests that more people see ghosts (or at least report them) in wartime and during post-war transitions. If this assessment is accurate, we should expect a barrage of ghost sightings related to Katrina, Afghanistan and Iraq. We are sincerely interested in studying this trend. If you have had paranormal experiences that you feel are related to social crises, please let us know by emailing us at: socialhauntings at tacticalmagic dot org

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: The Center for Tactical Magic is a moderate international think tank dedicated to the research, development and deployment of all types of magic in the service of positive social transformation. To find out more, check out tacticalmagic.org

All from http://www.missrockaway.org/

The Miss Rockaway Armada is both a collection of individuals and an idea. At its most basic, the idea is this: we’re going to float down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans on rafts that we built ourselves. The crew can be called many things: artists, musicians, builders, travelers, organizers, dreamers. Ask one of the people who help build and move these crafts for the purpose, though, and you’ll get many answers. But there are some things that we all agree on. We want to create: to invent a new sustainable way to travel, to demonstrate different ways of living and moving that are friendlier to the environment and to each other, to indulge in that essential urge to make something out of nothing. We want to meet people: to learn from new folks along the way, to teach what we know, to share our art, our music and our performance, and to make new friends. Finally, for adventure: to reclaim and reinvent the old American urge to strike out and discover the vast, mysterious land we inhabit and see it for ourselves.

We are floating down the Mississippi River on a raft we built from trash.
The catch is that we don’t know much about boats or rivers, and we don’t have any money. We know we are blowing crazy hot air, but if the idea makes your eyes glow like coals then you understand what we’re doing. For the last year we’ve been meeting, making phone calls, holding benefits, drawing blueprints and building like crazy. We collected scrap wood from all over the city and hammered it together piece by piece. We had benefit parties and socked away brown rice and dented cans. We organized mostly out of New York and New Orleans because that’s where we live, but we have folks from the West coast as well as the Midwest.

Here’s the plan: Last year we met in Minneapolis in late July with sections of our raft in tow. We pieced together our pontoons and filled them with salvaged blocks of foam. We made it beautiful and tied on anything that would float, adding it to our junk armada, our anarchist county fair, our fools ark. Our precious cargo is everything we hold dear: pieces and parts of the culture we are already creating. Our zines and puppets, sewing projects and poster campaigns, mutant bicycles and punk rock marching bands. Plus our thoughts and dreams and irrepressible energy.

In the winter of 2007 a nice bar called Ducky’s Lagoon in Illinois took Miss Rockaway in and dry docked our giant raft. We love them for that. Recently, we plopped Miss Rockaway back in the water with a crane and we’re getting back on the river soon with a bigger and better show, more rafts & boats, more workshops and a good helping of face painting or the kids.

Together we’re floating down the Mississippi river, as far as we can, anchoring here and there to perform, give workshops, and create the big huge stinking spectacle we wished would have stopped in our hometowns. And at each place we’re inviting anyone to contribute performances or workshops of their own.

Our flotilla is built green with precycled materials, rainwater collection, wind and solar power, biodiesel, and dumpstered dinners. If we make it right, everything will run on sunshine and french fry grease. However, we are NOT hippies.

We are a small group of people with extensive experience making big insane projects. In the past we have taken 20-person bands to Mexico, pulled off town square-sized guerrilla theater in Berlin, and fed hundreds of people with garbage and love. We know this idea is ridiculous and impossible. That’s why we’re obsessed with it.

A new biker gang is roaming the streets of Richmond Hill, Queens. This crew of mostly teenagers can be seen riding along 103rd Avenue just west of the Van Wyck Expressway. The bikes roar, but the booming sound has nothing to do with engines — because there are no engines. They are ordinary bicycles, not motorcycles, although these contraptions look and sound more like rolling D.J. booths. They are outfitted with elaborate stereo systems installed by the youths.

“This one puts out 5,000 watts and cost about $4,000,” said Nick Ragbir, 18, tinkering with his two-wheeled sound system, with its powerful amplifier, two 15-inch bass woofers and four midrange speakers. It plays music from his iPod and is powered by car batteries mounted on a sturdy motocross bike.

The riders are of Guyanese and Trinidadian background. In those countries, turning bicycles into rolling outdoor sound systems is a popular hobby.

“It’s really big where I come from in Trinidad,” Mr. Ragbir said. “When I first came to New York, I started with two little speakers. People here thought I was crazy because no one here has really ever seen it, except maybe for some Spanish dudes with a radio strapped to their handlebars.”

He added: “People say, ‘It’s the next best thing to having a system in a car.’ But it’s better because you don’t even have to roll down the windows.”

Mr. Ragbir and his brother, Elvis Ragbir, 22, and their friends build and maintain their combination bike-stereos in a garage on 103rd Avenue near 130th Street. Many say they finance their hobby by installing car stereos and doing other such handiwork.

They hit the streets on warmer days and spend other days in the garage tinkering with their bikes.

Inside, one can hear the whirring of power tools, conversation in heavy Caribbean accents and the occasional testing of a sound system. They make custom cabinets of wood or plastic to house the systems. Most of the bikes have decorative lighting and some have DVD screens for viewing while riding.

Stephan Sonnylal, 17, worked on his yellow Mongoose motocross bicycle, bearing a 200-pound system, which features a 50-CD changer bearing a map of Trinidad. It puts out 3,000 watts of power and has three 10-inch speakers, a bank of midrange speakers and two tweeters. It cost $800, he said.

Clint Hasnoo, 17, has a 1,600-watt system with four midrange speakers.

Nick Ragbir showed off his new bike, equipped with a sleek 1,500-watt system with the stereo and speakers encased in clear plastic custom boxes. The car battery and the console are mounted on the handlebars, and the four midrange speakers are mounted in the center of the bike frame.

“It’s not as powerful but it’s easier to ride around,” Mr. Ragbir said.

Usually, the stereos crank out heavy Caribbean beats, but Mr. Ragbir cranked up the new system, which was playing a 1980s hit by the Outfield — “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love Tonight” — and the near-deafening music had his friends bobbing their heads as they worked on their bikes.

The bikers said they have heard no complaints about the noise they make from residents or people they pass. And although there is a city law which says a summons may be issued if a person operates a personal audio device, like a radio, heard from up to 25 feet away, the bikers’ mobile stereos are less likely to attract attention because the noise does not persist in one place very long.

Mohan Samaroo, 19, has a system mounted on his sturdy Mongoose, with four 12-inch speakers that can handle the 5,000 watts. There are extra braces resting on training wheels, which can support the heavy system and also an extra rider standing on the back. When the bike cruises down the street with Mr. Samaroo standing, he said, he looks like a D.J. behind a sound system at a nightclub.

“We measured it at a car show,” he said. “It’s 150 decibels.”

The group rides in packs, each taking turns playing his sound system. Sometimes, the riders cruise down Atlantic Avenue to a McDonald’s, where car aficionados gather.

“People look at us like we’re crazy because no one’s really seen it here,” said Nick Ragbir, who with Mr. Samaroo formed a business called Legal Intentionz to install stereos on bikes.

“Some guy hired me to build them for his kids,” he said. “Now a lot of people want them.”

Hands down the funnest march I ever marched happened 8 years ago today. It was a polyamorous procession of the entire “Seattle Coalliton” (busty steel men, enviros, indigenous folks, dreamers and korean unionists) down some broad shoppers avenue on Capital Hill. Some where along the way the whole sh’bang (at least a thousand of us) fueled by the weight of our innevitablity, wandered off the street, onto the sidewalk and straight through the doors of one of those urban malls into a navy blue Gap. Through the atrium we brought our rummble of chants and slogans and drums, transformed it to an echo chamber- the mannequins in the store bopping to the drone of something louder than the big Taiko drums of the Koreans.

Later that evening my brother, this playful dude from Katuah Earth First! and I cruised Seattle in my ’89 Civic, playing rewinding and then playing again Garry Glitter’s stadium anthem Rock and Roll: Parts One & Two, all the while trying to top it with our own broadcasts of “General Strike Tommorow, Don’t Go To Work”, screamed out the window to any one we drove by. Next day was the blockade that closed down the city for the rest of the week.

Times have changed in the past but we won’t forget
Though the age has passed they’ll be rockin’ yet

Rock and ro-o-oll, rock and roll
Rock and ro-o-oll, rock and roll
Rock and ro-o-oll, rock and roll
Rock and ro-o-oll, rock and roll
Rock and ro-o-oll, rock and roll
Rock and ro-o-oll, rock and roll
Rock and ro-o-oll, rock and roll

(flyer and arm band scavenged from the Denny St. convergence center 11/99)

39 women blockaded the port of olympia, a soldier from ft. lewis approached the gate and asked the protesters if one of them could give him a ride home since he was refusing to drive the military vehicles out of the port. He said “fuck this, I’m not going to kill anybody anymore.” and got a ride back to the Fort. Check www.tacomasds.org for updates.

More

“The graphic production of Douglas reveals an unmistakable humanism, representing a populace that had been denied access to the American dream but who were emerging from segregation and proudly fighting to assert their rights to the American dream of equality for all. Douglas’s work gave potent visual form to the plight of urban mothers and to the humanitarian work undertaken by the Black Panthers to bring social services to their communities.

“The graphic work that Douglas created for print can also be seen within the context of Bay Area visual production from this period, revealing a kinship at times to work by artists such as Peter Saul or R. Crumb, while also serving as a stark antidote to the hedonism embodied in the posters promoting psychedelic rock across the Bay….

“Organized by artist and MOCA Ahmanson Curatorial Fellow Sam Durant with MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel, this compelling exhibition presents approximately 150 of Emory Douglas’s most influential works. In place of a catalogue, the exhibition will be accompanied by a monographic book on the work of Emory Douglas, edited by Sam Durant and published in February 2007 by Rizzoli.”

Sunday, Oct 21 3pm:
“Emory Douglas will discuss the graphic art that he created for the Black Panther Party during the late 1960s through the early ’80s. Following his talk, Douglas will sign copies of the exhibition’s accompanying publication at MOCA Pacific Design Center.”

Los Angeles
Exhibition at the MOCA Pacific Design Center
10.21.07 – 01.20.08

Saturday, October 6, 2-4:30pm @ LACE
6522 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90028

A part of the underground press movement Rags was published for a year, 1970-71. It covered the worlds of counter-culture fashion with street fashion reports, groovy adverts and a very liberated sense of style. As far as I can tell its print run was all b/w on rag paper.

The December 1970 issue includes “Revolution” (with models acting out scenes from peoples history),”Life Amongst the Amazon Today” (on body modification in Amazonian tribes), “If God Hadn’t Wanted You To Wear a Bra He Wouldn’t Have Invented the Contour Council” (all about “the bra” with super hip writing!!) and “Raggedy Robin Raggedy Jane” (a profile of a Haight Ashbury clown couple).

The SF Diggers went to bat against the hip capitalists in SF but the innocence, creativity and DIY styles displayed in this publication, which seems to have been distributed primarily in underground boutiques, is charming nonetheless. A mystery in its masthead is the listing of “commidify your dissent” artist Barbara Kruger. That name appears as one of two art directors.

Cassandro Tondro has a blog uploading pdf’s of her collection of Rags. Check it out!

On the West Coast you can find all of the armed forces public affairs liasons and propagandists (including army outreach who proudly serves as a center of influence on the West coast with direct links to the motion picture entertainment industry ) convieniently located in one building in the heart of Westwood at 10880 Wilshire Boulevard Suite 1250 Los Angeles, California 90024-4101.

Stop by for a visit to see what kind of magic you can make.

from Navy News 9/12/07

NORFOLK (NNS) — Navy Expeditionary Combat Command (NECC) introduced a new aspect of combat life-saving training to many predeploying Sailors during the two-week NECC-centric exercise Comet ’07, which ended Sept. 13.

NECC hired special effects company, Strategic Operations (StratOps), to conduct “hyper-realistic” medical training and to simulate a tactical combat environment.

According to NECC Force Medical Master Chief (DSW/SS) Dennis Polli, the primary goal of “hyper-realistic” training is to mentally prepare Sailors for situations that could over-stress them.

“Most Navy training is didactic; classrooms, text books and then maybe you buddy up with someone and practice putting on bandages or a tourniquet. During Comet, non-medically trained Sailors will have to treat people with major trauma injuries, while under fire.”

Using Hollywood-trained special effects, make-up artists and actors, many of whom are amputees, StratOps is able to present Sailors with one-of-a-kind training scenarios.

During the first week of Comet ’07, Sailors attended a basic combat life-saving class. After they discussed theory for several hours, two Sailors at a time were led from the classroom and taken outside.

They were then prepped for their practical exercise, according to Constructionman Jonathan Lewis of Riverine Squadron (RIVRON) 2.

“They had us sprint 100 meters and then crank out a bunch of pushups to get our heart rates up,” said Lewis. “Then they told us to enter a building and take a right. As soon as we got in, we saw a Sailor on the ground with both his legs blown off in a huge pool of blood. Apart from telling us to help him, they didn’t give us any instruction. It was the most realistic training we’ve been through.”

“When you actually have a guy who’s missing limbs covered in blood and acting as though he was in shock, it’s amazing,” said Gunner’s Mate 3rd Class James Soden, RIVRON 2.

One of the objectives of this course is to force the Sailor to calm down and assess the situation.

“In a way, it’s just like any other training, you want to build mental and muscle memory,” said Polli. “Once someone has seen something for the first time, they have a chance to get used to it, and the next time they’re in a similar situation they won’t hesitate to act.”

StratOps Special Effects Artist Alisha Saunders, said she’s had a lot of positive feedback from Marines who’ve gone through the training and returned from deployments in theater.

“A lot of people tend to freeze up when they see the wounds we create. From what we’ve been told, this is really helping prevent shock when out in the field,” said Saunders. “Plus, they learn to wrap wounds that are covered in blood, which is a lot harder than wrapping clean skin during regular medical training.”

Carie Helm, a makeup artist with StratOps, said there’s a lot of job satisfaction turning someone into a blood-spewing medical nightmare.

This is the best job in the world. We get to create our favorite things, horrible bloody wounds and work with Sailors and Marines. But seriously, if we can help prepare someone that’s getting deployed, that means a lot to us.”

Comet ’07 was conducted in three locations – Fort Pickett, Naval Weapons Station Yorktown Cheatham Annex and Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, all in Virginia. The exercise involves nearly 1,000 active-duty and reserve Sailors from various NECC commands including Maritime Expeditionary Security Force, Explosive Ordnance Disposal, Seabees, Maritime Civil Affairs and Riverine.

Additionally from the San Diego Union Tribune regarding the founding of San Diego Based Strategic Operations

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in 2001, Segall’s studio experienced a slowdown, but he soon found a way to put the excess studio capacity to good use, said Kit Lavell, executive vice president of Segall’s Strategic Operations Inc. ….

Around the same time, Lavell said, agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency, which is headquartered nearby, showed up at the studio because they’d heard shooting. A tour of the grounds led to that agency training there, and, as word spread, other agencies as well.

In September 2002, Segall incorporated Strategic Operations, which provides tactical training to the military, complete with “hyper-realistic” special effects, pyrotechnics, medical makeup and actors to stage attacks, sucking chest wounds and traumatic amputations.

The company, which offers a range of programs, can charge up to “a couple hundred thousand dollars” to train 1,000 marines for 10 days at the studio, Lavell said.

For further reading check out Paul Virilio’s War and Cinema

The first annual Park[ing] Day LA, which will be on Friday, September 21st will bring together a diverse constituency of community groups, neighborhood councils, design & architecture firms, professional organizations, non-profits, cyclists & pedestrian advocates as they work together to transform numerous parking spaces & parking lots located throughout LA into ephemeral parks for the day. By occupying a parking spot and feeding the meter, volunteers will enhance the street with a sustainably designed pocket-park.

Events planned in LA and across the United and Overpaved States!.
Original concept (and photo) courtesy of Rebar.

Infinite justice will rain down like peroxide blondes and little jerks- future service members in uncle sams shit pile.

From Navy Newstand

SANTA ANA, Calif. (NNS) — Navy Recruiting Station Santa Ana got a little bit of the Hollywood treatment June 8 when a film crew from MTV was on site to film an episode of its reality TV show “Laguna Beach.”

This rare opportunity gave the station a chance to help spread the Navy message to the Navy’s target recruitment audience on a national level when one of the show’s participants, Grant Newman, expresses an interest in the SEAL program.

Newman, joined by show mate Allie Stockton, was greeted by Navy recruiter Yeoman 1st Class (SW/AW) Thomas Jackson as the cameras rolled. After an exchange of friendly handshakes, Jackson gave Newman a rundown of some of the opportunities and benefits the Navy has to offer. Benefits such as educational opportunities, travel and job security, which would appeal to many young adults in the same age group as Newman.

“This is the perfect opportunity for us to spread Navy awareness to a wide range of people nationwide,” said Jackson. “It’s a chance for us to take away any misconceptions some people may have about the U.S. Navy in a positive light on MTV, a nationally televised network.”

“It’s a great chance for us to tell the story about the Navy,” said Lt. Erik Reynolds, of Navy Office of Information.

Laguna Beach is a show that a lot of young people watch and this gives us a chance to put out information about the Navy they may not have been aware of.”

Laguna Beach is a reality TV show which documents the lives of several teenagers living in Laguna Beach, a community located in Orange County, Calif.

for a different reality on military and college service check this out..

From DC this weekend

The Bird Feeder Hat, designed to be quirky, gives you an opportunity to wear a bird feeder on your head in order to begin experiencing a deeper kinship with a wild creature up close. Come to The Bird Feeder Hat events to feel a song sparrow or gold finch hopping and feeding on your hat, meet other species, learn to create sustainable interspecies relationships with members of your watershed, pinpoint your watershed on a world map and add your name to the growing record of watershed-aware citizens.

C.L.U.E. (color location ultimate experience)

A movement-based video piece by robbinschilds and A.L. Steiner, C.L.U.E. uses original choreographed language as a vehicle to explore the natural and human-made landscape. It embodies a poignant freedom in the unification of humanity and the vast natural world, juxtaposed against the contemporary tendency toward consumerism, waste and disposable architecture. The variegated landscapes featured in the film express the potential iteration of geology, with the performers costumed in the seven colors of the rainbow, which represent the wavelengths of the visual spectrum.

Also short video clip of dance performance “Seriously Heavy” at The Autumn Skate Bowl in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

in 2001 after the banks collapsed in Argentina social activists and collectives (grupo etcetera) organized? to toss animal manure and bags of excrement onto the steps of congress and banks. Political theater, a stinky escrache!

Getting ready to rock. An anarcho trailer encouraging folks to come to Minneapolis for the pReNC Labor Day weekend 2007 – to prepare for the Rep. Nat. Conv. Sept 1-4 2008.
http://www.nornc.org

Learn to deepen Presence, Sensation, Inner Spaciousness, Fluid Strength, and Ease of Movement. Amplify your body’s intelligence and awareness to stimulate creativity and performance ability. Explore how somatic experiencing awakens your inner world for a more profound connection with the performing environment and the world at large. For workshop descriptions, dates and times go to the Schedule page. Go to the Registration Page to sign up.

Los Angeles, Sept 18-23, 2007
Celebrating Conscious Embodiment in Performance

I am not going to the protest. I am tired of protests: they don’t stop wars. Not protests that are mostly about sign waving and hooking up with friends and strangers and feeling the solidarity and then going back to work or school on Monday. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

Sure it FEELS rebellious, these government-permitted, media-ignored, totally predictable rituals-but come on, going to an anti-war protest hasn’t been rebellious since Abbie Hoffman coughed up a fur ball at one in 1968. And in the context of the war on our civil liberties envisioned by Clinton/Reno and executed by your nemesis George W. Bush, they are very, very happy to have you protest and take your name and number. Or force you into a field, or a waiting pen to be locked away until they decide to let you out.

Personally I am tired of marching alongside people wearing masks and carrying signs about stupid Bush when we and everyone we know put together have not been smart enough to stop him. And the Bush bashing only makes the whole parade, err, protest look juvenile to the rest of the world.

Here is what I propose: let’s stop messing around. No more anti-war. Let’s stop the war. No more protest, unless it is part of some huge thing that doesn’t involve business as usual the next day. How do you stop the war? Shut ‘er down. No more business as usual. The target audience: the Democrats, and the presidential candidates who can’t fall over each other fast enough rattling their little Democrat saberettes. (“Bomb Iran? I can top that, let’s bomb PAKISTAN! Take THAT, cowboy!”)

Being anti-war is a fashion statement, a political position, not a movement. I talked to a fellow yesterday who was anti-poison but still used them on HIS lake to fight HIS weeds-weeds outta control because he and his neighbors dump tons of fertilizer on their beach hugging lawns. I personally am anti-junk food but I still eat it, anti-logging but I still use wood products, anti-fossil fuels but my work and fun still depend on them. I am anti-aging but I still age. I am against, rape, animal cruelty, torture, genetically modified food, child abuse but what am I doing to stop it? Well, being against it. In other words, nothing.

“Anti-” is easy-stopping is hard.

And stop it we must. We cannot wait ’til our hand is forced. Morally, it will mean we failed. Already the deaths of ten, or maybe hundreds of thousands of Iraqis is on our hands. Yours and mine. Mothers incinerated as they hold their children. Young men who looked like trouble. Shopkeepers standing where Saddam “might” have been. By some accounts two million refugees that we refuse to take in. Every day, more die because we are there. Sure it’s a mess–so was Vietnam and the killing only stopped when we left. (Read the actual history, Mr. Bush, not the pretend history.)

We are not welcome in Iraq by the people we are allegedly liberating. Most people don’t appreciate being killed to be freed and surprise! EIGHTY PERCENT of the citizens of Iraq want us gone. In fact a lot of them are so overjoyed with us “liberating” them to celebrate they are killing as many young Americans as possible. They long for the good old days before we “liberated” them, and coincidentally, their oil.

Why are we not gone? It’s our economy, stupid. Let’s get a grip: the U.S. does not have enough of it’s own oil, or natural gas, and soon coal, and no time soon-maybe never-are we going to be rid of our addiction to fossil fuels until it runs out and our cold, dead hands will at last let loose of the gas pump. Without access to Middle East energy YOU would not be flying to Ohio to see your grandma or to Europe for that meeting. YOU would not be driving your Subaru up the mountainside. And I would probably not be making movies by traipsing around the countryside in van. It’s not about the SUV or Ford F-150 driver-he or she probably uses less fuel in a year than you and I do flying to Hawaii or Paris one time. It’s about all of us, we Americans. WE are not complaining about HDTV’s and ipods and cheap prices on Travelocity or even aware of the irony of liking, no loving a show about a mobster family that kills, maims and extorts its way to wealth.

The grim reality we don’t have enough energy in the U.S. to feed economies and lifestyles going. Losing control of the region-and an Iraq ruled by Iran means the oil (and perhaps even more importantly the natural gas) is controlled by people who don’t kowtow to us-and might not cough up the oil & gas. The Chinese have contracts; we have ARMIES! Feel safer?

So why don’t we have A STOP THE WAR plan? That might require pain and sacrifice, something we’re told we don’t have to engage in as American’s–not even to save the planet. So for Christ’s sake if changing light bulbs and buying a hybrid can save the entire planet, I mean what do we have to do to save little puny country like Iraq? Squint? Give up the lime in limon? Buy some green light bulbs?

Now make no mistake, I like many of all of you reading, felt like I was giving it my all from time to time. The big protest in February of 2003 was part of that-millions turned out, we all felt heartened. Thought is was scarcely reported by the media, friends of mine blockaded a military deployment for a few hours while I and others served as a support team. I was part of making an anti-war movie you may have heard of-”Fahrenheit 9/11.” But I repeat, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting the same result, and hundreds of protests and anti-war films and four years later we have NOT stopped, nor slowed the war at all. Maybe we have helped galvanize public opinion. If so good. Maybe we thought supporting the democrats in ’06 would do it. It didn’t.

No longer can I live with myself by saying, well, I did my part. I don’t care whether the polls are for or against us. I don’t care whether or not the political process is working-it isn’t. It is immoral and a crime against humanity for us to continue to occupy Iraq and kill civilians. (Anywhere for that matter. May I digress for a moment? When did it become okay to bomb civilians because Saddam or a terrorist or a bad guy MIGHT be present among them? That’s a sin and those responsible should be held accountable. Would you be wiling to sacrifice YOUR family because someone wanted to take out a nearby bad guy? When did we lose our moral compass so badly that we don’t even need to pretend to be against killing civilians, or torture, or occupying a nation that wants us the hell out?)

I can no longer give myself a pass because MY deal, my family, my work, my ease, is more important. It’s not. Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, even if the comfortable are ourselves. We should be ashamed that we are leaving the heavy lifting the Cindy Sheehan, to me the lone voice who has failed to be cowed into submission or giving up among us.

Let’s come together not as activist or organizers but as citizens to make a plan. People associated with peace and justice groups could attend as individuals. Why? Because, 1) our “grassroots” groups, as good of people and as great a service as they provide, are really NOT grassroots groups, they are individuals self-appointed, and 2) organizations tend to merely want more of what they are good at, the usual protests, T-shirts and ad hoc causes glommed on to this one.

Only one cause here: stop the war. Only citizens allowed. Speaking of citizens, where is Al Gore? Or Bill Clinton? Jimmy Carter, we need you! Where are the heavy hitters? Time to weigh in, past time. Time like Martin Luther King or Gandhi to lead the walk-out, lead the shut-down, get out in front.

What would stopping the war look like? How about democrats: start to bring the troops home by thus such day, or we’re going to have NO MORE BUSINESS AS USUAL DAY. Picked a day, draw a line in the sand for a national strike, or slow down, or work stoppage, or walk-out, maybe a day when college students are getting bored, maybe in striking distance of the holiday shopping binge. But it should here is the message: “Democrats, end the war now. Bring the troops home now. Business will NOT go on as usual until you do this.” No shopping. No going to work. No movies released. No concerts. No TV shows produced. No schools open-the students have walked out. No buying of cars, plane tickets, gasoline. Hundreds of people driving the speed limit every rush hour-every major city will be shut down. Campus walkouts and non-violent strikes; maybe occupations. I don’t know how to do this, but I know we must do it, or something like. Do you have a better idea?

Their blood is in our name. Yours and mine. They want us gone. The killing does not have a chance of ending until we’re gone. We must admit we were wrong, we are wrong, apologize, ask what we can do to make amends. Sending young men and women to kill or be killed, young men and women with bombs, guns, napalm, artillery is the way to breed tens of thousands of Osamas, not the way to peace.

Let’s stop the war. Let’s pick a day and come together to plan this, how to stop, not oppose the war. You know the constitution gave us liberties not merely to be happy, but to rise up when our leaders have taken the power from the people. The president doesn’t have the power to wage war: only the people do. The second amendment wasn’t meant to safeguard your right to horde sub-machine guns in your basement, it was meant to reserve the right to rebel, to fight for what is right, for the people, in the event their government has gotten out of control.

History will not judge George W. Bush. It will judge us. He did not send the troops there; we did. Only one congresswoman and NO senators voted against this war. We can bring them home, but first the democrats must fear the wrath of the people. And right now they fear us far us far too little.

If the planning happens around the protest, then I will be there. If the protest is not an event, but is a reality-changing, world-changing first step in a real plan to stop the war; if everyone promises to not get back on the bus, on the plane, or in their cars having wasted a bunch of fossil fuel on a parade, I will be there.

And if we do have a slow-down, shut-down, buy nothing, consume nothing, use no fuels thing going for a time maybe we can have a parade on our bikes, get to know our families and neighbors, and begin the real work of stopping global warming and global wars and terrorism the only real way possible: by ending our role as the world’s chief glutton and bullies.

Jeff Gibbs is a filmmaker from Flint, Michigan. He was a producer on “Bowling for Columbine” and “Fahrenheit 9/11″ and is currently working on an environmental documentary and one on radical activism. He can be reached at jeffgibbstc@aol.com.

New works by Karl Erickson and Andrew Falkowski
September 8 – October 13, 2007
High Energy Constructs, Chinatown LA

Not your typical anti-authority, anti-war perspective, this exhibition is a considered response, reflecting arbitrary and insufficient answers to the untenable power struggles that envelope us all. The absurdity of our historical moment cries out for a reaction. But when has art ever produced an appropriate response to war? Guernica, a hallmark of cultural resistance, didn’t stop a civil war, it didn’t stop Franco and it didn’t stop fascism’s ascendancy in Spain and beyond. Leon Golub didn’t do a goddamn thing to change the torture in South America. Perhaps the complaint is misplaced….So what if art is limited? The Magnificent Bastards describe a mood: the angst and hapless bewilderment of an entire generation. Arrogant? Accurate? Okay! The Art of War is that expression: If you can’t stop’em, describe’em.

“The briefing begins. ‘Welcome to operation Roaring Monkey.’ Everyone laughs, the nervous tension releases a bit. ‘The police’s operation has been codenamed Hargood, we are already winning on the imagination front. Tonight we are going to make something we have been imagining a reality…’” (more)

Video Screening at Sea and Space accompanying an exhibit by Chris Bassett

A pair of documentaries looking at the architecture of Mystical Capitalism. The historical development of energy accumulating structures (baseball stadiums) and currency accumulating structures (banks) will be covered.

BOOK CLUB ~ autumn 2007 ~ PLANET OF THE HUMANS ~

~ We will meet in the dome from 7 – 10pm Thursdays from October 4th to December 6th. Each week a visitor will lead the conversation about the weekly book they have selected. Discussions and debates will go from there. Anyone may participate. Read the book* and come prepared to talk and listen. The topic this season is “Planet of the Humans”. Contact matt@fritzhaeg.com to let us know which weeks you would like to attend.

Books include: TENDING THE WILD: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California’s Natural Resources, CROWDS AND POWER , REFUGE: An Unknown History of Family and Place , THE WORLD WITHOUT US, POSSIBILITIES: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire .

For a complete list of books and facilitators go here.

Now the president agrees it’s Vietnam all over again. Well it’s time to familiarize yourself with usage of phrases such as 4-F, 1-A and 1-A-O. Meanwhile here are the final 5 pages from Tuli Kupferberg’s classic 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft to bone up on.
Also included is the intriguing “simple statement on war”.

Not that they’re worried or anything. But the White House evidently leaves little to chance when it comes to protests within eyesight of the president. As in, it doesn’t want any.

A White House manual that came to light recently gives presidential advance staffers extensive instructions in the art of “deterring potential protestors” from President Bush’s public appearances around the country.

Among other things, any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by “rally squads” stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out.

But that does not mean the White House is against dissent — just so long as the president does not see it. In fact, the manual outlines a specific system for those who disagree with the president to voice their views. It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police “to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route.”

The “Presidential Advance Manual,” dated October 2002 with the stamp “Sensitive — Do Not Copy,” was released under subpoena to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a lawsuit filed on behalf of two people arrested for refusing to cover their anti-Bush T-shirts at a Fourth of July speech at the West Virginia State Capitol in 2004. The techniques described have become familiar over the 6 1/2 years of Bush’s presidency, but the manual makes it clear how organized the anti-protest policy really is.

The lawsuit was filed by Jeffery and Nicole Rank, who attended the Charleston event wearing shirts with the word “Bush” crossed out on the front; the back of his shirt said “Regime Change Starts at Home,” while hers said “Love America, Hate Bush.” Members of the White House event staff told them to cover their shirts or leave, according to the lawsuit. They refused and were arrested, handcuffed and briefly jailed before local authorities dropped the charges and apologized. The federal government settled the First Amendment case last week for $80,000, but with no admission of wrongdoing.

The manual demonstrates “that the White House has a policy of excluding and/or attempting to squelch dissenting viewpoints from presidential events,” said ACLU lawyer Jonathan Miller. “Individuals should have the right to express their opinion to the president, even if it’s not a favorable one.”

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that he could not discuss the manual because it is an issue in two other lawsuits.

The manual offers advance staffers and volunteers who help set up presidential events guidelines for assembling crowds. Those invited into a VIP section on or near the stage, for instance, must be ” extremely supportive of the Administration,” it says. While the Secret Service screens audiences only for possible threats, the manual says, volunteers should examine people before they reach security checkpoints and look out for signs. Make sure to look for “folded cloth signs,” it advises.

To counter any demonstrators who do get in, advance teams are told to create “rally squads” of volunteers with large hand-held signs, placards or banners with “favorable messages.” Squads should be placed in strategic locations and “at least one squad should be ‘roaming’ throughout the perimeter of the event to look for potential problems,” the manual says.

“These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstrators,” it says. “The rally squad’s task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protestors (USA!, USA!, USA!). As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event site.”

Advance teams are advised not to worry if protesters are not visible to the president or cameras: “If it is determined that the media will not see or hear them and that they pose no potential disruption to the event, they can be ignored. On the other hand, if the group is carrying signs, trying to shout down the President, or has the potential to cause some greater disruption to the event, action needs to be taken immediately to minimize the demonstrator’s effect.”

The manual adds in bold type: “Remember — avoid physical contact with demonstrators! Most often, the demonstrators want a physical confrontation. Do not fall into their trap!” And it suggests that advance staff should “decide if the solution would cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone.”

The staff at the West Virginia event may have missed that line.

courtesy of Marc Herbst

PUBLIC FRUIT JAM 2007
Sunday, August 19th,from 12 noon to 3pm
CITIZENS OF LOS ANGELES! COME JAM WITH US! Bring your hand picked fresh neighborhood or home grown fruit.
Bring (recycled?) glass jars and good cheer! we will supply everything else for an afternoon of great jamming fun. Collaborate! Improvise! Jam!

MACHINE PROJECT
1400 Alvarado Street, LA, CA, 90039.

http://www.machineproject.com

http://www.fallenfruit.org

If you are world-famous rock video director Samuel Bayer (pictured above), what do you shoot after filming Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as well as every single video from Green Day’s “American Idiot”? The obvious answer: shoot at those very same teens who buy those records and get a job with the US Army to direct their “Army Strong” propaganda.

Way to go Samuel, doing it for the kids never meant so much!!

For counter-recruitment ideas check out this pdf.

AND FUCK YOU TOO, MARK ISHAM!

From the Army:
“Renowned composer Mark Isham is the artist behind the stirring original musical score for the Army Strong campaign…. Isham, a top Hollywood film composer, has more than 70 film and TV credits, including memorable scores for such notable films as Eight Below, Running Scared, Crash, The Cooler, A River Runs Through It, Blade, Nell, Men of Honor and Miracle. He won an Emmy in 1996 for the theme he produced for the television show EZ Streets.”

From Mark Isham‘s site:
“He has collaborated with some of the top artists in the music business, and his classic trumpet voice has graced the albums of such diverse artists as Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Ziggy Marley, Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Stones, Chris Isaak, and Van Morrison.”

Wandervogel means “migrant birds/free spirits.”

How to respond to “the surge is working”

A report to correct the balance regarding the LA 2007 Immigration Rights Rally.

7:00 PM August 21, 2007
Damrosch Park Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival NYC
and
Malibu Creek State Park, CA

There will at first be clouds or clusters of sounds. Eventually the clouds and clusters transform into harmonies, with common tones moving through the sound field as tuning takes place on many levels, actually and metaphorically.

The World Wide Tuning Meditation is offered in the spirit of bringing many people together through sharing a simple way of sounding and listening together. Sounding in the way proposed is open to all regardless of experience. Language is not a barrier as there are no words, only vowel sounds that are common to all.

Each person is invited to make their own private and silent dedication of intentions for this community of voices to have effect, personally and for radiating to others, out to the world.
How would you like for your sound to affect the world?

Tuning score by Pauline Oliveros

The World Wide Tuning Meditation (2007)
Begin by taking a deep breath and letting it all the way out with air sound.
Listen with your mind’s ear for a tone.
On the next breath using any vowel sound, sing the tone that you have silently perceived on one comfortable breath.
Listen to the whole field of sound the group is making.
Select a voice distant from you and tune as exactly as possible to the tone you are hearing from that voice.
Listen again to the whole field of sound the group is making.
Contribute by singing a new tone that no one else is singing.
Continue by listening then singing a tone of your own or tuning to the tone of another voice alternately.
Commentary:
Always keep the same tone for any single breath. Change to a new tone on another breath.
Listen for distant partners for tuning
Sound your new tone so that it may be heard distantly.
Communicate with as many difference voices as possible.
Sing warmly!

For more information and to commit to perform in NYC check out the Deep Listening Institute.
Sympathetic activity happening in the abandoned water tower in Malibu State Park. Info here.

In this ’68 issue an unbuttoned Schjeldahl co-authored (with Neal White) an expose of a So Cal commune (in Sunland-Tujunga!) called The Hog Farm.

Pigasus was Prime Minister of this, then two year old, commune. From here, his humble sty in Sunland, one can assume that he was the very same pig that went on to seek the presidency as the 1968 nominee of the Yippie Party.

In the late 60′s Sunland-Tujunga was a wild place. The article chronicles the tussles between the commune and its neighbors. According to Schjeldahl the Valley Ranchers Association had set up an armed roadblock. Additionally “local toughs, many of them Vietnam Veterans”, known as the “Androids” would occasionally “pillage the farm.” Much of this, according to Schjeldahl, was set off by a picture published in the Voice of the Verduga Hills of Pigasus with a flag “flapping above his sty”.

Administration of the commune is on a daily rotation basis with everyone, kids included, taking a turn as “Dance Master” or “Dance Mistress.” “When you have this many people living together,” Romney (Hugh Romney the founder of the commune, aka Wavy Gravy- ed.) observes “you’ve got to dance or you step on somebody’s hand.” The Dance Master sees that things get done by someone who wants to do them.

The farm, as Romney suggests, is more than a summer camp for misfits. It is a thriving spiritual community, an experiment in utopian living. You get the idea when you attend the highpoint (literally) of the Hog Farm day, just before bedtime in the cantonment’s biggest dome. Shrouded in parachute silk and brightly lighted, the dome can be seen for miles on a smogless night. You can only guess at what the citizens of Sunland-Tujunga imagine is possibly going on inside. What is going on is this:

Inside the dome 30-odd men, women and children_lotus-squating, clad in an assortment of strange clothes. Eyes closed, hands clasped in two concentric circles, they are humming in unison_”Om.” “Om” is a loud resonant, brain-buzzing sound made by vibrating air in the sinuses. The choral hum is punctuated by improvisatory moans, pants, and clucks, it dissolves into an athletic chant: “HOG-HOG-HOG-HOG-HOG-HOG-HOG!” Then someone in a Donald Duck jersey stands and gently raises everyone, like a a circle of dominoes in reverse. Climax! All fall down. “The Circle Joke” is over, and the Hog Farmers, spent and blissful, break the circle and retire to their sleeping bags for the night.

I like the New Yorker, but I can’t help but imagine how it would be if they or Schjeldahl had such a groovy editorial position on art and culture today.

All photos by Jillian Wasser.

What do you do when the people who kidnapped, tortured and killed your parents or relatives go free? When the doctors who attended your pregnant mother while in a concentration camp escape unpunished? The answer that many members of HIJOS, an organization of the children of the disappeared, extra-judicially executed and exiled in the Southern Cone countries, have come up with are escraches. An escrache involves setting up a demostration in front of the house or place of employment of a known torturer or killer, alerting the public as to his identity and his crimes. In a recent week, Argentinean doctor Raul Sanchez Ruiz was the object of an escrache. Sanchez Ruiz worked in the ESMA (Naval Mechanics School), the largest concentration camp in Argentina, where he made sure the disappeared did not die during the torture sessions, so that they could continue being tortured. He also attended the pregnant women who gave birth at the concentration camp, and is suspected of knowing the whereabouts of their children – most of whom were given to families and friends of the military to adopt as their own. The escrache included a play about a doctor who helped a military man adopt the child of a disappeared woman, and ended with red paint being thrown at the walls of the doctor’s house.

Like the sex offender registry, these events aim to make the neighbors of the Escrache target very aware of what kind of creep they live next to. The goal here is to make it hard for the meatball to move around without people calling him out for the scumbag he is. These Escraches involves targeted flyerring, noisemaking, graffiti painting, and mass rallies by the douche-bags own home. It’s a public justice thing.

A video (among many online escrache videos) advertising the public shaming of this Argentinian, Alfredo Bisardo, who looks like Karl Rove!! Twins missing at birth? Perhaps. They both seem to share a gene for complicity in genocide. The video shares the fleck of dirts home phone and address.

Thanks Jennifer Flores Sternad.

Additionally 2 other great looking screening of shorts Sunday Night 7 & 9:30.

Harpist -check
Spoken Word Poetry- check
Old Growth Redwoods -check
Goddess Worship -check
Tree Hugging- check
Topless Performance Artist -check
Flummoxed Loggers- check

Striptease to Save the Trees, the movie.
you’ll have to click here to watch this gem, courtesy of Earth Films.

Guatemala

Recently I got mailed this book of paintings by elin o’Hara Slavik called, Bomb After Bomb. I figured that I’d be looking at either a series of calculated flow charts of casualties or a grotesquery as it comes with a forward by Howard Zinn and the conceptual hook of the book, subtitled “A Violent Cartography”, is that it’s made up of paintings of maps of places the United States has bombed. I was surprised to see a book full of fairly abstracted and fairly “decorative” paintings. Though slavick’s paintings rely on a kind of information graphics approach, portraying clearly and exactly countries, towns, regions that the US has blown up, all of these paintings take a much more formal approach. Quite often they are dominated by a game of color, line, pattern, and abstraction. If it weren’t for the title, at times we wouldn’t know the deaths and crimes being masked here.

These paintings reminded me of the work of LA painter Jill Newman, who equally chooses to paint politically charged sites. Instead of working in a social realist form, both painters use their representations as a place for formal departure. Early this year, at the recently closed Park Projects (now resurrected as Sea and Space), Newman exhibited a lush painting of the South Central Farm called Endless Numbered Days.

Endless Numbered Days

Luminescent in oil, the large painting depicts the tree at the center of the struggle. This is the walnut tree that activists camped in to defend the garden. The significance of the tree within the conflict is visible only by a faint banner and the tree-sit platform painted with the word “SAVE” on it. Otherwise it’s a color and lightfest. At a recent show at Taylor De Cordoba, Jill continued her South Central Farm trilogy with a series of watercolor paintings of improvised architectural forms constructed by the farmers. Like the oil of the walnut tree, these paintings use the political context of the farm as an invitation for aesthetic play with color. Rather than a retelling of the tragedy that has befallen LA, it is as if saved in Newman’s painting is a little bit of the spirit, biodiversity and creativity lost when the place was plowed under.

Chatting with my friends Kimberly and Melissa about these paintings, we came to a quote by artist Andrea Bowers regarding Vija Celmins, an artists who spent hours drawing meticulous, formally perfect photo-realistic. Bower’s said:

When you work this way, imagery is not chosen lightly; it is considered for a very long time. The dedication of her labor is an act of generosity toward the viewer. Her work shares a record of time in relation to production and to imagery. Whereas cynicism is prevalent in the art world today, she instead chooses to believe in human motives, so obviously displayed in Untitled #9 (For Felix) (1994–95), a drawing of a comet dedicated to the memory of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whose own work focused on generosity despite his dealing with the horror of AIDS.

In an age of intellectual coolness and emotional distancing, Celmins’ work reminds me that the artist’s personal position in relation to her subject matter has value.

untitled, #10

Howard Zinn writes in o’hara’s book “if the drawings of slavick and the words that accompany them cause us to think about war, perhaps in ways we never did before, they will have made a powerful contribution towards a peaceful world”. If Zinn is refering to a kind of conscioussness raising frequently performed by political art, I find this unlikely to occur. Slavick’s is an art that doesn’t seem to circulate in the appropriate environments, and its postion seems to be more about painting than convincing. I don’t however think this makes her kind of political art useless. Though representational and political in subject, it takes a differen’t approach than someone like Leon Golub, who is political becuase he can bludgeon. By taking scenes and places, battle zones which we think we know so well, and transforming them for creative fodder for trips into other realms, Newman’s and slavick’s paintings do a bit to reclaim wonder and imagination from the death machine. And here is the peace.

Rock My Religion is a provocative thesis on the relation between religion and rock music in contemporary culture. Graham formulates a history that begins with the Shakers, an early religious community who practiced self-denial and ecstatic trance dances. With the “reeling and rocking” of religious revivals as his point of departure, Graham analyzes the emergence of rock music as religion with the teenage consumer in the isolated suburban milieu of the 1950s, locating rock’s sexual and ideological context in post-World War II America. The music and philosophies of Patti Smith, who made explicit the trope that rock is religion, are his focus. This complex collage of text, film footage and performance forms a compelling theoretical essay on the ideological codes and historical contexts that inform the cultural phenomenon of rock `n’ roll music.

Original Music: Glenn Branca, Sonic Youth. Sound: Ian Murray, Wharton Tiers. Narrators: Johanna Cypis, Dan Graham. Editors: Matt Danowski, Derek Graham, Ian Murray, Tony Oursler. Produced by Dan Graham and the Moderna Museet.

This weekend the Bicycle Film Festival happened in LA. To celebrate, a party shut down Heliotrope. 400-plus bicycles rode in: dainty cruisers, chopped-down one gears, imported multi-gears, bikes with bamboo peace flags, bikes with sound systems, dirt bikes too. There was this skid competition: folks would tear down Melrose, whip around the corner onto Heliotrope and jam on their breaks- trying to see if they could slide the distance between two wooden towers. Those who did skid got to advance, those who didn’t ended up head-over-heals with road rash. A weird way to spend the afternoon, but the crowd was into it and just being there–bikes!

The co-op bicycle kitchen used to be housed in the eco-village, but then moved onto Heliotrope. The Kitchen offers a place to fix up or build a bike. Part of the Kitchen’s mission is to expand bicycle culture in LA. Beyond fostering and supporting many bike and non-bike events and scenes, they’ve been doing this by getting more bikes between the legs of people, young and old. They have also been taking over their neighborhood, literally. Scoops, the least expensive and most “experimental” gelato shop moved in down the block. Across the street a commercial bikeshop, in league with the Kitchen, opened up. And now if you need another excuse to get on your two wheels, newly opened by members of the Kitchen family is the equally inexpensive brew joint and vegan restaurant Pure Luck. They have a solid selection of beers on tap and offer local visionaries a seat to re-imagine the city from. But then again they are all ready doing that.

from the Stefan Brecht’s Article: Revolution at the Brooklyn Academy.

The Living Theater’s four splendid spectacles were a great event. Like an astonishing portion of the country’s popular music, they proved to be in content and form outside the social system, not structured by it nor, except as outlet, implementing it: liberated territory.

Below is a script for the anti-theater masterpiece(?) Paradise Now.

“This chart is the map. The essentail trip is the voyage from the many to the one. The plot is revolution.”

In the film Paradise Now documenting a performance of the piece in Brussels and Berlin, the “actors” after haranguing the audience for hours, with naked calisthenics and existential questions like “why can’t I smoke marijuana”, yell something like, “leave the theater, the real theater is in the streets”. People tumble toward the door, presumably heading for some kind of barricade.

12:01 AM July 4th, aka late night July 3rd

Got this note from the Pocho Research Society

The Pocho Research Society (PRS) has installed “unofficial” plaques in public spaces to commemorate formerly queer Latina/o bars in the Echo Park, Silverlake and the Downtown area on June , 2007. The group operates in a clandestine fashion.

Since the longevity of the plaques at the sites is unknown, visit the following locations ASAP in order to view before they are taken down.

Site Locations:
Le Barcito, currently the Cha Cha 2375 Glendale Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90039
Klub Fantasy at the Nayarit aka The Echo 1822 W Sunset Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90026
Club Fire at the Nayariit currently The Echo 1822 W Sunset Blvd, LA , CA90026
The Score 107 W. 4th St, Downtown Los Angeles, currently Bar 107

Echoes in the Echo is a series of public interventions that will explore History and memory in and around Echo Park. This phase of the project commemorates a few of many queer Latina/o spaces that were a ‘home’ to many for periods of up to a couple of decades and have since changed ownership and now cater to a new, straighter, younger and whiter clientele. This project takes place while the city, itself, is at a crossroads in its own history. Dramatic increases in real estate prices coupled with commercially driven development projects facilitated by elected officials are two of a multitude of forces that push many working class communities out of the city “core”. Waves of new ‘immigrants’ (albeit from the Midwest) have in the process displaced longstanding cultural spaces created over several decades. Within this massive “land grab” questions like ‘where do drag queens, closeted quebradita dancers and gay cholos go once they been pushed out?’ arise. How and who defines a space? Is a space defined by its present incarnations or does its past ruthlessly resurface like dust in unswept corners?

Spatial Justice is a concept advanced by Ava Bromberg, editor of two excellent books Belltown Paradise/Making There Own Plans and the new Spatial Justice issue of the Critical Planning Journal out of UCLA. Concepts of spatial justice work to reframe social problems in space- the territorialization allowing for an active engagement with problems as a collection of ecosystems, rather than isolated abstracted alienated concepts.

Belltown Paradise/Making There own Plans is a cool double sided book put out a few years back by the exciting Whitewalls Press (Sun Ra’s Notebooks, Prison Inventions). Along with Chicago based, man for all seasons, Brett Bloom, this book presents several projects that are working on the level of landscapes to create inclusive, creative and just places for human cohabitation. Half of the book is devoted to transformations and stories from the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle. The other half focuses on a bunch of projects: City Repair gets a work up here as do Park Fiction (a German utopian group which facilitates spaces for “collective production of desire”) and Can Masdue. Can Masdue is a part of the intriguing (and endangered) Spanish Anarchist scene and is a project affiliated with the “rurbano revolution”.

The Spatial Justice issue goes way deeper into conceptions of spatial justice-giving frameworks (starting with postmodern Marxist geographer David Harvey) to the situationist/holistic/anti-hierarchical/D.I.Y. conceptions that are inspiring analysis and action in the worlds of proactive, progressive, urban design. A slightly heavier read than Belltown Paradise, the journal has its share of write-ups of radical D.I.Y., City Repair like, spatial interventions including an essay about Camp Baltimore and a rad essay about German Bauwagon culture (think squatting industrial wasteland in improvised circus trailers). Also included are discussions of alternative ways to design villages in Palestine, to resist the occupation, and explorations of how street festival’s in Philly help to cement a sense of blackness in gentrifying neighborhoods as a force counteracting economic displacement (gentrification). A wonderful case where expressions of culture serve to mark space, creating power.

My favorite section of the book is a series of interviews with spacial thinkers who offer expansive ways to consider how it is that we occupy land across all kinds of divides, and ways that we might better live here together. Spatial Justice offers ways to think beyond the brick and mortar which binds us to the status quo.

40 ‘civil weapons inspectors’ unexpectedly visit the offices of Indra, Spain’s third largest weapons manufacture, and dismantle its capabilities, in 2004.

Click To Watch Video

It’s in Spanish and well worth watching for a wonderful disregard for property and business as usual.

contact communication coevolution

“To celebrate the announcement of the location for this summer’s
CAMP FOR CLIMATE ACTION” – Heathrow Airport August 14-21, 2007

Eight days of low-impact living, debates, learning skills, and high-impact direct action tackling the root causes of climate change.

In 2006, over 600 people converged on a field in Yorkshire for 10 days, and held over 100 workshops, ranging from alternative technology to the Kyoto Protocol to non-violent direct action training. They made decisions collectively, without ‘leaders’, and produced their own energy using solar panels, biodiesel, and a wind turbine. Many of them used the camp as a base for non-violent direct action against industrial polluters such as Drax, the largest coal-fired power station in the UK.

The 2007 Camp for Climate Action will be even better! Everyone is welcome to get involved. If you have any questions, email info [at] climatecamp.org.uk

7 Video portraits of radical climate activists

image by trevor paglen

The first magazine of feminist spirituality, WomanSpirit chronicled the exciting exploration of women’s changing lives through the decade 1974-1984. WomanSpirit showcased art and writing from women all over the world, from the academy to alternative cultures. Produced in forested Southern Oregon by an open WomanSpirit of volunteers, inspired and sustained by editors Jean and Ruth Mountaingrove, it was published quarterly as the seasons turned.

WomanSpirit explored creating women’s culture, ecology, ritual, healing, psychic abilities, feminist politics, women’s life stages, wicca, divination, death and dying, goddess myths and traditions, and many other topics. Gorgeous artwork, photographs, songs, stories, articles, discussions, poems, letters, and book reviews sparked and connected the international web of contributors and subscribers.

Simply and beautifully bound, this magazine is a snapshot of a different (?) era of identity based politics, where folks were developing incredible vernacular cultures, languages and spaces for their own cultures to thrive in, outside and far beyond the dominant culture. It is no coincidence that this mag was published in Wolf Creek, Oregon the sight of many lands set up to be run collectively as womens lands (such as Cabbage Land (1972), WomanShare (1974), and Fishpond, OWL (1976), Fly Away Home, Rainbow’s End (1974), and Rainbow’s Other End, WHO (1972) and We’Moon Healing Ground).

When a magazines and the cultures they speak for get this wonderfully rich , we certainly begin to depart from any kind of traditional patriarchy.

An exhibit about the liminal, substanceless, and static space of automotive transience at The Center For Land Use Interpretation. Exhibit hours: Fri, Sat, Sun noon – 5pm or by appointment

Guerilla Theater by IVAW in Washington DC March 2007

“Honorably” discharged soldier member of Iraq Veterans Against the War may be judged “inhonorable” because of his anit-war activity

“Adam Kokesh was deployed to Fallujah and received an honorable discharge last November. Since then, he has become active with the national organization, Iraq Veterans Against the War. After participating in Operation First Casualty, a demonstration at which he wore parts of his utility uniform, he received a warning from Major Whyte, an active duty Marine Corps Major who had been assigned to investigate the incident. After replying with a strongly worded email, the Marine Corps decided to prosecute him and separate him from the IRR with an Other Than Honorable Discharge. He could have ignored the letter of notification, but instead chose to exercise his right to challenge the decision in a hearing.”

Today (6/3/07) in Santa Monica, CA simular acts of “guerilla theater” by the IVAW were planned, reenacting civilian Iraqi life in Bagdad for the Third Street Promenade. A flyer handed out by the group reads “The detention of Iraqi civilians combined with corporate fraud has inevitably lead to resentment, distrust, and frustration. This is what is fueling the insurgency and our troops are paying the consequences with their lives and limbs.”

Hippies + Free Jazz + Psychedelia + Youth Choir + Islam

Generated around 1969 by Bay Area Sufi Mystic “Sufi Sam” Lewis, the Sufi Choir’s album attest to an odd yet strangely comfortable mixing of cultures that should be instructive for these bellicose East meets West days. For culture warriors this charming bit of esoterica might appear as a huh?

The back side of this, their 1973 album gives shout outs to:

Northern California Youth Choir, Ether, saints, prophets, Archie Shepp, Aretha Franklin, Carl Shapiro, Asasvati, Lao-Tsu, Children, angels, jinns, Hu, ancients, Sarmad, Dylan Thomas, flowers, Hassan, Hasrat Khaja, Zoroaster, form, Pythagoras, Paul, Air, Marin, Fire, void, Vocha, La Monte Young, Parents, Otis Redding, Joan Baez, Lester Young, Mozart, The Rishis, Roshi, Rabbi Lama, Mansur, Ravi Shankar, Earth, Bob Dylan, Mount Tamalpais, Sakir Hussain, ALLAH, The Golden Gate, Yeats, Rumi, The Holy Spirit, Ali Akbar Khan, Baba Ram Dass, Miles Davis, Pete Seger, The Three Kings, The Incredible String Band, Ajari, Rocky Mountains, The Arizona Desert, The Grateful Dead, Ruth St. Denis, Moses, Orpheus, All those Known or Unknown, Cecil Taylor, Bilie Holiday ….

Why would you not go to this?

FUCK FOR PEACE: A History of The Fugs focuses on The Fugs as a band that was both the result and extension of Kupferberg and Sander’s creative and publishing endeavors. The exhibition will showcase records and ephemera, including posters, flyers, hand-written lyric sheets, songbooks, and fan letters as well as publications by both Kupferberg and Sanders. This is the first exhibition to focus solely on The Fugs, and certainly the first time that all this work has been presented together.

The Fugs recorded seven albums (The Village Fugs, The Fugs, It Crawled into My Hand, Honest, and Tenderness Junction, among them) for Folkways, ESP, and Reprise before playing their final gig at Hershey Park in 1969 with the Grateful Dead. The band’s activism, performances, and song titles (such as “War Kills Babies,” “Kill for Peace,” “Group Grope,” “Coca Cola Douche,” and “I Couldn’t get High”) positioned The Fugs as a seminal voice of sixties underground culture. As such they were the subject of controversy regarding their explicit song lyrics, live shows, and war protests, attracting the attention of the Justice Department and the FBI. Despite their premature demise in 1969, The Fugs regrouped in the 1980s and are still actively recording today.

At Printed Matter in NYC