We Who came of age at the dawn of R&Roll

All the stuff from people two generations younger, on how much they got from Bowie and what the aging and passing of generations of pop stars born within a year or two of my own entrance to planet Earth, meant to them. Lennon, Dylan…et al.
I was born 1941, the day the Nazi’s invaded the USSR. I’m an artist filled to choking with debt to the past and no clue how to deal with it, but to use it for my own vision against the stream of recent history. 50’s rock of my teens broke down borders for me, I discovered, not David Bowie–who came way later when I was in my 30’s…but be-bop and cool jazz. The Beatles, the rock of the late 60’s and first couple of years of the 70’s were like movie soundtrack to my 20’s –while my own head was all Bach and Josquin du Pres and Palestrina and late 19th C, early 20th Modernists–artists both literary and visual. My overwhelming sense from all this is that, as an artist, I have no place in history, and not a sq mm of space free from it. I feel like a Lost Generation of One

Everything Wrong with Art & Capitalism

Experts expect a ‘severe correction’, particularly in contemporary and American art, after years of spiraling prices and celebrity and luxury obsession

Alicia Keys, Swizz Beatz — Musician Alicia Keys, right, and her husband Swizz Beatz look at an installation by artist Gabriel Dawe, in Miami. Photograph: Lynne Sladky/AP

Edward Helmore in New York

Art Market in ‘Mania’ Phase, from the Guardian. Including this report and all its links

For my other posts on Art & Capitalism, alternatives to the market/gallery system, click HERE and scroll down.

Revolution now!

Art and Revolution

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In a better world, there would be no need for artists to sign their work. Material support would not be tied to a competitive system, and confirmation would come from performing and making and doing, without the destructive, enervating conflict that comes from confusing satisfaction with one’s work with social approval and economic status. On that level, the distinction between craft and art would vanish—as the satisfaction that comes from work well done would fall equally to all who contribute to the benefit of the community. Art would not be a specialty of a few—but a gift nurtured and shared by everyone. Those more dedicated and gifted would serve to teach and empower others.

The capitalist systems of exclusion that corrupt the arts and those who are called to them—the gatekeeping function of galleries, critics, investors, and yes—schools of art, which combine to work from earliest childhood to destroy the seed of the imaginative impulse before it can germinate—which works to marginalize, impoverish or reduce to servitude all but the smallest number of those who survive the culling—having lost its economic and political purpose, would crumble and disappear.

Aroused from the drug of the Capitalist nightmare, every artist, poet, dancer, actor, musician… would be a revolutionary

Fight Climate Change!

Support the Experimental Farm Network!

The Experimental Farm Network (EFN) aims to fight global climate change and ensure food security far into the future by facilitating collaboration on plant breeding and other agricultural research.

Founded in 2013 by Nate Kleinman & Dusty Hinz, the EFN is presently composed of over 200 participants: farmers and gardeners, plant breeders and researchers, amateurs and professionals alike. The network is not-for-profit, based on open-source principles, and dedicated to social justice.

All are welcome and encouraged to join. Read more, and learn how you can donate! HERE

Mouse Melons (Cucumis melo. subsp. agrestis) from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, an entire nation threatened by inundation due to sea-level rise caused by climate change. — Mouse Melons (Cucumis melo. subsp. agrestis) originally from the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, grown by EFN in 2015. Maldives is an entire country threatened by inundation due to sea-level rise caused by climate change.

EFN exists because our agricultural system is broken. As a society, we no longer grow crops primarily for human consumption, but as commodities. We don’t farm in harmony with the environment, but in ways that harm it. We’ve stopped breeding plants for resilience, taste, and nutritional value: instead we genetically engineer and patent them to maximize corporate profits.

To take back our food system, we’ll need to marshall an army of volunteers to counter the power of the multinational corporations. We’ll need to develop more agricultural cooperatives and strong regional economies like those that thrived before industrialization. And we’ll need to develop carbon-sequestering perennial staple crops (including grains and oilseeds) and more sustainable growing systems & practices in harmony with the natural world.

Staring at the Face of Our Collective Death Wish

When the level of fear, zenophobia and thinly disguised blood lust exceeds all reasonable accounts of the perceived threats, it’s not about those threats, it’s about something else.
It’s time we paid close attention to that ‘something else,’ cause it’s already broken ground, it’s head and tentacles dripping with poison. What’s been let loose by the funders of the tea party, of climate denial–by those who have used racial hatred to gain political office and war for profit–it’s all come together. What was set loose by the bloodbath of the First WW, the collective madness that grew between the wars has been raised up in a new and more terrifying form and all signs indicate that it won’t end until the collective madness has exhausted itself over mountains of bodies, human and other, and a planet no longer able to support life above the molecular level.
I grieve for those with children… and for those children. We have broken the seal. What we buried has risen to devour us.

Revolution: organizing for the long haul

An interesting question: when all our ideas about how to maintain long term stability are modeled on capitalist institutions (the symbiotic relationship between non-profit and profit being the most obvious), how do we organize for the long term in ways that will break that mold? Put another way: how does a revolutionary movement remain revolutionary when the struggle is going to be multi-generational?

Do we assume they will be temporary but reoccurring, splintering off into more conventional affinity groups (like Occupy),

or can we create forms of self-renewing continuity that are not dependent on existing institutions, but exist in the interstitial spaces abandoned or not yet occupied by the machinery of capitalism–and having the power to resist assimilation and occupation?

————

55 Days of Occupy Philly: 54, 55… The beginning is near

11/29/11 Day 54
Rain. CoCo, Friend’s Center

I’ve posted these for the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from the first day of OWS, the days of planning for OP, to the first day of our camp on October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click: 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

Still on Dilworth. Two more days before Social Security.

Sunday—four rows of 25, — people sitting on steps

from 5 PM (time named in eviction order)… somewhere around 11:00, people disassembled. Crowd went from 500 or so (?) to about 100—OWS people from New York arrived—electric energizers! Plastic Pail drumbs—danced for hours. Straw vote to ignore Gwen-of-Labor’s warning that cops wanted drums to stop—unanimous. Congo line to Northwest corner, across to Thomas Paine—back down JFK & 15^th –danced in the street past the cops.

About damn time we stoped letting the cops tell us what to do. Not to bed till after 3:00 AM. The damn orientation at 8:30 next morning—turned out to be about conditions of bail. Call in twice a week, don’t get arrested before trial or risk revoking bail and contempt of court.

Friday
12/2/2011
Day 55
The end came Wednesday. November 30. Up all night Sunday. Again eviction day. Bowled over by a horse. Last night—GA at the Friends Center… so, it goes on.

…not with a bang, but a whimper

Soon they will come, the police. The city workers with their trucks. Our city of tents, our fights–all of it will disappear. Scrub away our presence, uproot the trees. Pile up the marble slabs we slept on.

My mind drifts back in time. I am fishing on Lake Michigan with my father in his boat. This is shortly before he will die. My parents had bought a retirement cottage not far from Grand Rapids. The light on the water, that silvered turquoise water, the peaks of the waves glisten in the sun–even the Voice is lulled to somnambulant slumber. I think of my mother–of that last summer, the summer before her final illness, while she is still herself–sitting on the porch–martini hour–watching the sunset over the lake, the jet skiers droning and whining like gigantic mechanized insects, a moment I want to go on forever. A tableaux receding into the distance, like the light of stars that no longer exist.

I will always remember…

55 Days of Occupy Philly: days 51, 53 the end is near…

11/25/11
Friday Day 51

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click: 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

11:50 Am A week till Social Security. Fasted for Thanksgiving. Played chess. Chilled. Went to City Hall for a stroll, conversations. People had brought quantities of food for occupiers.

Camp is in sad shape. Number of tents dwindling by the day—but still more than 200 or near that.

Walked to the ACME. Ready to sit down and read, write, do an on-line interview about my facilitation experience.

______ hi-jacked the GA—and threw a tantrum at CoCo—with his core of body guards threatening anyone who tried to approach or speak to him. He had a 3 page single spaced proposal he demanded be presented to the GA as a unit—with no amendments permitted. This when we’ve been given a 48 hour eviction notice—cops went around sticking notices in every tent.

… a break at Fergies

Sunday Day 53
11/27/11
10:30 AM
Preparing to go to City Hall for what may be last day of the encampment.

________ tried to hi-jack the GA again last night. He’s glittery-eyed obsessed—never stops. Managed to contain him by surrounding him with bodies and then retreated to Arch St. Methodist, blocking the door, creating a double line of bodies for people to pass through, and keep him out.

Meetings
and more meeting…
from 1:30 past 10—more than 9 hours. Facilitated CoCo (happily–____didn’t show up), & one proposal at the GA.

We plan to gather at Rittenhouse Square at 4:00 PM day after eviction—march to the Round House if there are arrests, as there almost surely will be.

I’m holding up pretty well.

May not be till Monday afternoon. If not arrested, have an “orientation” court ordered—for the Wells Fargo action, Monday morning. Will let Legal know

Peace and Solidarity!

55 Days of Occupy Philly: Days 47-49.

I will be posting these for each of the 55 days of Occupy Philly on Dilworth Plaza, from October 6, 2011 to November 30, the night of our eviction.

To view all posts to date, click: 55 Days of Occupy Philly.

Sunday 11/20/11
Day 47
Independence Mall
Committee of Correspondence… 62 degrees. ¬¬Gray clouds. Sitting on the grass.
Finance tomorrow at 4:00/ meet at Friend’s Center.
InterOcc—Com of Correspondence. PhilOccTogether.
Occupy Philly Media for posting info, Facebook, for Dec. cross occupy gathering.

Al Jazeera has on Occupy index

Occupy think tank—problems/ideas

Conference call 3:00 on preparing for Dec. 10.

GA report

Agenda-Iwanka and I will make a working group report to GA tonight.

Food Group—ask about lunch on 10th. Welcome—I’ll do that.

Café—fruit coffee

Political Theater—do what we did in Wells Fargo.

Tomorrow: PRESS CONFERENCE
Video

11/22/11
Day 49
17 in waiting room across hall from the court room. 14 defendants, an attorney, 2 supporters. I’m a defendant, but not for today. Here to support my fellow perps. AMP date for me the 28th (if I choose to do community service—I won’t), my arraignment set for 12/6, but trial will be consolidated.

________ sits next to our lawyer—never stops talking, endless loop.

Reading Terminal. Home—long nap. Thought I’d left Spirit Stick at Reading Terminal… bummed me out. Grumpy all GA—which was poorly facilitated.

A proposal for a list of demands that should have easily passed was tabled for a 3rd night. _______was so obsessed with pleasing everyone—drags the process on forever.

I’d left Spirit Stick outside when I went for mail… there it was when I got home…soaked. Heavy. Soggy… poor thing.

City ready to move on us—but not till Thanksgiving or after. But who knows?

We had a press conference

—Wells Fargo 14 report livestreamed at GA. I didn’t see it.

The sand is running out…

but we’re still here!

What’s the alternative?

Sometimes I play with the idea–and it twists my mind–of being a “success” … in what that comes to in popular notions.

My worst nightmare!

To make stuff to entertain the rich and powerful, and worse–for them to use as investments.

THAT”S what “success” means for an artist.

What’s the alternative? I want people to see my work. I want to be appreciated for what I do. But the only way open to pursue that, is to make money, and of course, to do all the shit you have to do make that happen.. .which ends up… making stuff that entertains the rich and powerful–the ones who are fucking up this world and leading hell bent to species suicide, and worse… making art they can use to make even more money!

Better, give my work away. Or burn it.

Or make work they would love… but would leak poisons to melt their brains.

Oh… that I had that power.

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