Good Night, Casablanca

The social center Casablanca was evicted this week from an abandoned luxury apartment building in central Madrid. It is only the latest squat to be cleared in Madrid, as the rightwing government has gone on an eviction spree to wipe out the logistical organizing bases of the 15M movement throughout the city.
Organize for Occupation in New York has called for a peaceful protest at the Spanish Consulate on Tuesday, September 25th at Noon, 150 East 58th St (Between Third and Lexington Avenues).

Yesterday morning, Wednesday 19 September 2012, the self-organized occupied social center Casablanca in central Madrid was evicted by state police. Large demonstrations have been held to protest this sudden police action against an important center of activity for the 15M (15th of May) movement in Spain. Even now, the 10,000 volume library of the BiblioSol, the relocated library of the Puerta del Sol encampment of the 15M movement, is held hostage inside the closed-up building.
Miguel Martinez* writes: “It has been a very strange eviction because our legal case was won by us many months ago and the owner had no chance to claim the property again. We did not receive any notice about the new demand, except a brief note in June to which we replied. It was illegal not to be notified in advance of the eviction. We suspect that there are political motivations behind this fast eviction. There is a call to surround the Parliament on September 25 [and call for a new Constitution], and one of the groups organising for this action was holding their meetings at Casablanca. In the past few days, some people have been arrested and identified by the police due to their participation in this forthcoming action. We feel really sad because Casablanca had become the main venue for alternative politics and culture in the inner centre of Madrid. Today some text books for primary and secondary school were going to be exchanged and freely distributed among people who need them. And thousands of books and materials from the Sol Camp are now shut up in this now-fortified building.”
(See Miguel's longer text (in Englsh) on this event at: http://www.miguelangelmartinez.net/?The-necessary-squats)
READ: The Diagonal online journal piece about the eviction (in Spanish)
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for reports in Spanish, follow on Twitter:
@fanetin
@almu_en_sol
@kolontai1969
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SEE VIDEOS:
see "CSO Casablanca cerrado por razones políticas: 25S"
(Casablanca closed for political reasons: 25S [25th of September action]” (in Spanish)
3-minutes – Images of the eviction and street full of demonstrators.
"C.S.O.A. Casablanca se queda, no al desalojo!"
(C.S.O.A. Casablanca remains, no eviction!)
(in Spanish)
This 4-minute video shows images from the succession of social centers established and evicted by the assembly of Casablanca, culminating in early images of Casablanca.
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Address letters of protest to:
Cónsul General, D. Juan Ramón Martínez Salazar.
Consulate of Spain
150 East 58th St., 30th floor.- New York, N.Y. 10155
E-mail: cog.nuevayork@maec.es
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Communique from the Casablanca Assembly immediately after the eviction Wednesday September 19, 2012
Today, at 7 am, the police have forcibly evicted without notice the squatted and self-managed social center Casablanca, situated at calle Santa Isabel 21-23, in Madrid, Spain. This was a totally illegal eviction. A magistrate's court and the Provincial Court of Madrid firm filed the criminal case started building ownership. It is illegal to reopen the case, and it is illegal we have not been notified of the decision to evict.
In two and a half years, Casablanca has been a meeting place open to everyone in the Lavapies neighborhood and city, as well as creation and development of social and political consciousness. Working and creating a safe space and a benchmark of solidarity, mutual support, self-management, horizontality, autonomy, and asamblearismo care. The community center has been built from the conviction that another world is possible, rejecting the capitalist system and corrupt patriarchy.
In CSOA collaborate over 30 collective, developing projects related to: Creating and critical thinking: Casablanca has served as a meeting place for various groups working and popular neighborhood assemblies and student movements, through countless lectures, learning journeys, empowerment and social criticism.
Education: a project for living free and learning with children two to six years ("Tartaruga"), a cooperative project between parents for the care of infants under one year ("Common House"), a Spanish teaching project for migrants ("the library"), reading workshops, a management project loan of more than 10,000 books donated during the camp popularly Sol and exchange of textbooks, in which more than 200 people involved in situations of need every Wednesday ("BiblioSol"), the physical file Sol …
The self, as an alternative to the model of consumption: a sewing, construction, bicycle repair, silkscreen printing, photography, computer …
Art, culture and personal health: theater workshops ("Timbuktu", "Impro theater"), dance ("Dance Lab"), yoga, queer culture ("Queer Tango Workshop"), swing, hip-hop, film (Casablanca Cinema) …
Social development: a project of support among people living with HIV ("HIV Madrid Critique"), a legal aid office to migrant groups, women's groups, the Office of Okupación Madrid, theater group ("Dystopia" ) …
Alternatives to consumer model: free store, consumer groups ("Tomarte Rojo", "BAH"), urban gardening, vegan dining, bike shop … It would be impossible to name all the people and groups who have been here for two years.
All this took place in a closed building, owned by the builder Monteverde SL, bought what was to become a college luxury homes. But came the bursting of the housing bubble and the crisis and were unable to continue speculating with it, the building being closed for more than three years. This company processes involved in corruption (Operation Malaya II), is part of the real culprits of the current political-economic context. Therefore, the proposed Casablanca has the legitimacy that they lack.
The political line of Casablanca, which has been developed for years in the occupied centers of La Escoba (the Broom; 2006), La Alarma (the Alarm; 2007), Malaya (2008) and La Mácula (2009), has become and remains a project of political struggle. This line has always believed and worked on the development and articulation of networks outside the mercantilist system. We believe in collective work as a means of achieving self-management of our lives and mutual support. We support the model of cooperation as an alternative to the model of competition and we continue to fight.
We realize that this eviction was not casual. It is the product of a process of growing repression of movement places arising from fear, and is closely related to recent calls for civil disobedience to demand the recovery of popular sovereignty. In this context, the eviction of Casablanca is now part of the strategy with which the elites of economic and political power face a new stage of social mobilization. Those of us who want to build a different reality have moved from a position of strength to a direct confrontation on September 25th, which will be a turning point. If you've come here because we have spent many months working, sharing, knowing, fighting, we are no longer fragmented people and groups. So this social center has been one of the areas where this has taken place, but the eviction is not the end of what has grown up here.
Another eviction, another squat.
Casablanca CSOA Assembly
/////////////////////// STATEMENT OF SUPPORT by Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid (FRAVM)
The FRAVM rejects the eviction of Social Center Casablanca
The Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid (FRAVM) rejects the social center eviction Casablanca occurred this morning and regrets that, with it, the building will be empty to become fodder for speculation as it closes its doors one of the few social spaces open participation of grassroots collectives.
Around 7 in the morning of 19 September 2012, several National Police agents have entered the social center Casablanca, located at number 23 Calle Santa Isabel, to evict. They put so well, by order of the magistrate court number 38 of Madrid and at the request of the owner of the building, more than two years of intense activity.
The building, abandoned for years, was occupied by a group of youths in April 2010. Since then, the community center has hosted numerous cultural, educational, social, political, educational ... Such as workshops to fix bicycles, employment, theater, concerts, screenings, presentations fanzines ... A self-managed program for some of the many groups that make up the active social network of Madrid and the result is richer than that offered many cultural centers run by the government and supported by public money.
At the time of eviction, the social hub Casablanca housed over 10,000 volumes Bibliosol, a library built collaboratively by people who give life to 15M, theatrical equipment ... The eviction today, added to that occurred in the past Usera July (The Osera Usera) and those before them back to emptying a building that will fall into utter neglect for the sole purpose of become pasture land speculation.
The Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid (FRAVM) demands respect to self-management projects promoted by collective basis in order to build meeting spaces open to the participation of all citizens while contributing to the creation of a living social fabric , democratic, independent and transformer.
http://www.aavvmadrid.org/index.php/Noticias/La-FRAVM-rechaza-el-desalojo-del-Centro-Social-Casablanca
/////////////////////////// * Miguel Ángel Martínez teaches in the Department of Sociology II, Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology, University Complutense of Madrid – his blog:
http://www.miguelangelmartinez.net/?lang=en
This text by him connects the 15M and squatting movements in Madrid:
http://www.miguelangelmartinez.net/IMG/pdf/articulo_Bilbao_v4_book_doc.pdf He has just written this entry on the Casablanca situation (in Spanish) –
http://www.miguelangelmartinez.net/?Las-okupaciones-necesarias He is a member of the SqEK research collective: Squatting Europe Kollective -- https://n-1.cc/pg/groups/91603/squatting-europe-kollective/, and http://sqek.squat.net/
Details about Monteverde Grupo Inmobiliario S.L., the real estate group that owns the building, (in Spanish) are at: http://www.centrodemedios.org/Inaugurado-el-CSO-CasaBlanca-nuevo.html
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A Voyage to the Black Rose

[I am busy moving this summer, so I reblog Ernie Larsen's recent great email. Ernie is a filmmaker who has been showing his work in Greek social centers for some while. This text describes his voyage to the beloved OSC Rosa Nera. Lots of cool photos, but, as he didn't post it, only emailed it, I can't link to them.]
All but two of the dozens of flat-screen TVs on the many upper decks of the giant ferry E. Venizelos (now en route from Piraeus to Chania) were tuned to the faceoff of the Eurocup football match between Greece and Germany. The three of us, including Nikos, had taken refuge on Deck 8 in seats several yards away from those last two hold-out TVs, thinking ourselves remote if not safe from a few hours of nationalist uproar. Nikos said, with a smile, that it might be better for the Greeks if the Greek team lost--as was expected-- so long as it wasn’t totally thrashed. Either way we were pleased to be insulated from the spectacle about to commence—but no, we were mistaken: a ferry employee in nautical uniform appeared as if on cue to change the channel on both regrettably, the TV-enhanced color of the football fan's jacket is lost here.
Seconds later, the TV camera’s attention switched from the digitally-enhanced natural green of the football pitch to alight on the irradiated vomit-green of Angela Merkel’s jacket in the immense stadium in Kiev. The impresario of austerity had traveled all that way to cheer on still another dimension of humiliation to be sternly administered the Greeks by an ace squad of her loyal subjects. Since football is a game with precise rules how could the supposedly rule-flouting Greeks ever expect to triumph?
Nikos and I climbed up to the open-air pool deck. The pool was empty, a net thrown over it, to dissuade the foolhardy , the inattentive, and the suicidal. The only brand of beer available at the bar was Mythos. An inconsequential detail that in my present state of exhaustion I found dimly resonant—a gulp of mythic spirit(s) while afloat on the Aegean—or something. A group of Athenian anti-authoritarians soon turned up. They stayed up all night. Drinking and talking.
Dawn arrival at the port of Chania. Bleary-eyed, we stumble out of the maw of the E. Venizelos, dragging our bags. It’s already warm, very warm. We’d slept through our chance to see the long series of NATO installations that dot the hills along the way into the channel. Though broke, tiny Greece boasts Europe’s largest defense budget (per GDP). Having gutted wages, the government is busily taxing everything in sight and aims to privatize every resource with the exception of public outrage.
However, there’s still some spare change left for the cops in Chania to bring a drug-sniffing dog to the dock to greet the anarchists, anti-authoritarians and autonomists here to celebrate the eighth anniversary of Rosa Nera, a squatted social center regarded with a considerable reverence by many in Athens and Thessaloniki. The consensus is that this canine cop theater amounts to a warning: We know you’re here, we’ve got eyes on you, the cops are saying. But the German shepherd, as a well-trained fragrance connoisseur, could care less about cops having eyes on anarchists. His discriminating nostrils are excited by the baggage of a hiker. The dog is so proud of himself that one cop has to restrain him from ripping into the bag that another cop is avidly searching, garment by garment. We miss the denouement: everybody piles into one of the two cars awaiting us and we are driven off to the extraordinarily picturesque old port. Rosa Nera (Black Rose) overlooks a restored Venetian lighthouse and the remains of a fortress breached by the Turks in the fifteenth century and by the Nazis in 1941. Or to be more (though not completely) accurate about the port’s history: Minoan then Greek then Roman then Byzantine then Arab then Byzantine then Venetian then Genoan then Venetian then Ottoman then briefly Cretan then Greek then Nazi then Greek. Even before parking in the private square we are told about fascist attacks on immigrants a few days earlier and an 88-day miners’ strike still going in nearby Heraklion. Two of the attacked immigrants, both Algerians, are among those staying at Rosa Nera. One sports a cast on his right forearm. Such an injury could have resulted from an accident playing football--except it didn’t.
Two nights later, following a discussion about the Heraklion strike, in which two of the striking miners participate, we screen our video, “Rock the Cradle,” in the square. (The video focuses, for the most part, on the aftermath of the December 2008 to January 2009 insurrection in Greece.)

A View from a Squat -- as seen from Rosa Nera square...
Afterwards an anniversary feast for 500 guests is spread in the square (500 real plates!) while local musicians play and sing, sing and play. We sit at one of the long tables, drinking local wine and eating lamb, risotto, and salad from plastic--rather than china--plates. How did that happen?
The only Americans in attendance, we talk for some time to an Athenian woman in her early thirties, who describes being among the half-million protesting the imposition of anti-austerity measures for five long hours in front of Parliament (“five hours, 500,000 people,” she repeats, more than once) a few months earlier--and then Parliament went right ahead and voted against the people. She speaks as if she still can’t believe what happened. “And then when the police attacked it was the anarchists that defended us,” she says. She’s been in Crete for three months now, in quiet retreat while mulling over what to do next. She’d quit her academic job. When Sherry says what an inspiration Greek resistance has been--and still is--to so many in the U.S. it isn’t clear that she believes or perhaps even quite hears what Sherry is getting at. In the present context -- in the midst of the lively communal celebration of eight years of unbending resistance going on around us—her somewhat unyielding expression of a doubt which surely everyone feels at times is disconcerting. But I wonder if there is anything more inevitable—given enough time, a stumble, a route or a rupture -- than such occasional rumbles of doubt. Late the next morning the musicians are still playing, still singing, with only slightly less energy, even though their audience has dwindled to a handful of diehards and sleepy-eyed insomniacs. The persistent tradition of folk melody, songs of work and desire that everybody knows and shares, among its many other benefits can be an effective salve for the lingering psychic scrapes doubt exacts.
A few days later, when we’re back in Thessaloniki, 34 anarchists, whose cell phones have been tapped for months, are arrested on felony charges of belonging to a criminal organization. In the past few months, fascists have attacked immigrants dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times. No arrests. Syriza had promised, if it won the election, to purge the police force of its fascist elements. It is well-known that the police are heavily involved (perhaps to the tune of 50%) in Golden Dawn, the fascist party that garnered 7% of the official vote count.
A few months ago, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg boasted: “I have my own private army,” a bloated statement reminiscent to some of the early stages of fascist consolidation of power. But of course it’s silly to imagine that this billionaire mayor, who had the law limiting the election of a mayor to two terms changed when he decided that he wanted to be Mayor-General for the third time, whose private army purged Zuccotti Park of the Occupy Movement, when, tiring of its excess, he so ordered, should be mentioned in the same breath with any of the tinpot fascists who rose to power, way back in the second and third decades of the last century. And maybe that’s correct: people here in Greece are beginning to speak of a molecular fascism, built from the ground up, which is not indebted for its increasing influence to the skillful demagoguery of a charismatic leader. And no one in their right mind ever accused Bloomberg of being charismatic.
– Ernie Larsen, August 2012

Showing "Occupy"

Two current exhibitions address the Occupy movement, one in Austria and one in California. “Occupy Everything” and “Occupy Bay Area” take different approaches, however, based on different understandings of the movements that arose in 2011. (Caveat – this is not a review of shows I've not seen; it's a digest of PR.) The San Francisco show is diffident about the movement, and limited in its goals. Occupy has “generated both praise and condemnation”; a sensitive audience is warned that it is controversial. It is “a direct response to the financial instability, subprime mortgage crisis... [and] problems in the labor market.” Occupy Bay Area focuses on the political poster artists who message the politics and culture of the movement, supporting its goals and aspirations.
This sounds very modest and limited. Nevertheless, the Occupy Bay Area includes as well some record of the important underground history of occupation there, including the Free Speech Movement at University of California, Berkeley (1964–65); the San Francisco State University protests, to gain an Ethnic Studies program and Black Student Union demands (1968–69); the International Hotel eviction struggles in Manilatown (1968–77); the Occupation of Alcatraz by Native American Indians (1969–71); and the ARC/AIDS Vigil at City Hall (1985–95). All of these struggles used the tactic of occupation. The show disclaims any intention of being a “fully executed social history”; instead it is a testament of the power of images to evoke the emotional expression of popular and wide-spread sentiments.” Yes, well – even with the rapid back-pedaling, it sounds like a good job.
“Occupy Everything,” an exhibition organized by Oliver Ressler for “Regionale12” in St. Lambrecht, Austria, has a much shorter run, but it is conceptually more ambitious. The historical sequence of 2011 is right – “ the 'Arab Spring', the movement of the squares in Spain and Greece, and the Occupy movement starting from the USA.” (People in the U.S. somehow tend to see their Occupy as first.) Ressler is a political artist concentrated in filmmaking. He concentrates on the common character of these largely non-communicating movements – “They are regionally active, non-hierarchical movements that reject representation and use direct democracy to make decisions. Occupying central public places serves as a catalyst to form and develop political projects and working groups. Successful occupations in one place can often inspire occupations in other cities.”
The show includes an on-site documentary of Tahrir Square by Stefano Savona, “tactical and symbolic infrastructure” for NYC Occupy developed by the collective Not An Alternative, and a collection of posters from Occuprint. Finally, Ressler mounts video projections which show discussions he staged with activists from 15M in Madrid, the Syntagma Square movement in Athens, and Occupy Wall Street in New York. The video installation “re-enacts the working groups of the square movements; it deals with issues of organization, horizontal decision-making processes in the assemblies and the meaning and function of occupation of public spaces.”
These are two strong indications of the path cultural institutions are taking in explaining and supporting the Occupy movement worldwide, the first excavating a largely unknown local municipal history of occupation, and the second exploring the common political processes which have constituted this new movement.
A video about the artists --
called "Occupy Bay Area: The Artists"
LINKS
Occupy Bay Area July 7-October 14, 2012
http://www.ybca.org/occupy-bay-area
“Occupy Everything,” an exhibition organized by Oliver Ressler for “Regionale12” in St. Lambrecht, Austria, June 23 – July 22, 2012

The Legal “Good” and That Which Is Necessary

I fell into this website, “Good,” which promotes forward looking projects, sustainable city initiatives, new technology, new economy, this sort of thing. We could call it a part of the sustainability movement – it was so named in 1990. I haven't followed it, but it's what schools of design are teaching, and what artists worry about. Yes, everyone who thinks worries about the cliff our human world is rushing towards. “Good” was featuring a Madrid project. Some folks had gone into the streets of the city center and put little sun umbrellas and plastic dinosaurs over plants growing through cracks in the stone-paving to protect them. These artists observed that their project was “noticed” the next morning.
This in a nutshell sums up what is wrong with the “Good” approach. The problem in Madrid isn't too few weeds in plazas, it's too many cars. Walk around this city and you smell it. Bicycling seems suicidal. There's a group working on that problem called the Critical Mass. Next week Chris Carlsson from San Francisco is coming to Madrid, a guest of the “Bici Critica” group here. (I'll blog about that when he comes.) Chris is one of the founders of this mass bicycle ride through the excessively grand highways that pierce our modernist cities. It interferes with the sovereignty of motorized traffic. It's a viral form of direct action that's gone global. In New York City the Critical Mass led to years of nasty confrontations with police. Now, finally New York has bike lanes. Coincidence? Well, it's like Bill Di Paolo said 25 years ago, the “Time's Up” on waiting for governments to act.
Now, after the sad showings in the Bonn climate talks and Rio+20, the director of Greenpeace is also fed up. “We have to ask ourselves what history teaches us in terms of how change happens when humanity has faced a big challenge, such as civil rights, apartheid or slavery,” Kumi Naidoo told the Guardian in Rio. “It is only when decent men and women said enough is enough and no more, and were prepared to put their lives on the line and go to prison if necessary, and that is where we are. We have to intensify civil disobedience. I keep thinking of what [Nelson] Mandela said decades ago, which is, this struggle is one that I am prepared to live for and if needs be to die for, and that is what the leadership challenge is for us.”
Greenpeace does not want Shell Oil to drill in the Arctic. Shell has obtained a global injunction against Greenpeace. (Didn't know about those? Ah, well – even the right doesn't like the newly proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership.) So Greenpeace plans to break some laws. A Shell-bought country may send out their navy to stop them. Who's good? Who's bad? What is necessary?
So back to “Good.” I linked there from the BMW Guggenheim Lab in Berlin. They emailed me that they're having a contest, which Good is arranging, to send in your ideas for improving public spaces. (There's a blog contest too, but “Occupations & Properties” can't be entered because it reports on activities that are illegal – it's in the rules.) The BMW Guggenheim Lab was born from the partnership of the mega-German car company and the entrepreneurial modern art museum. By the project's own flack, it's a “a think tank, a community center and a public space,” and it opened first in New York just before last year's Occupy fall. In August of 2011, some of the old-time Lower East Side squatters and their friends came to the lab and got loud, staging a “Let Them Eat Cake/Eat the Rich/No Comfort Zone street party.” The BMW Lab's theme is “Confronting Comfort.” So then, whose comfort is being confronted?
When the ex-squatters descended, blogger EV Grieve writes, “The Lab itself greeted the protest with a mixture of appreciation and utter annoyance, sympathizing with its cause but finding its aggressive tone objectionable. 'This space is meant for dialogue,' said Lab team host Kristian Koreman, who has roots as a squatter in Rotterdam. 'If they had acted in a way where they wanted an answer to their questions, we would have answered.'”
Well, that's promising, I thought, that an ex-squatter is working with them and is willing to take questions. But it seems these questions should not be ontological: the entire basis of the project is not up for discussion. Still, they could have answered – but what was the question again?
The NYC Lab was used most regularly as a presentation venue for young experts-in-training, architects, planners, and assorted urban geeks. When the Lab was packing up, EV Grieve asked what its readers thought of the NYC gig. One commenter wrote: “I live nearby. I had to pass by to get home many nights. Imagine white hosts in their twenties with lazy, nasally, monotone speaking voices peppering the word 'urbanology' over loud speakers to a mostly fedora and calf-high black-boots-over-black-tights-wearing crowd.”
Urbanology – that's the study of cities. And that is who is working in and curating the Lab. (Except for those who shift chairs and scenography, cook and serve the $10 hamburgers, etc.) While they did invite in a number of old-time resistance oriented people to talk and present, finally it was as history, not as possibility or critique.
They invited me to talk, and I would have if I could have. That's my old neighborhood. The NYC Lab was sited directly across the street from Whole Foods, a giant expensive supermarket developed on city-owned land. Thirty years ago I ate for $1 in a sunny breakfast cafe which stood on that land, next door to a bum's bar open almost 24 hours. (The customers were often allowed to sleep under the tables.) Ten years before I lived there, Jane Jacobs' tribe of activists pitched tents along Houston Street to protest the city's plans to displace low-income residents. The battles this neighborhood fought against gentrification were lost long ago. A local boutique recently did a sarcastic victory dance on the photographic remains of the Mars Bar, the last bastion to fall. So if I had talked at the BMW Lab it would have been in terms of reminiscence, an old geezer sharing his fond and bitter memories...

And Now It's Time for Your Questions
Now the BMW Guggenheim lab is in Berlin, “confronting comfort.” They are “focusing on citizen participation in the future of cities” from June 15 to July 29, offering “free programs designed to empower residents to change the city they live in.” They had planned to plop the Lab in Kreuzberg, along the River Spree. Kreuzberg in the former West Berlin was the epicenter of the squatting movement in the 1980s. Long slated for the massive redevelopment campaign of Mediaspree, this area is on the front lines of the struggle against gentrification in Berlin. The city has been bumping squats and alternative projects out of there one by one. So folks are steamed, and very well organized. The cops got the willies, citing “threats of violence by ultra-left groups.” (The favored weapons of the Mediaspree Versenken / Sink Mediaspree campaign at its height were paint bombs and water pistols, but never mind.) So the Lab was relocated to Prenzlauer Berg, the plush neighborhood of aparatchiks in the former East. Even there they are having trouble – with the police!
They are being over-protected. “If someone makes a presentation in the lab, I do not want visitors to feel they are surrounded by police,” said Maria Nicanor, the curator of the Lab. But they are. A competitive citizens' event for children was interfered with by police. Because that is more or less what the BMW Lab has been reduced to, holding events for children. (P'berg is full of breeding couples.) Which is kind of what the “Good”/BMW Lab collaboration is, finally, an invitation to submit your idea, to ask your question, to make your suggestions. They will judge them, and you might get some publicity, maybe even some kind of prize, like a chance at geekdom yourself.
This is a far cry from what political squatters have traditionally resisted for, and what their contemporary allies envision – a full-scale participatory planning process. “Good” won't do. “Good” is a cartoon for children. Although, just as all those talking animals make a lot of grown-ups into vegetarians, we may hope that our “Good” kids may wake up before we're all in free fall over that cliff. Time's Up. We can't just be “Good.” We must fight the evil, including the evil that results from doing nothing and refusing to look.
Although the times so often seem to demand it, I don't like to write cranky or canty. So let me add, as a kind of coda – the info about the resistance to the BMW Guggenheim Lab was sent to me by a member of the SqEK group who is following the action. His email subject line was “FUCK THE BMW LAB.” In Germany, as the website of the anti's makes clear, there are plenty of reasons to feel enmity towards that company for its past, its political role, etc.. In the USA they are simply known for making expensive cars which get exhibited in museums like the Guggenheim.
I have devoted my life to seeking and disseminating knowledge, so I have respect for the “laboratory” process that BMW Guggenheim Lab pretends to embody. But the way that SqEK is doing it is in the model of militant research, and we don't have any money. This is rather the opposite of the embedded institutional and corporate knowledge that the Lab seeks to produce and disseminate.
Corporate knowledge, even in its tutelary mode, does not advance according to a model of “criticism and self-criticism.” At best, it will answer your questions. (In some way; speak after you have spoken; or maybe say nothing.) It rests securely on its monetary foundations. Those talking are paid to talk. Those listening may pay to listen so that they in turn may become the ones paid to talk.
There is a great deal to be learned from the inhabitants of a city which you are seeking to redevelop. There is much of value in the institutions they have created, especially those that they have formed with great effort and solidarity in resistance. If you don't talk with them instead of at them you will never learn. When you are surrounded by the police, it is clear that the position of your investigation is corrupted. Then you are not a listening post but a sound truck. You present as a potential victim who must be protected from the discourse you wish to understand. The knowledge you gain will, of course, be shared with your protectors. So why should anyone talk to you? Talking to the police can only get you in trouble.
It isn't that the people running the BMW Guggenheim Lab are bad – they aren't. They come from an enlightened corporate sector. They mean well, and they are trying their best to do something meaningful amidst difficult circumstances. It is that at this very late stage in our planetary devolution they are still trying to make a business out of doing “Good.” It's certainly too late for that.

images -- from Treehugger.com, "Walkout from Rio+20"; PowerShiftCanada2012
police around BMW Lab from bmwlabverhindern.blogsport.de
LINKS
“Good” – it's registered in Iceland(?), although it is U.S.A.-centric; there's also a journal
http://www.good.is
Bici Crítica -- Every last Thursday of the month, at 8pm in Cibeles, Madrid.
bicicritica.ourproject.org
Chris Carlsson speed raps for 30 minutes on his book “Nowtopia” – our necessary future
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_pfDjnbWuQ
TIME'S UP! is a New York City-based not-for-profit direct-action environmental group that uses events and educational programs to promote a more sustainable, less toxic city.
http://times-up.org/
Jo Confino, “Furious Greenpeace moves to 'war footing' at Rio+20 -- Pace quickens at Rio summit, as NGO director responds to weakened oceans proposals with promise of civil disobedience”
15 June 2012 at http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/19/greenpeace-rio-20-civil-disobedience
EV Grieve blog – August 9, 2011 anti-gentrification protest at the BMW Guggenheim Lab – “(The comments section is still smoldering.)” http://evgrieve.com/2011/08/recap-of-saturday-nights-protest-at.html EV Grieve blog – “Packing up the BMW Guggenheim Lab”
http://evgrieve.com/2011/10/packing-up-bmw-guggenheim-lab.html
“Hamptons boutique Blue & Cream mounted a 'Tribute to Mars Bar' photo exhibit in their Bowery location.”
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com.es/2012/06/mars-creamed.html
“Confronting Comfort: BMW Guggenheim Lab Opens” in Berlin
http://www.good.is/post/confronting-comfort-bmw-guggenheim-lab-opens/
“The project's overarching theme, Confronting Comfort, spans the first two-year cycle of the six-year project”
Christopher Cottrell, “Berlin's Gentrification Row – Locals Rage Against Rising Rents”
at http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/berlin-s-gentrification-row-locals-rage-against-rising-rents-a-784966.html
about the monster that is “Mediaspree”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediaspree
Nicanor and other quotes are from “BMW Lab Verhindern” (prevent BMW Lab) blog in German, via Google translate
http://bmwlabverhindern.blogsport.de
“City Forward” competition – good luck!
http://www.good.is/tag/city-forward

Squat Cinema June 21, Interference Archive -- Two Documentaries from the European Squatter Movement Thursday June 21st, 7:30pm Resistir es Vencer: "To Resist is To Win" is a diy documentary that chronicles a year in the squatters movement in Barcelona in the mid 1990s. Starting with the eviction of the famous Cine Princesa occupation this film follows the demonstrations, occupations, and riots that accompanied this particularly strong period in the squatters movement in Barcelona. Barcelona 1998. 30 min. Spanish with English subtitles
69: Ungdomshuset (literally “the Youth House”) was the popular name of the building formally named Folkets Hus (“House of the People”) located on Jagtvej 69 in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, which functioned as an underground scene venue for music and a rendezvous point for varying anarchist and leftist groups from 1982 until 2007. On 1 March 2007 Ungdomshuset was cleared of its occupants by the police at about 7:00 in the morning, sparking days of intense rioting and giving birth to a widespread social movement that fought for a new space for alternative culture.
“69″, directed and shot by first-time filmmaker Nikolaj Viborg, looks at the dramatic events leading up to the authorities clearing Ungdomshuset on 1 March 2007 and the conflict that ensued. The film won the New Nordic Voices award at Nordisk Panorama 2008. Denmark 2008. 58 min. Danish with English subtitles

On Failing, Sharing, and Getting Lost

I'm stewing over the Wisconsin electoral defeat of the recall effort on Governor Scott Walker, that light-of-the-right union buster. All that grassroots organizing seems to have gone for nothing. Once you enter the electoral arena, you face huge bloated moneybags throwing their weight around propagandistically. And the sheepy people buy it. For me, this goes hand in hand with the suppression of the Occupy movement nationwide, which we learned was coordinated by federal agencies. We're back in the desert again, shut out of electoral politics. And again, frustrated reformers have only their sometime friends, the Democratic Party, to blame – for, according to the party's own calculations, not throwing their own chances away by supporting lost causes. So, say many, there goes Obama. Between the shitty economy – thanks to Republican obstruction in Congress which has successfully blocked stimulus – and the fatal loss of morale in the progressive cadres, the first black president looks to be fucked for a second term. Bienvenido Mr. Romney.
For his people it seems fine, all right, if the USA becomes a sea of third world poverty with a few well-fortified islands of urban plenty. So much of the science fiction I read in my youth describes just such a world – and it weren't no utopia, that's for sure!
So now what?
Around the same time the Occupy camps were being cleared in the USA, a gal I'd never heard of gave an interesting talk in London at the Centre for Cultural Studies Research at the University of East London. I picked up the Jack Halberstam podcast today, talking about her new book The Queer Art of Failure. The website billed it as a look at “how failure can be used to mobilize radical politics.” Well, maybe not – but it's pretty damned interesting.
Here's my notes on the arguments in her podcast. First, she says, “Queerness is failure as style.” Because queers – that's newspeak for the gay and lesbian and transgender people who don't think of themselves as the new bourgeoisie – queers cannot adopt to gender roles. They always “fail” at being successful heterosexual men or women. So, instead of being shamed by this failure, queers “inhabit it.”
Now, capitalism is about winning and losing. But we always lose sight of the losing part – we are encouraged to forget about that! For a few people to win a lot, many many people have to lose a lot. This means that many, in fact, even most of us under capitalism, are defined in relation to failure.
Then she starts talking about the Invisible Committee, and their recent radical pamphlet “The Coming Insurrection.” The analysis of the Invisible Committee suggests that we get disorganized, and push the crisis in order to try to bring the system down, because it is not the system that is in crisis, it is capitalism that is the crisis. Again, the economy isn't in crisis, it is the crisis. So the IC urges activists – anarchists, particularly – to intensify the crisis. Get disorganized, find each other, and help to push the system into collapse. Occupations have tried to do that.
(Here I lost her a little, since it's not clear that Occupy or any radical group has any power to intensify anything in the general economy, outside of an occasional wildcat strike in a very marginal sector of the economy like coffee shops or bookstores in a notoriously hippie town. Occupy, I thought specified the analysis of the crisis, and diversified the strategies of popular organization that are confronting it – that's all [although that's a lot!]. They have had no real effect on the structure of the crisis itself, i.e., no economic effects, except for boosting police budgets.)
Then she talks of the classic modernist attitude towards failure, using playwright Samuel Beckett as her example: “Fail again, fail better.” Refuse the terms of success, because for the modernists, successful humans are despicable. Only those who fail are respectable. (Again, I doubt it – but I'm reporting her!)
Halberstam then referenced the anarchist political theory of James C. Scott (in his “Seeing Like a State,” 1999) on peasant resistance. Slowdowns, passive resistance, “foot-dragging,” are signs of resistance, stalling the imposition of any kind of rule. (E.g., “Slackers.”) Failure then is one of the “weapons of the weak,” and it stalls the business of the dominators. Then she talked about the novel “Trainspotting.” “In the U.S.,” she said, “people don't read it, but here it's a way of life.” This is “an unqueer novel about failure, disappointment, addiction, violence” with “outbursts and obscene rants from the Scottish working class... [and] moments of searing punk negativity” through which the (anti?) hero articulates his resistance. Halberstam said she was invited by the lesbian art publishing group LTTR to contribute to an event around failure. They pointed out that lesbian tennis champions don't get commercial endorsements. For example, big winner Martina Navratilova was passed over in favor of a loser because she is so “out.” “The butch,” Halberstam says, “can't be co-opted by capitalism. Capitalism presumes that in order to sell things it has to engage the male gaze on the one hand, and sell a certain version of femininity on the other.” This is how to begin to think of the logic of failure, and how it disrupts all kinds of systems. “Capital doesn't run through every single identity location.” While in books and TV shows to be queer is to be consigned to a place of sadness and loneliness, in fact, there's an active social network. Heterosexuality is the place of “nuclearity and isolation.” There was a lot more. She whacked on Slavoj Zizek for his book “In Defense of Lost Causes,” criticizing his take on the recent UK riots as being an inverse of capitalist consumerism, a matter of “shoppers out of control.” The problem we face today “doesn't conform to an old left lineage. As soon as you think big, you're already back into the logic of capital. We're looking for weapons of the weak. We have to think small.” (It's not only Slavoj; this is the kind of talk that drives David Harvey crazy too, although he keeps a better poker face.)
She spoke about the way we sentimentalize the small, the miniature, because it's irrelevant, using a painting of a dead baby bird. She talked about her chapter on “shadow feminism,” the work of undoing femininity, citing as examples the artists Yoko Ono and Marina Abramovic. (She missed my old pal “drag king” Diane Torr, a Scottish lass who's been at this as long as Marina.) Halberstam also analyzes a series of recent childrens' films using the new technique of CGI animation. “To address a child viewer, you have to address failure, because children are always messing up.” These films, she says, teach that “children are collective beings.” But we need to unlearn the attitudes of childhood in order to become competitive individuals in capitalist society. These films educated the Occupy generation. “The child's best line of defense is simply to say 'no'.” This absolute irrational negativity stymies response, and stops the forward motions of parents. Children are a reminder of what we used to be, and a reminder that there are other ways of being in the world.
Finally, during the question period, Halberstam returned to questions around Scott's book “Seeing Like a State” concerning legibility. “The failure to be is a failure to be legible,” she said. “But the answer is not to become legible.” But that's been my project with “House Magic” – precisely to make the social center and squatting movement “legible,” i.e., intelligible as to its political objectives and constituency of activists and participants. Through this, I have reasoned – in classic liberal fashion – it could become possible to legalize successful occupations, to make them “demotic institutions” (not “monsters” as Universidad Nómada has argued). But since its inception, I have worried about my strategy. Stefano Harney and Fred Moten argued that what they called the “undercommons” was a precious resource of the oppressed precarious workers within universities, knowledge that should not be shared with the rulers. The nagging doubt remains that the social center information project could be misguided, unproductive, itself doomed to failure and obsolescence. Halberstam seems to point to a strategy of condensing within failure – which for squats and occupations means eviction – and doing... what? Not exactly so clear, then, is it? More self-isolation – “auto-ghettizzazione,” as the Italians called it?
Even as I write this, my doubts strike me as a little silly. (But then I'm reading Tony Judt, and for him, everything is a little silly.) Still, the question of the conduct and utility of research on the new social movements is on the table with the rise of new cadres of militant or movement researchers and activist-scholars. There's been an important recent burst of thought on this. Is it a reprise of the “scholars into the factories” movement of the French Maoist '60s? Well, not exactly. The group I'm in with, SqEK, is also going through some conniptions around these questions. And there's an “Occupy Research Collective Convergence (ORCC)” June 30 on “activism and research ethics” in London. The game is afoot in academia, and it's a good bet that Mycroft is listening.
Halberstam concludes poetically – (it's cultural studies, after all!) – “We need to forget the old models, cut them loose, so that we can be available to what comes next, open to the political possibilities that will come from being disoriented.... You have to get lost to be able to find a new path.” Well, me too, I'm lost. Vamos à la dérive.
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LINKS and REFERENCES
only the first of many reports on U.S. federal repression of Occupy is Rick Ellis, “Update: 'Occupy' crackdowns coordinated with federal law enforcement officials” (November, 2011; Minneapolis Examiner) – but it's a lot worse that this, as subsequent reports have shown – cf. yr local “repression watch”
http://www.examiner.com/article/update-occupy-crackdowns-coordinated-with-federal-law-enforcement-officials
Jack Halberstam on The Queer Art of Failure – a podcast; link is here:
http://culturalstudiesresearch.org/
you can pick up “Coming” online, among other places here – http://es.scribd.com/doc/17495854/Invisible-Committee-The-Coming-Insurrection
where the tagline says the book is now illegal in France. Wait a minute, don't they have a new president?
James C. Scott’s book “Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed” (1999)
LTTR No. 3, “Practice More Failure” (July 2004) is an artists' book; but some of it is online –
http://www.lttr.org/journal/3
Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, “The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses” in Social Text Summer 2004
The Argentinian group Colectivo Situaciones published “On the Researcher-Militant” in 2003 (trans. S. Touza) – it is at http://eipcp.net/transversal/0406/colectivosituaciones/en
in English, Spanish and German
Stevphen Shukaitis, David Graeber, Erika Biddle, eds., “Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations, Collective Theorization” (AK Press, 2007)
Julie Perini and Kevin Van Meter (Team Colors Collective), “What Is Militant & Co-Research?” (2008)
at http://es.scribd.com/doc/6010057/What-is-Militant-Research
Colectivo Situaciones (trans. Nate Holdren & Sebastián Touza), “19 & 20: Notes for a New Social Protagonism” (Minor Compositions, 2011)
http://es.scribd.com/doc/75816585/19-20-Notes-for-a-New-Social-Protagonism
“Vamos à la dérive” is the Spanish title for “Let's Get Lost” (1988) is Bruce Weber's movie about Chet Baker. Jazz and heroin in France of the boom years.

Earthquake in Milan

I've been in Italy, visiting ancient monuments on a real-life vacation. As I was leaving, an earthquake with 200+ aftershocks fractured much of northern Italy's historical patrimony (matrimony?). The span of my vacation also covered the lifespan of a new eruption in Milan, the MACAO cultural center occupation in a long-abandoned skyscraper. Milan has a venerable tradition of political squatting, including what many call the first European social center, Leoncavallo. This squat is different, though. It's not only anarchists or communists, not even only indignados – this time it's a mass of “cultural workers” who walked into this typical example of speculative over-reaching. And they had support – a roster of leading European intellectuals signed on in support. Dario Fo spoke to the squatters. The institutional internet mainstay E-Flux urged support for the occupation. Even Italian Vogue covered the story, sending out their photographers to snap some very elegant pictures of the activists' job-site. The photo of the general assembly of MACAO above tells you why there has been so much interest. There are simply too many people, too many workers in this very important fashion industry town, who are in on this occupation to ignore it. It is a rising of the fabled precariat of the culture industry, but this time supported by their management. As the occupiers write, “MACAO, the new arts centre in Milan, is a great experiment in building with a bottom up approach a space in which to produce art and culture. A place where artists and citizens can gather together in order to invent a new system of rules for a common and participatory management which, in an autonomous way, will redefine time and priorities of their work and allow them to experiment with new common languages. We are artists, curators, critics, guards, graphic designers, performers, actors, dancers, musicians, writers, journalists, art teachers, students, and everybody who works in the field of art and culture. We’ve been mobilizing for one year, meeting in assemblies to discuss our situation as precarious workers in the fields of artistic production, entertainment, media, entertainment industry, festivals, and t

he so-called economy of the event. A world increasingly hostage of the finance that exploits and absorbs the primary task of culture, which is to be an economy of sharing. We represent a large share of the workforce of this city that has always been an outpost of advanced service sector. We are the multitude of workers of the creative industries that too often have to submit to humiliating conditions to access income, with no protection and no coverage in terms of welfare, not even being considered as proper interlocutors for the current labor reform, all focused on the instrumental debate over Article 18. We were born precarious, we are the pulse of the future economy, and we will not continue to accommodate exploitation mechanisms, and loss redistribution.... MACAO fought alongside and within this network: Lavoratori dell’arte, Cinema Palazzo in Rome, Teatro Valle Occupato in Rome, Sale Docks in Venice, Teatro Coppola in Catania, L’Asilo della Creatività e della Conoscenza in Naples, and Teatro Garibaldi Aperto in Palermo.” The mayor at first seemed as if he was going to play along and give the group some space, only not this building. Yesterday it seems, negotiations broke down, and first the police, and then the army was sent in to evict the squatters. Even so, it seems like only the first act. The corruptions and privations of the Berlusconi era have led to a huge “pent-up demand” for viable cultural facilities and services. (These recent troubles are spelled out in Rob Hammelijnck and Nienke Terpsma, eds., “Italian Conversations: Art in the Age of Berlusconi,” pub. Fucking Good Art, 2011.) When a social center occupation attempt gains the support of leading cultural figures it can very well be the prelude to a deal. LINKS -- MACAO www.lavoratoridellarte.org // E-Flux “Art & Education”: “MACAO belongs to everyone, let’s protect it!” http://www.artandeducation.net/announcement/macao-belongs-to-everyone-let%E2%80%99s-protect-it/ // the Facebook page (a triumph of design, BTW) http://www.facebook.com/macaopagina // article on MACAO on the website of Italian Vogue http://www.vogue.it/en/people-are-talking-about/obsession-of-the-day/2012/05/macao-in-milan