After publishing the book Let's Start A Pussy Riot we wanted to explore what it means to be an activist.
This new project, 100 Days of Activism, seeks to inspire the activist that we all have inside of us. We will be looking at activists from across the globe and posting inspirational interviews and stories. We need you to help us - please send your responses on whatever issues spark your fire and how you choose to engage - whether it's artistic, protest, slogans, banners, subversive, internet based or physical.
We all have the potential to change the world.
send submissions to: [email protected]
Events are still unfolding, with police illegally evicting the squatters. Follow events here.
In their words:
Love Activists and Squatter and Homeless Autonomy (S.H.A.) have seized a disused RBS bank abandoned for two years in the heart of Westminster; a building that has been taken by the people, for the people. RBS was bailed out £46 billion by the taxpayer, equating a loss of £1500 per UK taxpayer. This means RBS are 82% owned by the people of the UK. This is a public repossession. Despite the 1.5 million empty buildings, There are 110,000 homeless people in the UK this winter, and squatting is a direct solution to this housing crisis. We demand a repeal of the 2012 laws, which have outlawed squatting of residential buildings. This could provide adequate housing solutions to the homeless.
We have opened up the space as a community area, completely separate from the greedy capitalist structure of modern society. The community will provide a free meal center for those living on the street, and to gather support to continue this project. A planned Christmas dinner will take place on Christmas day supported by Beat 'n Street Kitchen, and Food not Bombs. Our aims are to continue to provide food to the homeless, and a safe space for them to rest. Further to this, there are several spaces on the upper floors for groups wishing to hold events, workshops and talks. We would love for the whole community to be involved with this space.
Finally, we demand an end to the increasingly militarised Police and State violence and repression against those most marginalised and voiceless. We want homes, not banks and jails. Survive, protest, resist, reclaim. We will continue to expropriate wealth and space on behalf of the people. Everything that is necessary is just. Love Activists and S.H.A. say DRAG 'EM OUT (#dragemout)
Our first project is a large-scale collaboration between major and emerging NL metal artists in support of the Red Cross, in occasion of 3FM Serious Request 2014. Donations will bring help victims of sexual violence in conflict territories.
“The Power of Love” will be available for download against an open donation from 08.12.14 on www.thepoweroflove.nl
In their words:
Our mission is to create engaging short films which accurately represents individual journeys with gender expression and self-identity.
While the My Genderation films are made by trans* people about other trans* people, they are for a much wider audience, to allow people to connect and empathise with individual journeys. We create all our films independently and have total control over filming and editing.
So far, My Genderation films have been shown in schools, universities, film festivals and is endorsed by the BBC through their ‘Fresh’ documentaries initiative.
Lewis Hancox & Raphael Fox are the creators of My Genderation. The film-makers both took part in My Transsexual Summer (Ch4) which was a prime-time series which essentially started a dialogue with the nation about gender.
Lucky Tooth Productions was founded by Raphael Fox & Lewis Hancox in 2013, for a variety of film-work, including documentary, promotional and music videos.
MORE FILMS
The death of Eric Garner sparked protests around the US, especially in New York, after the policeman was acquitted.
The photograph above comes from the Guardian, who write:
The demonstrations also continued in New York. Here, a man protests in falling snow following a news conference where members of Justice League NYC presented a list of demands at City Hall. The league, made up of juvenile and criminal justice advocates, artists and experts, and formerly incarcerated individuals, issued the demands in response to the failure of a Staten Island grand jury to indict white police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner
In 2011, the Arab Spring motivatedwomen, including al-Huwaider and Manal al-Sharif, to organise a more intensive driving campaign, and about seventy cases of women driving were documented from 17 June to late June. In late September, Shaima Jastania was sentenced to10 lashes for driving in Jeddah, although the sentence was later overturned.
Two years later, another campaign to defy the ban targeted 26 October 2013 as the date for women to start driving. Three days before, in a "rare and explicit restating of the ban", an Interior Ministry spokesman warned that "women in Saudi are banned from driving and laws will be applied against violators and those who demonstrate support." Interior ministry employees warned leaders of the campaign individually not to drive on 26 October, and in the Saudi capital police road blocks were set up to check for women drivers. Read More
Picture: Cosima von Bonin, The Bonin / Oswald Empire’s Nothing #04 (The New York Version With Blue Feet), 2011, wool, fabric, MDF, lacquer, CD player, electrical wiring, sound speaker dome, speaker cable.
"The Guardian and the Royal Court are collaborating on an unprecedented series of “microplays” which bring together journalism and the theatre, the first of which has been authored by Laura Wade, the award-winning writer behind Posh.
The filmed, five-minute plays, which will appear online over the next three weeks, unite Guardian writers with some of theatre’s most important playwrights and directors. Written at speed, filmed in a day and starring actors including Rafe Spall and Katherine Parkinson, the microplays are designed to be an extension of the Guardian’s journalism.
The project, entitled Off the Page, presents a state-of-the-nation portrait by responding to critical issues within six key areas of Guardian coverage: food, fashion, music, sport, education and politics." Read More
Photograph: Noah Payne-Frank
Watch: Britain Isn't Eating by Laura Wade
Life can be viewed as a compilation of experiences. To gain someone else’s experience is to gain their perspective. And, it is when these perspectives are shared that intelligent conversation takes place. In this context, we all have something to share: ourselves.
The concept of talking to your neighbor or meeting the people around you is nothing new, but the chances for doing so seem to be few and far between. We live in a world with over 7 billion other people, yet talk to only a small handful.
Free Intelligent Conversation is the introduction of a culture that seeks out these often-passed-by conversations.
We have been told our differences–social, cultural, racial, economic, and so on–are barriers that we have to be mindful of when talking to others. But, we have found that it is these differences that allow for lively, intelligent conversations. We can only grow and learn as much as our circle of people allows us to. The bigger our circles, the more we can refine each other’s thinking and ideas and find answers to the questions we ask.
This was a chance for sex workers and campaigners to light-heartedly point out the roles of censorship and sexism in how the regulations view the porn industry.
On the other side, a spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said: "The legislation provides the same level of protection to the online world that exists on the high street in relation to the sale of physical DVDs.
"In a converging media world these provisions must be coherent and the BBFC classification regime is a tried and tested system of what content is regarded as harmful for minors."
Mali, 26, Londoner, possibly a dinosaur, urban planner, researcher in urban street art & social transformation, doodler, runner, art psychotherapy dork. These are a few choice descriptives.
How did you get involved with your current campaign/form of activism?
Hah. It's weird to consider the itsprsnl project as a form of activism, as it really started from a shit place in my life, and it wasn't about others but about me. I was going through a pretty dark patch, I'd lost my dad, I did a lot of drugs, drank myself into absolute oblivion, I fucked up in a relationship. I was in a pretty self loathing place. I started by carrying around a roll of blank stickers, and releasing confessions into public spaces in London. I was feeling desperate, scared, dealing with a lot of anxiety, and losing a lot of faith in life. This was the most rational way I found of letting stuff go. Once I got started, I started writing more and more stickers and eventually, I actually began to feel lighter and to forgive to myself. There is something incredible cathartic about releasing some of your darkest shames into the public sphere and walking away. I started getting curious about what people must think when they encountered the confessions, if it connected with their own truths, bringing up feelings of empathy. I set up a tumblr and a twitter, and started documenting some of them. I mean, nothing happened, for months, but occasionally I get the odd message, and those moments make my heart sing. I'm not disappointed in not hearing from more people, it wasn't ever the point, and I am incredibly happy in the thought that these little stickers may be creating invisible lines of connectivity, empathy and closing the gaps of loneliness between people. Over the summer, I was invited to be part of a performative exhibition where I threw up over three days all these confessions and almost had a nervous break down. It was quite a lot to process across three days, in front of this unmoving wall, growing, so different to how I'd interacted with the project previously in public spaces, and I saw myself as this really narcissistic being. I became really aware of people reading the wall, it had become this thing separate to myself and yet held so much of my vulnerabilities. On the last day, I came into the space and as I read over the previous couple of days work, I had this voice, someone else's hand writing, jump out at me. It was a really strange experience, I was pissed at first and then moved that someone felt compelled to add their voice to this wall. I made someone cry. That was weird. I always disassociate myself from things that I do, and someone stood next to me at the end of those three days and cried because I moved them. I remember her saying, "you are loved". It's funny the things we see and don't see, I hadn't even really realised that was what I was afraid of, was being unloved. These days, I actually do a lot more origami birds that I 'release' into London, that carry more positive messages, which I think reflects where I am in my life right now. But sometimes, I still write the odd confession, it's like finding an old friend, the intimacy and adrenaline of those moments remain incredibly important to me.
What motivates you as an Activist?
As much as it can be a really frightening place, connecting through my vulnerabilities is where I am my strongest. And I think that activism is a combination of both vulnerability and passion, as well as empathy and kindness. I think it's important for everyone to figure out their own way of finding strength in the vulnerable, be it through music, or talks, or stickers, or whatever. Be active in that.
What does it mean to you – to be an Activist?
To stay open hearted. So much of life could make us hard, shut down and cut off from others, or even to yourself. I think being really part of the world, and being active within it, is to stay open hearted, even when it hurts like hell.
How does your work as an activist translate/help or hinder the other work or projects you do?
It doesn't, I would actually say that the project has helped me in more ways that I fully understand. I once has a job interview when someone brought the itsprsnl project up. I thought I was going to vomit; hello potential employer, meet all my insecurities EVER. But I got the job. The itsprsnl project became my first stepping stone towards setting up a social enterprise with a friend, called FLOOR:[SPACE], where we run a series of projects around being twentysomething and having normalised conversations on mental health and addiction, within public spaces.
More and more people seem to be getting involved in Activism (like the Ice Bucket Challenge) in its many forms – what do you think about this trend?
I think activism does come under all these different forms, and is so prolific with the internet. The Ice Bucket Challenge did a lot towards putting ALS on the map, but it's important not to de-sensitise ourselves from the importance of human connectivity, and that activism is firstly about people joining in a common belief and emotion. It's so much more than a like, a share or a fucking selfie.
Do you have any nuggets of wisdom you would like to share with us?
1. Be passionate
2. Be kind
3. Be forgiving
How do you envision the world in 30 years-time?
Hopefully we will have resisted the urge to be sucked further and further into our phones and screens and privatised spaces, and living in a world which is kind and empathic and community orientated.
Failing that, I would be quite happy with unicorns.
Many left as barricades were taken down at the Admiralty camp but some vowed to stay despite police warnings.
Police began their operation early on Thursday in what is widely seen as the final act in the long-running protests.
The number of protesters has dwindled in recent weeks from the tens of thousands who turned out in September.
They want Beijing to allow free elections for the territory's next leader in 2017. China says everyone can vote but a pro-Beijing committee will screen candidates.
Police officers started to clear the camp and dismantle tents after issuing orders for protesters to vacate the "occupied area" within 30 minutes or face arrest. – BBC News
The established motivation for every activity is money. The motivation was never, after all, human beings. In a capitalist system, human beings have learnt to think in terms of equivalence, subjugating their entire lives under the law to give less than what you take as an exchange. Goods follow the arbitrariness of hyper-value. The configuration of desires from consumers gradually installs the power of the status quo. ‘I want what you are selling to me because you can convince me that with that I will feel better and more supreme’. In capitalism, if you are not a part of the bourgeoisie, you are just a consumable unit.
We now recognise a need to initiate an Artists’ Assembly Against Austerity to organise artists across all media, writers, musicians, performers, broadcasters, technicians, administrators, audiences and allies under our shared aim to end the cuts and protect public services. As we see it, artists have as much to lose as many other groups as a result of a dwindling public sector; the Artists' Assembly will provide a space in which we can mobilise to affect real change.
Our demands centre on four key issues:
1) Healthcare: Healthcare – free at the point of need – is a human right and a cornerstone of a fair society. A fully privatised healthcare system would leave many people in the UK, including artists, without coverage.
2) Education: Many artists rely on teaching to support their practice to some extent. But as a result of government cuts jobs are harder to come by, wages are going down in real terms while student experience suffers. We do not want fees of £9,000 per year to put working-class people off studying creative subjects and contribute to the gentrification of cultural life and artistic production.
3) Housing: We need affordable homes and studios, and this means capping rent at reasonable levels and ending cuts to housing benefit.
4) Arts Investment: We demand that the government take a rational approach to arts investment which generates a significant cash benefit to the tax payer. This means no more cuts to the cultural and heritage sectors and reinstatement of arts funding to pre-2010 levels, appropriately adjusted for inflation.
Privatisation is a serious threat to our public services; now is the time to mobilise against the cuts.
To register your ongoing support and to help build the movement, please email:
Christian Höller (born 1966) is editor of springerin–Hefte für Gegenwartskunst and writes extensively on art and cultural theory. Between 2002 and 2007, he was Visiting Professor at l’École supérieure des beaux-arts in Geneva, and from 2006 to 2007, he was scientific editor of documenta 12 magazines. His curated projects include: the exhibition Hauntings–Ghost Box Media, Medienturm Graz, and the accompanying concert series Sonic Spectres, 2011; the special programPop Unlimited?, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 2000; No Wave New York 1976–84, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, 2010, Austrian Filmmuseum Vienna, 2010, and Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, 2011; and Site.Sound.Industry within the exhibition See This Sound, Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, 2009. He has edited the following anthologies: Techno-Visionen (co-editor) (2005); Hans Weigand (2005); and Pop Unlimited? (2001). He is the author of the volume of interviews Time Action Vision: Conversations in Cultural Studies, Theory, and Activism (2010). Höller lives and works in Vienna. (Source)
