Callout Interference 2010

Interference 2010
21-25 June 2010

Combine art, politics and protest in Interference 2010

We’re looking for artists, non-conformists, pissed off individuals, alternative thinkers and people who want to make and shake things up to join us in addressing and acting upon climate change, the environment and other social and political issues of the day.

Artsadmin’s Interference is an intensive weeklong series of collaborative workshops, actions and events in June, offering you the chance to work with new people who have a range of experiences, to test ideas in a supportive environment and to push both art and activism in an array of new directions.

Working alongside artist activists Beth Whelan and Julie Hill, participants will develop new ways of working together and making a difference. During the week we’ll look at two approaches to making change happen; reacting against present systems and creating new visions for the future. These approaches will include:
Story-telling and myth making
The history of creative resistance and some of its triumphs
Climbing and reclaiming public space
Urban foraging
Self-publishing
Skill-sharing
Night biking
Evening escapades
Intervening and interfering in everyday life, with encouraging support from guest interventionists sharing their ways of working.

The week will be based at Artsadmin’s Toynbee Studios home in East London and will be punctuated by activities and trips with a focus on participation, engaging with people who inspire and excite.

How to join us!
Interference is open to people from all backgrounds and experiences, so if you are new to art or activism and want to give it a try, if you’re interested in working collaboratively or being part of an empowering movement, then please write a short paragraph explaining why you want to get involved and send it to heather(AT)artsadmin.co.uk
Please note participants should be prepared to not only think about change, but act on it!
The workshop is limited to 20 places, so get in touch as soon as possible. The deadline for expression of interest is Friday 4 June. Open to anyone who’s 16+.

The problem. And how we got round it.

I just don't even know what to say.

These posts are a selection of advertisements taken from The National Geographic, mainly from a few years ago now.

Thank You Man. Thank You Science. Thank You SkyDigital.

Does that Jeep float?

There's No Better Way to Fly. Lufthansa. Selling your dreams daily*!

* from $125

YOU and THE WORLD OF WORK

With thrilling career opportunites such as these: Eyebrow Threader, Chicken De-boner, Static Security Guard and Minister of Religion, trips to the Jobbie Centre are just what i need in life.

LIBERATE TATE COMMUNIQUE #1

Dear Tate

Happy Birthday. We wish we could celebrate with you. But we can’t.

As we write, your corporate sponsor BP is creating the largest oil painting
in the world, inspired by profit margins and a culture that puts money in
front of life, its shadowy stain shimmers across the Gulf of Mexico. A toxic
tide that turns thriving ecosystems into deserts and deprives cultures of
their way of life, it is one of the world’s greatest works of corporate art,
a work that reeks of death and speaks of our society’s failure of
imagination.

Every day Tate scrubs clean BP’s public image with the detergent of cool
progressive culture. But there is nothing innovative or cutting edge about a
company that knowingly feeds our addiction to fossil fuels despite a climate
crisis, a company whose greed has killed twenty-one employees in just over a
year, a company that continues to invest in the cancer-causing climate
crimes of tar sands in Alberta, Canada.

By placing the words BP and Art together, the destructive and obsolete
nature of the fossil fuel industry is masked, and crimes against the future
are given a slick and stainless sheen.

Every time we step inside the museum Tate makes us complicit with these
acts, acts that will one day seem as archaic as the slave trade, as
anachronistic as public executions. Every time Nicholas Serota is asked how
a museum that prides itself on dealing with climate change can be funded by
an oil company he responds that there are no plans to abandon BP sponsorship
(anything to do with having an ex-CEO of BP chair Tate’s board of
trustees?).

When art activist group The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination
(Labofii) were invited to run a workshop on art and civil disobedience, they
were told by curators that they could not take any action against Tate and
its sponsors and the workshop was policed by the curators to make sure the
artists produced work “commensurate with the Tate’s mission". In March 2010,
Tate Modern ran an eco symposium, “*Rising to the Climate Change Challenge:
Artists and Scientists Imagine Tomorrow’s World*”, on the same day that Tate
Britain was celebrating twenty years of BP sponsorship with one of its ‘BP
Saturdays’. Incensed by this censorship and hypocrisy, participants in the
symposium called for a vote: 80% of the audience agreed that BP sponsorship
should be dropped by 2012.

So today we offer you a birthday present, a gift to liberate Tate from its
old-fashioned fossil fuel addiction – a gift for the future. Beginning
during your 10th anniversary party and continuing until you drop the
sponsorship deal, we will be commissioning a series of art interventions in
Tate buildings across the country. Already commissioned are *Art
Action*collective, with a birthday surprise at this weekend’s
*No Soul For Sale* event, and The *Invisible Committee*, who will infiltrate
every corner of Tate across the country in the coming months.
We invite artists to join us and act to liberate Tate. Free art from oil.

www.twitter.com/liberatetate

channelling leopard

Chimpz lvs hierarchy.

BONOBO

Bonobo communities are peace-loving and generally egalitarian. The strongest social bonds are those among females, although females also bond with males. The status of a male depends on the position of his mother, to whom he remains closely bonded for her entire life.

CHIMPANZEE

In chimpanzee groups the strongest bonds are established between the males in order to hunt and to protect their shared territory. The females live in overlapping home ranges within this territory but are not strongly bonded to other females or to any one male.

GIBBON

Gibbons establish monogamous, egalitarian relations, and one couple will maintain a territory to the exclusion of other pairs.

HUMAN

Human society is the most diverse among the primates. Males unite for cooperative ventures, whereas females also bond with those of their own sex. Monogamy, polygamy and polyandry are all in evidence.

GORILLA

The social organization of gorillas provides a clear example of polygamy. Usually a single male maintains a range for his family unit, which contains several females. The strongest bonds are those between the male and his females.

ORANGUTAN

Orangutans live solitary lives with little bonding in evidence. Male orangutans are intolerant of one another. In his prime, a single male establishes a large territory, within which live several females. Each female has her own, separate home range.

The Story of B by Daniel Quinn

Revolutioary Association of the Women of Afghanistan

RAWA is the oldest political/social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women's rights in fundamentalism-blighted Afghanistan since 1977.

They're cool - as is the RAWA Solidarity Scotland group that has been raising funds and awareness - they're doing a sponsored bike ride:

You are invited on a fun cycle ride from Edinburgh to North Berwick on Saturday the 20th March.

The women involved with RAWA are a brave lot. Working for womens rights in
Afghanistan is dangerous work. The suggestions in the media are that the occupying
forces are now trying to tempt the Taliban into a coalition government. That is
very bad news for Afghani women and children. Just ask RAWA.

The sponsor cycle will start from the Forest Cafe. We will assemble at 10:30am
where the Edinburgh RAWA solidarity group will provide refreshments (and flags!) before our
send-off. And remember you can get the train back . . . of course after you've
indulged in some ice cream etc.

Please send an e-mail to the list if you're interested in cycling or sponsoring so we can fill you in on the details.

rawasolidarityscotland@lists.noflag.org.uk

Hope to see you there!

Mainshill Solidarity Camp

Mainshill Solidarity Camp in South Lanarkshire Scotland is on the site of a proposed open-cast coal mine. The land has been occupied and defended by campers who are working with the local community in opposition to Scottish Coal's plans.

See updates on the website:
mainshill.noflag.org.uk

tart tart tart

Tart:

TART * The sweet: as in the dessert tart, coming to English in the 1200s from French. A bit of pastry with some fruit in. Maybe a spot of cream in there and a glaze on top.

TART * The tart: as in the adjective tart, meaning “sharp, piquant,” originating from an Old English word teart, with intense meanings of pain and suffering.

TART * The sweet and tart: as in the pejorative tart applied to prostitutes, promiscuous women and occasionally men. This version of the word was sweet in that it was used in a positive sense when it appeared around the mid 1800s; it took pejorative connotations not long after. It's thought that the first use of tart in this sense was as a shortening of sweetheart, or jam-tart, cockney rhyming slang for sweetheart.

Item 4:

Item 3:

Item 2:

Item 1:

Evidence

I've been quiet for a while...the evidence to follow.

Smash Miss Contest - The Video

Protest Groups Disrupt Miss University London

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
11.03.09 4:30 AM
smashmisscontest@gmail.com

Protest groups disrupt Miss University London beauty pageant.

“Now I know why my mother’s generation did what they did in the 60s. I feel amazing. Tonight we did what we said we would – we smashed Miss University London!”
- Martina Pasonaria, 30, Musician

At 1.30am this morning a group calling themselves SMASH MISS CONTEST infiltrated Miss University London and caused disruption throughout the event with stink bombs and personal alarms, culminating with a stage invasion bringing the show to a halt during the announcement of the winner. A questionnaire and open letter to participants were scattered to the audience, contestants and compere.

Miss University London re-emerged two years ago amongst widespread controversy. Set up by 121entertainment, led by Christian Emile, the event drew in three different protest groups. Miss-Ogyny, a group specifically set up to resist the pageant’s presence on campus, rallied opposite the entrance. They were joined by The Space Hijackers who handed out tissues to men queuing for the pageant.

“They couldn’t hide what the event was – a crass judgement of women based on their looks, all so that they could make money.”
- Helen Bradshaw, 21, Student

**Video on youtube soon**

We (heart) Leila Deen

Good aim! Watch it happen or play the game.

Creative Rebels Needed

CLIMATE CAMP AT THE G20, WED 1 APRIL

CALL OUT FOR WORKSHOPS and CULTURE - AT CLIMATE CAMP G20

Climate camp 2009 /// Stopping carbon markets /// Because nature doesn't do bailouts.

At Noon on April 1st people will gather at the European Climate Exchange on Bishopsgate to set up camp against carbon markets.

The camp is looking for workshops for the day. We would love to hear from you if you can offer a workshop, especially (but not limited to) workshops on carbon trading, market solutions to climate change, and the economic crisis. We are also really keen to hear from you if you can offer music, street theatre or anything else which will make the day inspiring and educational!

Please let us know if you would be able to offer a workshop and the details at g20workshops@riseup.net

The information about the camp is at www.climatecamp.org.uk/g20, and we hope to see you there!

Smash Miss Contest!

On Saturday The Ketchup Vaginas (name to become evident soon enough...) had a stall at the Anti-Capitalist Feminist conference 'Gender, Race and Class' - and met lots of great people interested in spectacular interventions...visit and find out more about Smash Miss Contest!

The People VS The Banksters

RBS, or The Oil Bank of Scotland have misappeared billions of taxpayers' money in a matter of months. And their favourite investment? Fossil fuels...

FOSSIL FOOLS more like! Taking the snow-fight fun to a bank that likes to take a risk any day of the week, 30 or 40 people pounded the doors, the building, bankers and of course, each other. Workers in the bank stopped working to watch, and the rotating door got jammed with snow - business as usual stopped for a good half hour or so.

Climate Justice Assembly Declaration

Bélém, Brazil, 1 February 2009

CLIMATE JUSTICE NOW!

No to neoliberal illusions, yes to people's solutions!

For centuries, productivism and industrial capitalism have been destroying our cultures, exploiting our labour and poisoning our environment.

Now, with the climate crisis, the Earth is saying "enough", "ya basta"!

Once again, the people who created the problem are telling us that they also have the solutions: carbon trading, so-called "clean coal", more nuclear power, agrofuels, even a "green new deal". But these are not real solutions, they are neoliberal illusions. It is time to move beyond these illusions.

Real solutions to the climate crisis are being built by those who have
always protected the Earth and by those who fight every day to defend their environment and living conditions. We need to globalise these solutions.

For us, the struggles for climate justice and social justice are one and
the same. It is the struggle for territories, land, forests and water, for
agrarian and urban reform, food and energy sovereignty, for women's and worker's rights. It is the fight for equality and justice for indigenous peoples, for peoples of the global South, for the redistribution of wealth and for the recognition of the historical ecological debt owed by the North.

Against the disembodied, market-driven interests of the global elite and the dominant development model based on never-ending growth and consumption, the climate justice movement will reclaim the commons, and put social and economic realities at the heart of our struggle against climate change.

We call on everyone – workers, farmers, fisherfolk, students, youth,
women, indigenous peoples, and all concerned humans from the South and the North – to join in this common struggle to build the real solutions to the climate crisis for the future of our planet, our societies, and our cultures. All together, we are building a movement for climate justice.

We support the mobilizations against the G20 summit and on the global crisis from 28 march to 4 April, and the 17 April 2009 mobilisation of La Via Campesina.

We support the call for an International Day of Action in Defense of
Mother Earth and Indigenous Rights on 12 October 2009.

We call for mobilisations and diverse forms of actions everywhere, in the lead up to, during and beyond the UN climate talks in Copenhagen, especially on the Global Day of Action on 12 December 2009.

In all of our work, we will expose the false solutions, raise the voices
of the South, defend human rights, and strengthen our solidarity in the
fight for climate justice. If we make the right choices, we can build a
better world for everyone.

You didn't remain impartial Mark Thompson, you exposed your bias.
Bricks, squashed tomatoes and indeed shoes may be posted to his BBC HQ office at Television Centre, Wood Lane, London, W12 7RJ

Extract from Friday at Kaaitheater

I’m from Manchester in the UK and I’ve lived in cities all my life. I’ve lived off food I’ve got out of bins for six months at a time.
It was a fun thing to do with friends.

What we did was meet up in the evening, after the pub or whatever, and cycle round the smaller supermarkets of the city, hopping in the bins at the back and picking through the see-through plastic bags picking out what was edible. Bag of pineapples? Magic. , for example, Bag of beef? Eurgh, put that back in! My all time favourite skipped food finds have to be…No 1 the forty bunches of Marks & Spencer’s flowers – we gave them away to everyone on the main road, they were like Oh that’s so nice are you really sure are they for free?! And we were like, we just got them out of the bins, on you go! And then No 2 the great mango and cabbage find, literally about 40 of each, mangoes not even ripe yet. My friend made a lot of chutney. And then finally No 3 is when they recalled Maltesers, that was a good one. They got everywhere.
We’d take loads of bags with us, and divide out the food into bags for different people that we’d then drop off on our way home. You’d put in all the things you thought each person or household would like the most – no cheese for them, they’re vegans, all the ricotta for Thom, he’ll use it, and flowers? They have to go to Scarlet, she loves them and so on.

I like statistics which are expressed in humans, so for example, 1 in 15 people think Obama is actually going to make some changes, or 1 in 2 people have tried cat biscuits or, I remember in secondary school when someone found scientific proof on the internet that 1 in 3 people were definitely gay, and the whole class looked round the room of like 30 of us and realised that meant 10 of us were gay but we were 12 and we didn’t know if we were one of the gay ones or not so it was quite exciting.
So, 1 in 5 people in the UK live below the poverty line, in Belgium it is 1 in 10. Meanwhile, across Europe, 30-40% of food put on the shelves ends up in the bin. In the UK an organisation formed to get some more numbers on it. For me there was a clear winner for the worst and therefore kind of the best statistic. Guess how many whole chickens are thrown away in the UK every day? Any guesses? 5,500 whole chickens. Each day. Shit. Sqwauk.

a pretty good day.

Early wake up with phone calls and buzzes and there's folks on the sofa and an invite for breakfast where there's beans and squishy skipped bananas and ach - we'll make a plan on the way. Wobbling bikes lugging cardboard gun, wedding dress, banana skins, bouquets of wilting flowers and a fat suit.
First stop the bank, where there's an organised protest – placards and leaflets and a megaphone and in we go without a thought and blag and blah and ask the questions that they can't answer until we're firmly escorted out.
I wanna do something but I don't know what.
There's a samba band around the corner – Let's get 'em round here.
I'm bored. Let's buy loo roll and throw it in. Let's write messages on it.
Let's go.
Catch youse soon.

That shop window's got a door in - we just have to dodge the guard - catch him off guard.
OK, hold my gun - let's go. One by one we step, grinning into the readymade playground.
I pull down my new-man-the-mannequins trendy trousers and hold his hand and ask the gathering crowd: “SHOPPING IS...?”
“That's the police on the way”.
“SHOPPING IS...SEXY?
“You'll have to leave now”
“SHOPPING IS...BORING.”
And off we go and it must be time to distribute these flowers salvaged from the bins in all their cellophane glory. We shower the band with confetti and dance along to find those most deserving of the flowers.
A couple parting – here, you get him, I'll get her – say they're from each other.
Another guard. But he wont have it – he's got his image to think about.
And then there's folk in the window – wedding dress and fat suit, telling a strange love story of super bargains.
We chat to the guy who's visiting from Nigeria. He says "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is", but eventually he accepts the flowers and as far as we know they brought him no ills. He can't imagine that we'd ever make our way to Nigeria on our bikes, but he certainly likes the sound of us trying.
After some negotiation the bargain bride and bulging companion are released from the shop with no more than a strained groin and a confused shop-manager. BHS has never known such excitement.
On then, on.

GIVE BLOOD says the sign and so we obey - “can you keep moving round please”. Each time a chair becomes free we move camp. Dresses and fat-suits and crumpled guns and all. This is very important, despite the fact that there's nobody waiting behind us.
Giving blood isn't as simple as it seemed.
The tricky questionnaire filters most of us out but I scrape through and leave a pint of myself behind.
Then it's on to McGills for karaoke (and replacing those lost fluids) but it's a no-goer so we creep underground for the free preview and out for the trudge home.
May as well lets stick our heads in the bin eh? And the trudge home is harder but merrier with bags of food to share out over tea and snoozes and banging loud crazy tunes. And in the background there's bikes to be fixed, sculptures to be made, friends to be met, dogs to be walked and then the party to fill the night.
That was a pretty good day by the way.
(Though we never did find a use for that cardboard gun).

Things are getting sticky

So I thought I'd leave you a little something to wake up to, little B.  On a regular basis.