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enibly · 4 years ago

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Strategizing For A Living Revolution

By George Lakey

Otpur (“Resistance” in Serbian) began as hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of young people took to the streets to rid their country of dictator Slobadan Milosevic. Impatient with the cautious ways of many of their pro-democracy elders, the youths organized in coffee bars and schools, posted graffiti almost everywhere, and used their street actions to embarass the regime.

Milosevic counter-attacked. His police routinely beat up the protesters, in the streets and more thoroughly in the police stations. His spies were everywhere. His monopoly of the mass media meant that the Otpur was described as hoodlums and terrorists.

In October 2000 Otpur won; joined by hundreds of thousands of workers and professionals, the young people threw Milosevic out. His party was in disarray, his police in confusion, his army was split.

From the moment Otpur began it had a strategy. The young people were immensely creative in their tactics and at the same time realized that no struggle is ever won simply by a series of actions. Otpur activists knew they could only succeed by creating a strategy that guided a largely decentralized network of groups.

Cynical outsiders were skeptical when Otpur activists claimed not to have a leader, when the young people said they were all leaders and shared responsibility for their actions and their common discipline. What the skeptics overlooked was the power of strategy as a unifying force, taking its place beside the rebel energy and the lessons of recent history that the young people shared. Otpur activists didn't need an underground commander giving them their marching orders because they shared a strategy they believed in; they were happy to improvise creatively within that strategic framework.

Bojan Zarkovic, one of the Otpur trainers, told an audience at the A-Space (anarchist coffee house) in Philadelphia about the boundless creativity of the young people. They would virtually fill a wall of newsprint with their tactical ideas, he said. Then they would choose, in light of their strategy and also their preference for humor and pranks. The result was that the media's painting of them as terrorists lost credibility. True, these young people wore black jeans, black leather jackets, and black T-shirts with a clenched fist silk-screened on the front, but their actions had humor andconnected with people. Passersby who saw them (and spread the word) debunked the media portrayal. “They're our kids having fun and, you know, they're right about Milosevic!” is what they said as they spread the word.

Late '90s Serbia was different in many ways from the situation facing activists in the U.S. or other countries. Even so, Otpur's experience can stimulate our thinking. Given how many activists are tired of an endless round of protests that don't seem to add up to anything, Otpur activists' biggest gift to us might be their choice to unite around a strategy, to get creative about tactics, and to let the strategy guide which tactics make sense and which don't.

Strategy = Power

The young people who started Otpur had a clear conception of how domination works. They saw their society as a pyramid, with Milosevic and his cronies at the top, in alliance with business owners, party leaders, and generals. The direction of power was typically top-down, and included both obvious repression (the army, police, secret police) and subtle repression like a monopoly of the media and school curricula. Here's where Otpur activists diverged from conventional wisdom about power. They noticed that each layer of domination was in fact supported by the layer below; that the orders that were given were only carried out because those below were willing to carry them out.

Rather than buy into the top-down version of power that Milosevic wanted them to believe, they decided instead to picture Serbian society as organized into pillars of support holding up the dictator. If the pillars gave way, Otpur believed that Milosevic would fall.

This alternative view of power became so central to Otpur that it was taught in all the trainings of new Otpur members. (All new Otpur members were expected to go through the training so they could understand the winning strategy.)

Since the top power-holders depend on the compliance of those beneath them to stay on top, Otpur's strategy was to weaken the compliance and finally to break it. First, Otpur needed to ask: which are the pillars of support needed by the dictatorship? Then: what are the tactics that will weaken those pillars?

Activists in other countries can follow this methodology to begin to create their strategy.

Here's just one example of how it worked in Serbia. One pillar of support for Milosevic was his police. Otpur systematically undermined that pillar. The young activists knew that fighting the police would strengthen police loyalty to Milosevic (and also support the mass media claim that the young people were hoodlums and terrorists). So they trained themselves to make nonviolent responses to police violence during protests. One of the slogans they learned during their trainings was: “It only hurts if you're scared.” They took photos of their wounded. They enlarged the photos, put them on signs, and carried the signs in front of the houses of the police who hurt them. They talked to the cop's neighbors about it, took the signs to the schools of the police officers' children and talked with the children about it. After a year of this, police were plainly reluctant to beat Otpur activists even when ordered to do so, because they didn't want the negative reactions of their family, friends, neighbors.

The young people joked with the plainclothes police assigned to infiltrate them and reminded the cops that everyone would get their chance to act for democracy. Through the assertive outreach of the activists, relationships were built with the police, even into the higher ranks. When the movement ripened into a full-fledged insurgency in Belgrade, many police were sent out of the city by their commanders while other police simply watched the crowds take over the Parliament building.

It wasn't easy, as one of my Otpur friends who had been beaten repeatedly told me. It was, however, simple; the strategy guided the young activists to develop creative tactics that took away one of the key pillars of the dictator's support.

Can this alternative view of power work other places?

One reason why the Otpur activists worked so efficiently at undermining the various pillars of Milosevic' support was because many knew their view of power had already worked in other places. Consider what had happened within the lifetime of Otpur teenagers: the Philippine dictator Marcos had been overthrown by what was called “people power” in 1986; Communist dictatorships had been overthrown by people power in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland in 1989; commanders in the KGB, army, and Communist Party were prevented by people power from establishing a coup in Russia in 1991; a mass nonviolent uprising in Thailand prevented a top military general from consolidating his power in 1993; the South African whites' monopoly political rule was broken in 1994 after a decade of largely nonviolent struggle. In all these places the power-holders found their power slipping away because those they depended on refused any longer to follow the script.

When I was trying as a young man to puzzle out this alternative view of power, so different from what is usually taught in school, I encountered Bernard Lafayette, who was then a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) staffer from the deep South. He explained it to me with a metaphor. Bernard said that a society is like a house. The foundation is the cooperation or compliance of the people. The roof is the state and its repressive apparatus. He asked me what happens to the house if the foundation gives way. He went on to ask: “How will it change what happens if more weapons are put on the roof, bigger tanks, more fancy technology? What will happen to the house then, if the foundation gives way?”

I then realized why this alternative view isn't promoted in school. What power holders would want us to know that the power is in fact in our hands? That instead of being intimidated by police, military, corporate leaders, media tycoons, and politicians, the people were to find out that we give away our power through compliance, and we can take it back again through noncooperation?

Of course the power holders want us to believe that power is top-down, that we must be passive, that violence is the most powerful force. Don't look for them to declare a national holiday dedicated to People Power!

And they don't need to. The use of nonviolent tactics to force change has a deep track record which is reaching critical mass. For example, hundreds of thousands of people of color have used nonviolent direct action in campaigns for over a century in the U.S. alone. (In 1876 in St. Louis African Americans were doing freedom rides against discrimination on trolley cars, to take one of thousands of examples.) In any given week there are community-based organizations of people of color, all across the U.S., who are engaged in nonviolent action: marches, sit-ins, street blockades, boycotts, civil disobedience, and the like. Books could be written just about the unions of people of color, like the hospital workers, hotel workers, and janitors, who go out on strike as well as use other tactics. While names of people of color most easily leap to mind when we think of nonviolent action, like Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez, and a higher proportion of blacks than whites participate in nonviolent struggles, it's still not just “a black thing.” Whites in the U.S., especially working class whites, also have a long track record of using nonviolent tactics to struggle for their goals. The challenge is not so much encouraging diverse peoples to engage in nonviolent struggle when they are up against it; the challenge is to link short-run struggles to more far-ranging goals4.

Noncooperation is not enough My friends in Otpur would be the first to admit that a mass insurgency that brings down a dictator is not enough—not enough to establish full democracy, respect for diversity, economic institutions in harmony with the earth, or other parts of their vision. It's one thing to open up a power vacuum through noncooperation (and that is a great and honorable achievement). It's another thing firmly to establish the democratic community we deserve.

For that, the strategy must go deeper. We need to go beyond what has been done plenty of times in history—to overthrow unjust governments through nonviolent struggle—and create a strategy that builds at the same time as it destroys. We need a strategy that validates alternatives, supports the experience of freedom, and expands the skills of cooperation. We need a political strategy that is at the same time a community strategy, one that says “yes” to creative innovation in the here and now and links today's creativity to the new society that lies beyond a power shift.

With the help and feedback of many activists from a number of countries I've created a strategic framework that aims to support today's activists, something like the way Otpur activists were supported by their strategy. I call it a strategy for a living revolution.

The strategy not only encourages creating new tactics and more boldness in using the best of the old, but it also helps activists sort out which tactics will be most effective. Finally, the strategy brings in the dimension of time. It suggests that some tactics that are ineffective at one moment will be just right at another. It offers an organic, developmental framework of stages over time.

Time matters. Activists from other countries have been heard to laugh at U.S. activists because we notoriously lack a sense of history. This strategy framework supports us to overcome our cultural limitation and learn to think like the historical beings that we actually are.

The strategy framework has five stages:

Cultural preparation

Organization-building

Confrontation

Mass political and economic noncooperation

Parallel institutions

The stages are in sequence, with lots of overlap. Like any model, this one is over- simplified in order to be more easily learned and worked with. One of my favorite ways to complexify the model is to picture society as a cluster of sub-societies that respond to these stages at different rates, which means that activists might go through the first several stages over and over. In reality we may end up more in cyclical motion than in linear progression. But that's for later. Right now, I'll present the five stages in a linear way, and be happy for readers who get from it a sense of movement over time.

(continued here: https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/lakeylivrev.html)

#this is the other reading we did today #very interesting if you are connected to social movements/looking for ways to brainstorm new strategies #reality #history

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powermakesussick · 4 years ago

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Q&A with Power Makes Us Sick

A condensed version of this piece appears in the Spring 2021 issue of Slingshot.

A few years ago, when I was living in Europe, I heard about a feminist healthcare collective called Power Makes us Sick (PMS). They were organizing and holding workshops, writing, printing and distributing zines, beautiful posters, and free resources, in different countries in the EU, in South America, as well as in the US. Being very curious and excited to hear about this project, I read and saw more of what they were sharing with folks, and putting out into the world, all rooted in an anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist perspective, politics, and practice. And in the process, the PMS collective was creating and connecting broad networks of projects, communities, and individuals involved in various forms of healthcare, as well as various forms and fabrics of political struggle. I felt inspired to try to meet with some of them in order to learn more, and hopefully spread the word about PMS, who they are, what they're about, and what they do.

What follows in this article is an interview with some of the members of the collective. Hope readers out there find this useful, and that we all deepen and solidify our networks and relationships of care in our own lives and communities. Stay safe out there, and take good care of yourselves and each other.

"Self-care can't cure social diseases"

In solidarity, Sarafina Witch Militia Northeast

Who is PMS? We are called Power Makes Us Sick, which kind of speaks for itself in a way. We're an anti-national group that researches autonomous health practices and shares the good news about all the ways we can and do care for one another outside of and in opposition to the state and capitalism.

How does PMS relate to issues of health? Where do you fit in? “We're all a bit sick. In some ways we are healing. We're all healers in some way. We're all growing stronger or learning how to better act in the world through this collective and others. There's a lot of little things that we've just accidentally found out along the way that we all have in common, they didn't start off as rallying points.”

“Take what you need and compost the rest” is a slogan and an approach that inspires us.

Our work is centered around sharing skills, resources, and tools. A mutual aid with emphasis on the “mutual”. We offer our support to social movements and others fighting back against oppression. We make new friends along the way, we share strategies and lessons from their experiences and ours. They help us refine our tools, and then we bring all of that back to the group and are able to share new skills farther and wider.

What is autonomy? What is health? What are practices of autonomous health? Autonomy, in our context, really doesn't mean “solo” or on the level of the “individual”. It's something that only begins to make sense in a collective context, and against repression, control, and institutional power. We see it wherever people are finding each other and coming together to directly bring about the kind of world they wish to see.

In terms of “health” it's the kind of health we want to see in the world, not necessarily in the ways it is conceived of by those in power. If “health” is related in a certain context to work and productivity, we might refuse to be healthy. Alternatively, we might choose to say this or that aspect of the dominant society is profoundly “unhealthy”, sickening, sick...

Our working model of health encompasses the mental, physical, and social aspects and we want to incorporate an understanding of each part. We are inspired by an example given to us by our friends at the “group for an other medicine” (rough translation) in Thessaloniki, who say that if there is mold in a building and you're only looking at the physical health of the individuals, you might treat the affected lungs, but if you understand health in a social context, you might come together to pressure the owner of the building to remove the mold. This is just an example of how the shift to the social can help address the issue at its core.

We too often feel that the dominant practices of healthcare ignore the health of the social body. By shifting the discourse to encompass the social, we can get a better picture of the things that are ailing us as a society, whether that be the way that capitalism makes us all very anxious, the way that industrial civilization itself encourages us to work ourselves to death, the way that patriarchy can make us feel very small (or gets us killed), the way that racism means we ignore the pain of certain people (or gets us killed), among a myriad of other social ailments.

While those in power may work to incorporate that in diagnosis and policy, there is a point beyond which their analysis and actions won't go. Anxiety, depression or dependency might be portrayed as “mental health epidemics” with social causes and outcomes, but they will never be portrayed as a symptom of capitalism and various forms of exploitation, exclusion, and extraction. Giving ourselves the freedom to make that analysis can open up new spaces to work in. This consciousness doesn't mean we can write and analyse our way to better health, but it can give us an edge, an organising basis, a direction to go in.

This is where practices of autonomous health comes in. Methods and means can be pirated and communalised, or found in already existing popular and folk contexts. In our zines, we share examples of what autonomous health care looks like in practice through articles, reportbacks, and interviews. The mental, physical, and social aspects are not necessarily distinct from one another, but we cover them all in each zine. In Issue #2 (2017) you can see physical health being addressed in a reportback from a DIY abortion workshop, as well as a comprehensive article about gut flora, probiotics, and microbiome health and resilience. In that same issue, emotional wellbeing is addressed in an article about how to perform a hex, and a guide to some acupressure exercises for stress and anxiety. The health of the social body is addressed via reportbacks from sex worker organizing), a report on an anti-surveillance makeup workshop PMS organized in Berlin, and more. You can download (and print for free, although we appreciate donations) that zine and others on our website.

What are the inspirations or prior struggles that PMS is building on? We put together a very incomplete and eclectic list of instances that came to our minds. We have a lot to say about each of these inspirations and struggles, so if you want to hear more, perhaps you can read some of our report backs or otherwise get in touch:

Greek solidarity clinics (particularly in Thessaloniki and Athens) post-2008

Icarus Project (New York, et al.) [now Fireweed Collective]

Health organizing from our past and in our own communities that we have left behind (personal failures within the Woodbine autonomous health track, the failures of so many accountability processes, the blockades, the occupations, the herbal mutual aid efforts that have come and gone, etc.)

Out of Action (Germany) and Activist Trauma Support (UK)

Black Mesa Indigenous support (Stone Cabin Collective)

All of the sex work and sex worker organizing that so many of us have been involved with over the years

Standing Rock med tent

No More Deaths (so-called US/Mexico border)

Lincoln Hospital occupations (South Bronx, 1969, 1970); Lincoln Detox (1970-78); Dr. Mutulu Shakur

Socialist Patients' Collective (Heidelberg, West Germany 1970- present)

Radical Herbalism Gatherings (UK, 2014-present)

The Gynepunks in Catalonia

The Solidarity Apothecary / Nicole Rose / The Prisoner's Herbal

Pirate Care (Croatia / Europe / worldwide)

Many people working in the 'undercommons' of the NGO-industrial complex

How do you all work together as a group, especially given that you're all far apart? Since we don't get the chance to meet in person very often, a lot of our organizing is done online. We'd already been meeting over an encrypted video chat site for years, so once the pandemic started, we had a communication strategy ready to go and could continue meeting as usual (almost).

Sometimes we come together in person to work on projects or respond to specific calls for support. Actually, that's how most of us who are with the project now have met each other, in doing the work along the way. We've been exploring new modes of emotional support for some time now, and most of the instances where we've been asked to support social movements have centered around bolstering different existing communities' infrastructure for support in, and after, potentially traumatic events, such as actions and occupations that involve direct conflict with the state. Along the way, we met others interested in working on this topic and have expanded our networks and our collective through those relationships that have been made “on the ground”.

One key aspect informing our organizing is a prioritization of one another's wellbeing over the productivity of the group as a whole. In practice, this means making time and space to check in before and after our meetings and following up with one another to offer support outside of meetings. We talk about emotional support, herbal remedies, or just brainstorm solutions to health-related issues that come up for us as people. This also means that a lot of what we do tends to move slowly as we give ourselves the time we need to work at whatever pace our own health needs require. We create spaces where we can be honest with one another about where we're at and what our capacities are, so that we can do the work that we want to do together with intention.

What are some of the shared beliefs that have brought the group together? “Action dries your tears! Self care can't cure social diseases! Most of us are not doctors!”

We don't have these set in stone, but there are definitely some common threads that come from our experiences and that we've encountered. There's a few points that stand out as some kind of “tenets towards an autonomous healthcare”. These areas are consent, accountability, self-defense, and illegalism. They might be more open questions than core beliefs, but we certainly see them as crucial, and sometimes underdeveloped, in movements and initiatives we've been involved with.

How does the matter of consent come up in your work, and how do you navigate that? Our approach to consent in care goes something like this: take measures to ensure that you are getting consent from folks before providing care whenever possible. Be conscious and respectful of the tools and practices that the individual (or community) in question might already be using. Honor and strengthen those practices and offer information about additional sources of support if it makes sense or it is requested of you. Always ask folks what help they need first and what they are already doing: they probably have a good idea of what support they need or want anyway. We look to harm reduction principles, which affirm that each of us is capable of determining what our own health, healing, and well-being could look like, and that these understandings are a valuable basis upon which care and support can be provided. Caring is a process; consent needs to be obtained and maintained throughout that process.

Beyond offering care, consent extends into the way we relate to one another in the group as well. We make decisions on the basis of consensus, which for us is about people in the group consenting to doing work that they feel called to, that coheres around their values, or simply that they feel good about. Consensus is not about unanimity, but unity, which is generated through shared commitment. It is about slowing down in order to take the time to consider and address everyone's concerns, as well as their cool ideas. When we practice with consent and consensus in these little ways, like decision making, we learn what it feels like and can spread that farther and wider into the everyday.

Self-defense and health aren't necessarily topics you would expect to see together. How do you see them relating? For any movement to substantively or even marginally challenge capital, self-defense must be considered. The line between self-defense and care is quite blurred. How can movements survive without defending themselves from the many systems of exploitation, dominance, coercion, and oppression that we experience in our daily lives? And further, how can we defend ourselves without cultivating our own infrastructures of care to patch the literal and emotional wounds, both current and ancestral? In our zine on autonomous trans healthcare, we wrote of the Stonewall riots in 1969: “If you are so accustomed to fighting to exist on a regular basis, and fighting to keep your friends and loved ones alive, you are already so enmeshed in, and so concerned with a community self-defense that letting the brick fall on someone who is attacking you is simply not so far of a stretch.” We think this is how it starts; survival and self-defense are just so intertwined for so many.

Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P Johnson, who were involved with the riots, were founders of STAR: Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, a group focused on direct action as well as harm reduction and providing housing and food for other trans/gender-nonconforming people. It's clear to us that these aspects of the movement are so much a part of one another that no distinction is clear. When self defense becomes care, when care becomes a riot, when these become interchangeable - that's when it becomes revolutionary, when substantial change begins to happen.

How do you approach the question of illegalism? What does that mean to you? In short, we are against the law.

It is an essential aspect of state formation to criminalize solidarity. In most contexts, like wherever there is a state, it is illegal to meaningfully take care of one another's health without supervision. Acts of care are criminalized; such as sharing food with houseless people, providing shelter to those without the documentation the state demands, and distributing medication without a license. We are guided by our theoretical approach and stay grounded in the history of past projects of autonomous and illegalist care, but often it is most effective to learn by doing, bringing us into direct conflict with the state.

Solidarity means taking care of one another. When we learn to take risks for one another's wellbeing, we learn to render the walls of division obsolete. Sometimes people are baffled by the idea that these seemingly trivial acts would be illegal, but of course they are. Taking action through seizure, distribution, or provision of what is necessary for survival in the face of oppression interrupts and challenges the state's ability to maintain power. State power depends on the ability to decide who is a citizen and who is not, who deserves “rights” and who doesn't, and ultimately who lives and who dies. That is whack, obviously, and so we aspire to shift the responsibility of care into the hands of the community.

This is why we don't just passively skirt the law, but we support practicing in a way that essentially renders “the law” totally irrelevant. Remember, “you didn't see shit.” We're doing the work in a manner that DIRECTLY creates the world that we want to see. That means us being able to take care of one another's bodies entirely on our own terms, with consent, with abundance, with nurturance.

Is that why you're an anonymous collective? It seems this is directly connected to how you relate to legality. Yes, anonymity is practical: we may allegedly do things that are not considered entirely lawful, or that the state considers a threat. Sometimes this looks like direct action; often these are simply things we do to survive. When we don't connect our names and faces to our work, we can speak more openly in hopes of sharing our tools and strategies with others living lives that are similarly outside of the law. Some of us have faced doxxing by fascists or harassment by abusive people in our own scenes. You may see some of us at events or workshops, or out doing things in our communities, because some degree of identification is sometimes what's needed to build connections of trust with others, but maintaining good security practices is essential for us.

Anonymity can be a tool for accountability: it may feel counterintuitive when we're used to an emphasis on visibility, but speaking and moving as a nebulous collective means that no one can use our work to build themself a platform or gather social capital, or actual capital/money, for that matter. We have agreed to refuse to do so ourselves.

We recognise that being denied visibility can be part of the harm and repression inflicted on us by power. It can be degrading and demoralising when we don't get recognition for our actions: either because care and healing are less visible and less valued than other forms of activity - or because we consciously chose (alleged) criminality and anonymity over taking credit.

Also, speaking from a position of anonymity doesn't mean you speak for everyone. It might be necessary to be very clear about the standpoint you're talking from. At least, it's important not to speak for those whose experiences you don't share.

These problems open up a strategic question about what kinds of visibility are useful as a means, but for us it's never simply an end.

“Accountability” can be understood in a lot of different ways. Usually, in radical communities it is understood in a very specific context around harm. It sounds like you all might be intending for it to be understood differently. Can you elaborate on what this concept means to you?

Accountability is an elusive principle that we constantly aspire to develop and understand within ourselves, with each other, and in our communities. Why is it so hard? We could start by looking at two different ways accountability gets used. First is the view that seems common in activist, anarchist, queer, feminist communities. There, accountability is often seen as a response to harm, something that’s primarily invoked when one person harms another, often in the form of abuse and sexual violence. The second way accountability can be understood is as an ongoing practice of care, or as harm-reduction, a continual basis for healing and reparation(s), which may open up some new possibilities and directions.

What is the accountability model and what were some of the inspirations behind it? Here we understand accountability as a kind of shared responsibility, specifically in relation to a person's health. Being able to 'account' for each other. We have been developing a tool for groups to use to move towards collective engagement in the health of many individuals, in an overlapping web of smaller groups. We were inspired by some models that people were already using to reinvent how they thought about healthcare for themselves, including the clinic at Vio.me in Thessaloniki, the Icarus Project, and others. In Thessaloniki in the wake of “the crisis”, some newly-unemployed medical professionals were able to reinvent health care from the ground up by creating an experimental clinic in a factory squatted by workers. Later, some of those involved developed the “group for an other medicine” whose project was a system starting with an expansive initial interview that would take about three hours or “as long as was needed” with (1) someone from their community, (2) a 'doctor', and (3) a 'psychologist'. They would use an exhaustive questionnaire to inform a comprehensive discussion about the person's wellbeing, some next steps, and how to achieve them together. It also served as a kind of health record for many of the migrants who otherwise did not have papers of this type that they were in control of and could take with them. Drawing heavily from how inspired we were by what we saw of their process, we wanted to adapt this for folks who might not have access to a a physical clinic, whose networks might be more spread out, or for groups of friends and comrades in community with one another.

Our accountability model is a guide with suggestions for how people might form such a group themselves. It covers the types of commitments and boundaries participants might choose to make with one another, a series of questions for the long interview itself, and ideas about how to move forward and continue working on core issues once they've been identified. Right now, it also contains some practical suggestions around security and group process that would aid in keeping everyone safe and secure. The idea is to redistribute accountability for each other throughout the ties that exist between people who already share community with one another, and shift responsibility (and therefore power) into the hands of the community while mapping out and making visible the pre-existing relationships of care so that they can more heavily be relied upon. This means building ties based on accountability and support for the wellbeing of each individual in a pre-emptive way - building stronger relationships of care before people break under the burdens of capitalism and other oppressions, and the community is left to pick up the pieces.

What are you working on right now? Our most recent zine came out last May and was a collection of preliminary ideas and resources in response to the Covid-19 pandemic - much of this is still relevant and reflects what we are doing right now.

As for our current public-facing work, we're forming a new publication tentatively titled “An Abolitionist's Guide to Autonomous Emotional Support”, which will focus on concrete models and tools to support the emotional wellbeing of our communities on our own terms. The general contexts we see are immediate and longer-term survival, combatting and deserting repression, isolation, “pathology”, and associated distress, harm, and capture. We are in an environment where psychological warfare is a primary mode of attack from the state and its allies (fascists, police, the border, the psych ward, the prison). These kinds of attacks aim to divide us and leave the most vulnerable among us to deal with the consequences. Combatting this means taking the responsibility for our collective wellbeing into our own hands through care with longterm treatment plans, navigating existing resources together, and community self-defense. If we really want to get rid of the logic of the prison, we have to take on the work of caring for one another, and it isn't easy. The zine will include some ways to relate to our herbal allies, notes on how to navigate 'big psych', reflections on supports that have served us well (DBT, somatic exercises, on-the-ground emotional first aid, etc.), a toolkit for a "spa day" you can take anywhere, de-escalation and self-defense basics, an 'ask me anything' from an anarchist therapist, among other little treats.

If you are working on a project that coheres around these themes, we'd love to hear from you. We invite you to share tools and strategies that you have found useful in supporting the emotional health of your friends or community, or that have allowed you to find support in times of crisis.

How can people hear more, or how can people work with you or become involved in the collective?

On our website, there's a “Want to get involved?” section listing ways folks can connect with us and support our work.

All our zines and a bunch of shareable resources can be downloaded here [look in the “resources” tab]. Our zines are made to be shared! Feel free to print them out give them to your friends, put them in your local infoshop, add them to your zine table, leave them strategically placed around your city etc.. We have a small social media presence, but we mostly rely on people spreading the word about what we do, sharing our zines, and reaching out to us personally. If you don't have access to the internet, you can write to us and we are happy to correspond, and/or send physical copies of our zines to anyone who needs them.

PMS can be reached via e-mail at [email protected] or [email protected].

All physical mail can be sent here: PO box 234 Plainfield, VT 05667

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uofgstudioart · 8 years ago

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We got the incredible chance to speak with artists Katherine (Katie) Owen and Larissa Abrams-Ogg, about their amazing show in Zavitz Gallery last semester, Overlooked, Undertouched. Read more to find out what inspired their show, how they approach their art-making process, and what advice they have for you!

Katie Owen uses recycled and found objects in her art and says that it is a large contributor to her love of art. She said, “I always feel a very personal connection to my work when I can look at it and not only see my idea but also see my memories”. Owen graduated from the University of Guelph Studio Art Program last semester and is currently working on opening a gallery and drop-in studio, with the aim to continue creating memories within the community.

Larissa Abrams-Ogg is in her final semester in the University of Guelph Studio Art Major. Larissa is an interdisciplinary artist who explores systems of personal and societal valuation, and their impact on everyday experiences. In addition to her studio practice, she is a body painter and a choral singer, and is interested in the making and dissemination of art as tools for social engagement. She plans to continue working independently upon graduation.

Tell us a bit about the exhibition and how it was inspired.

K: Larissa and I were originally interested in doing a group show with many more artists; last minute the show fell apart. But both Larissa and I were still interested in putting an exhibit together.

L: We didn’t have a plan at first. We’d never collaborated with each other before and pretty much never been in the same classes, so we weren’t familiar with each others’ work at all.

K: As we talked about our work, we were pleasantly surprised with how much we had in common and how our art would function together. We both seemed to be inspired by everyday things.

L: Or in trying to expose a hidden side of the mundane. So that became the purpose of the show.

How do you want people to read your exhibit/artworks?

K: I hope viewers come in, keep an open mind and just have fun! I hope that people take the opportunity to create personal interpretations of their own. If they happen to think about their relationships with everyday objects and concepts...well then that’s a bonus. !

L: Many of the works were about taking the time to observe things beyond an initial, superfluous reading. So I found myself thinking of the exhibition as an opportunity to “practice looking”, or to gain strategies for examining things that are otherwise considered uninteresting. Something viewers could take away and apply to their own surroundings beyond the show.

Did you work on any pieces together or was it mainly collaborating on the same idea? How do you think collaborating helped you in your personal artistic process, if at all?

K: Larissa and I made our pieces individually, all of my pieces were made prior to the exhibit.

L: And I made some new pieces specifically for the exhibition. There was, however, a lot of collaboration in how we divided the space. We thought it would be interesting to set up the room like a subtle mirror image, with works of similar size or shape echoing one another. If noticed, it might prompt a comparison, or a consideration of the works’ relationships across the room. We didn’t plan this initially- we noticed it happening when we started moving our work in, talked about it and realized that it could add another layer to the show.

K: Though we worked separately it was absolutely wonderful organizing an exhibit with another artist. I feel like I learned so much just in our conversations about how our pieces would create dialogue between one another. It felt very rewarding to have art come together and make sense, like we were apart of something larger than ourselves.

L: I always find working with another person such a great way to learn- you act like a fresh set of eyes on each other’s work. Katie had so many interesting ways of approaching the same problems as me that I wouldn’t have thought of- it gave me a lot to think about.

The exhibit was about everyday aspects of life that generally go unnoticed - was there anything particularly interesting or captivating that you discovered while working on the pieces for this show? Do you have a favourite piece because of it?

K: I don’t think I can say that I have just one favourite piece, but I was amazed when I took a step back and looked at our works. There are so many realms in which the ‘everyday’ goes unnoticed. The sky, the clothes we wear, branding, community action, body movements and nature, the list goes on and on. Our world is such a complex place with so much to see and experience. We are very lucky to live on such an amazing planet!

How do you usually approach a new piece of work?

L: I’m a major planner. I’ll start brainstorming ways to impart [a very specific] message with an experience, usually by trying to elicit an emotional response in people towards something, which in turn questions the nature of the thing and its relationship to the viewer. Once I come up with some possible ways to create the experience I have in mind, I just start experimenting which usually involves asking for peoples’ feedback, since I need to know how they’re experiencing the work. When I’m not sure what it is exactly I want to say, I let myself just work intuitively and see what comes out. Improvisation is a way for me to identify what it is I’m really after in work that I don’t plan.

K: When I make a work of art, it is usually a surprise to me. I sit down to do something I enjoy and sometimes something really worth while comes out of it. Other times I fall in love with an idea and feel great determination to get it out of my mind and into a piece! Being that I am on a student budget, a lot of my sculptures and installations are guided by materials I already own or can access easily. I think that has a big impact on what kind of work I make. It also allows me to feel a very personal connection to the finished product when it might be made out of a bit of wire that’s been kicking around my apartment for the last six years.  

As un undergraduate student in their last semester and a graduate student from the Guelph Studio Art Program, what advice would you give anyone looking to either fill the Zavitz Gallery, or just general advice to anyone in the program?

K: My advice in terms of filling the Zavitz Gallery would be to plan ahead and have direct ideas. It can be competitive to get an exhibition so make sure you apply on time. Also this is your moment to shine, so make sure you make deliberate decisions. My general advice would be that no matter what your professors think is cool, always stay true to your interests. It’s much more fulfilling when someone likes your work when it’s the work you wanted to make.

L: I’d say it depends on your approach to planning a show. If you were to do what Katie and I did (pull a common theme out of your existing work) then I’d say just make work. Make lots and lots of work. Explore your ideas, get the things that don’t work out of your system, and start feeling your way towards what you’re truly interested in. In terms of general advice, I’d say it’s good to talk to people, observe how they respond to your work and ask for their opinion. The more perspectives the better, because what you think you’re saying in a piece isn’t always what people interpret, and because there’s such a wealth of brilliant ideas to be learned from those around you.

#interview #uofgstudioart #uofg #studioart #fineart #exhibitions #alumni #guelphalumni #articles

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anthonynorrie0-blog · 7 years ago

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11 Effective Ways To Use Social Media To Ensure Your Information

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webpostingpro-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Webpostingpro

New Post has been published on https://webpostingpro.com/boost-your-productivity-with-these-time-saving-community-tips/

Boost Your Productivity With These Time-Saving Community Tips

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How do you find time for quiet and contemplation in your existence?

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webpostingpro-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Webpostingpro

New Post has been published on https://webpostingpro.com/boost-your-productivity-with-these-time-saving-community-tips/

Boost Your Productivity With These Time-Saving Community Tips

Pay attention to Your Personal’ Sleep conduct

Keep away from Those E-mail Marketing Errors

Pay attention to Safety Issues at Paintings

Invest in Commercial LED Lights to Boost Sales

When you have been seeking out the high-quality LED lighting fixtures to apply on your commercial or retail area, right here are some popular options to hold in mind.

Movement sensor lights

lighting also makes it less complicated to see products from out of doors if the store has a window.

Showcase lighting

Increase Your Productivity by Finding Time for Quiet

Distractions are everywhere these days, and quiet is difficult to return by using. It is a fact of lifestyles inside the 21st century.

We live in an age of constant connection

Immediate get admission to and googling the whole thing. And as the first rate as that can be, now and again don’t you simply feel besieged with the assignment, picks, possibilities, and facts?

At the same time as one-hour blocks of time can be hard to locate each day, I enthusiastically assist the general concept of putting aside time each day for quiet. And here’s why I say that:

Self-care is the root of your successful time management. It replenishes your strength and sharpens your cognizance.

You would possibly attempt searching at your time in 15-minute increments.

And you realize what?

How do you find time for quiet and contemplation in your existence?

Five Tricks to Increasing Community Development

1. Preserve Everyday Meetings

2. Be Open to New Thoughts

3. Attempt to Work With the City

4. Don’t Give up

0 notes