Monday Night 06.30.03 — Prison Series — Trevor Paglen — "Listening to Pelican Bay"
Comments Off on Monday Night 06.30.03 — Prison Series — Trevor Paglen — "Listening to Pelican Bay"Contents:
1. About this Monday
2. About Prison Series
3. The Dept. of Space and Land Reclamation Wants You
http://www.16beavergroup.org/monday
http://www.paglen.com/silentspaces/
http://www.paglen.com/silentspaces/pages/projects/Listening.htm
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1. About this Monday
When: 7pm
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 5th Floor
Who: Open to all
As a part of our Prison Series, we are thrilled to invite Bay Area artist, writer, experimental geographer Trevor Paglen.
“Listening to Pelican Bay” is an experimental lecture documenting a series of unauthorized incursions into California’s carceral landscape. Using conventions from film, music, lecture, and performance art, “Listening to Pelican Bay” creates a multi-sensory montage which seeks to both ask and answer some of the following questions: What are the origins of super-max incarceration and what are its effects?; Why is the Security Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison so quiet?; How does Pelican Bay function within larger topographies of incarceration and domination?; What are some strategies that cultural producers might use in order to gain access to illegal places?
Trevor Paglen is an artist, writer, and experimental geographer currently working out of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. His work encodes and decodes physical and cultural landscapes in ways that challenge the assumptions, proscriptions, and prohibitions built into human environments. Borrowing heavily from the physical and human sciences, Paglen uses a broad range of contemporary media to develop projects for cultural institutions, activist organizations, and urban landscapes.
www.paglen.com
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2. About the Prison Series
The Prison Series is a loosely based set of evenings
that will focus on different aspects of prisons,
incarceration, and “security”. We will be inviting
a variety of cultural workers and activists to discuss
their ideas and efforts.
In August of 2002, we invited writer activist, Mark Dow
to discuss his book on death row. In that same month
we invited Tommy Trantino, an acclaimed writer and
New Jersey State’s longest serving inmate to speak about
his experiences serving on death row and his thoughts on
the prison industrial complex.
For suggestions on other possible guests, please write to
prisonseries@16beavergroup.org.
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3. The Dept. of Space and Land Reclamation Wants You
If you are nice, Trevor may also speak to you about an upcoming
project in October in San Fran.
Info Below: Please Distribute Far and Wide…..
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The Department of Space and Land Reclamation Wants You!
Proposals Due August 22, 2003
www.dslrwest.org
The newly-founded Western Division of the Department of Space and Land
Reclamation (DSLR-West) is pleased to announce an Open Call for
Submissions & Participation in the first-ever Space & Land Reclamation
Campaign west of the Mississippi. Converging in San Francisco for 72
hours of non-stop occupation, intervention, recreation, and re-invention
of public space, the DSLR-West campaign will take place in the first
weekend in October. Using the infamous art/punk rock/community center,
Mission Badlands/Balazo Gallery as a center of operations, DSLR-West
will establish a hub from which projects will radiate out across the
metropolis. The emphasis of this campaign is on the creative usage and
appropriation of public space by autonomous individuals and groups from
all walks of life. DSLR-West is not just interested in Art! We are
interested in people taking back their cities with a wide range of
methods and approaches. We want to work with, encourage, and be
encouraged by people who want to reclaim the streets and buildings, the
empty lots and back alleys, the skies and the waterways. As such we
welcome submissions from artists and non-artists alike – urban
gardeners, media tacticians, pirate radio, interventions, graffiti,
pranks, social services, snake-charmers, performance artists, buskers,
landscape alterations, pie-throwers, street sculpture, agit-prop,
aerialists, ‘zine-sters, monkey-wrenchers, billboard manipulators,
hackers, activists, cultural saboteurs, kite-fliers, renegade
taxi-drivers, anarchitects, muralists, bike brigades, skaters,
perfumers, aesthetic bounty-hunters, magicians, musicians & mariachi,
b-boys, grrrls & gender-benders are all encouraged.
Entries will be selected by the following criteria (proposals should
have one or more of these points in mind):
1) The project is specifically geared towards reclaiming space in the
Bay Area (we will try to assist, but participants must work out the
details of their spatial reclamations). Site-specificity (e.g. – the
trolley stop on Powell & Market) and site-generality (e.g. – public
transportation) are equally acceptable but should be stated to help us
better organize.
2) The project provides free materials from the DSLR-West HQ to
visitors/participants for distribution, installation, and/or operation
in public space (i.e. – stickers, ‘zines, posters, smoke bombs,
stencils, condoms, how-to manuals, noise-makers, first-aid kits,
handcuff keys, kites, etc, etc, etc).
3) The project is interactive, collaborative, and/or relational with
other individuals, groups, participants or visitors (i.e. – workshops,
teach-ins, cooking, legal services, scavenger hunts, bike rides,
protests, blood drives, etc, etc, etc). These types of projects may take
place at the DSLR-West HQ, or may use the headquarters as a meeting
place/laboratory.
4) All projects will be video-documented and screened on monitors at the
DSLR-West HQ. A corresponding city map will allow visitors to reference
the project and its location in the urban environment.
5) Although the campaign will be occurring around-the-clock, individual
projects are not bound to any spatial or temporal restrictions.
Please send submissions to be received by August 22, 2003 to:
DSLR-West
865A 52nd St.
Oakland, CA 94608
or email: onward@dslrwest.org
DSLR-West is organized by a small but diverse collective (kinda like the
A-Team but not all dudes) which includes artists, activists, agitators,
an analyst, a geographer, and a bike mechanic living in the San
Francisco Bay Area who were inspired by DSLR activities in Chicago, New
York, and elsewhere.
If you would like to assist us by providing logistical, financial, or
other material support (money, labor, food, goods, printing, etc) please
contact us at:
goodluck@dslrwest.org
Thanks & good luck!