The Crisis of Everything Everywhere — Day 7
Comments Off on The Crisis of Everything Everywhere — Day 7THE CRISIS OF EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE
or WELCOME TO THE NEW PARADIGM
A midwinter retreat, a modular molecular seminar with Everyone
Day 7
Cultures of Resistance, Resistances of Culture
Culture and cultural practitioners have played a central role in the movements of the squares and occupations of 2011. Moreover, occupy wall street has become a cultural phenomenon in its own right. Day 7 will be dedicated to bringing together different individuals to reflect on the cultural questions of these movements and to also attempt to connect to prior histories of resistance and political struggle and the role culture has played.
6PM [ at MOMA]
For Friday, we had initially thought to organize a day that would attempt to bridge inter-generationally the question of culture in the midst of powerful political and social tumult, crisis, or struggle. We thought to invite individuals who had been involved in the Black Panthers, Act Up!, or even historical efforts to organize artists like Art Workers Coalition and to place them into discussion with the cultures and cultural questions being posed within and through the Occupy Movements and broader political struggles today
We had thought to meet with participants of the Arts and Labor Committee, Art and Culture, Occupy Museums, Occupy Sothebys and other working groups. But a proposal has instead been made by the committe preparing day 7, to meet at MOMA at 6pm.
The Museum is free on Fridays as a result of the struggles waged by groups such as Art Workers Coalition.
Within the course of the evening, we will attempt to open up a consideration around these and other questions.
— What kind of culture could emerge from a refusal to accept the systems of values imposed today by capitalism?
— What kinds of cultures are called for, which could resist the reinforcement of a system that places the majority of the control over everything (e.g., culture, science, resources, common wealth, labor, life, political decisions, information, communication) to a small minority of individuals?
— What kind of resistance will be necessary to alter the trend of corporatization of public institutions, including institutions of art?
— What kinds of cultural shifts are necessary to refuse growth, refuse positivist discourses of progress, refuse patriarchy, refuse racism, refuse isolationism, refuse hetero-normativity, refuse class, refuse war, refuse over-consumption, refuse capitalist guilt/debt, …?
— In this midst of contemporary struggles against the crisis of everything, how can those who identify with and work inside the spheres of culture (e.g., artists, cultural producers, those who work in institutions of culture, education etc.) dis-identify with those institutions which purport to support art, but tacitly or explicitly depend upon, mimic, and help perpetuate systems based on the immiseration of the majority of the world’s inhabitants?
— What do cultures of the commons look like?
— And how can public or non-profit cultural institutions be committed to a culture of the commons? How can these same institutions resist the becoming numbers of the world?