Category Archives for Uncategorized

June 19th through 21st – Bicycle Film Festival in NYC

This summer’s international Bicycle Film Festival will be held at Anthology Film Archives in New York from June 19th through 21st, featuring a smorgasbord of bicycle-related short films and feature-length movies from all over the world.

Short films range from a watercolor animation showing the director’s thoughts while riding her bicycle (Thoughts On My Bike), to a documentary about a group of friends from Trinidad who built “enormous stereo systems jerry-rigged onto ordinary BMX bikes” so that they could throw their neighborhood “an outrageous impromptu music and dance party on wheels” (Made in Queens).

Feature-lengths of note include Keirin Queen/Onna Keirn, a classic Japanese film about a girl from a small fishing town who trains to become a Keirin track queen, and Where Are You Go, a documentary about a cycling adventure across Africa:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NpubbAzKSY

ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES
32 Second Avenue (at 2nd St.)
www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/

Tickets are $10 per program.

Learn more about the festival and buy tickets here.

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — MARC BLOCH

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June 16– Marc Bloch
French Annales medieval historian, martyred to Nazi terror.

JUNE 16, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*Egypt: Night of the Drop. A night of deliberation and prognostication caused by the mysterious rise of the Nile River.
*Dublin, Ireland: Bloomsday.

ALSO ON JUNE 16 IN HISTORY…
1835 — London Working Men’s Association founded by William Lovett.
1890—Film comedian Stan Laurel born..
1944 — French Annales school historian Marc Bloch killed by Nazis, near Lyon.
1958 — Former Hungarian leader Imre Nagy hung for role in 1956 uprising.
1961 — Soviet ballet star Rudolf Nureyev seeks political asylum, Paris, France.
1963 — Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes first woman in space.
1970 — Russian futurist, French surrealist muse Elsa Triolet dies, Paris, France.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

Report on "The Coming Insurrection" book launch at NYC Barnes and Nobles, Sephora, Starbucks

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During the last week this mysterious message made its way across the internet:

SEMIOTEXT(E) Book Launch: The Coming Insurrection by the Invisible Committee

“Two centuries of capitalism and market nihilism have brought us to the most extreme alienations—from ourselves, from others, from worlds. The fiction of the individual has decomposed with the same speed that it once became real. Children of the metropolis, we offer this wager: that it’s in the most profound deprivation of existence—perpetually stifled, perpetually conjured away—that the possibility of communism resides.”

—The Coming Insurrection, Introduction to the English edition

THE COMING INSURRECTION has been labeled a “manual for terrorism” by the French government, who recently arrested its alleged authors. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben has called the book “one of the most intelligent works of our time” and numerous commentators have seen it as a heir to the legacy of situationist Guy Debord. Meanwhile, bootleg translations have circulated around the world and passages from the book appeared on the walls of Athens during last December’s uprising.

Anonymously written in the wake of the riots that erupted throughout the Paris suburbs in the fall of 2005, THE COMING INSURRECTION articulates a rejection of the official Left and its reformist agenda, aligning itself instead with the growing number of those—in France, in the United States, and elsewhere—who refuse the idea that theory, politics, and life are separate realms.

Please join us for the official book launch, including discussion of the text as well as content-appropriate activities, on Sunday, June 14 at 5pm on the fourth floor of Union Square Barnes and Noble.

I arrived at the fourth floor of Barnes and Nobles right on time. Continue reading →

Brower Propulsion Laboratory Mission 003: Pre-Launch Operations Test at Parker's Box in Brooklyn

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Moranic Mission to Montana Early production artwork depicting MUNIN (Module for Unmanned Novel Investigation and Notation) spacecraft and equipment, Steven Brower, 2009.

This month at Parker’s Box, artist Steven Brower‘s Brower Propulsion Laboratory stages a three-week “Pre-Launch Operations Test” for its third large-scale space voyage, lovingly christened “Moranic Mission to Montana.” A pioneer and market leader in the field of one-man, penniless “corporate” aerospace companies, BPL is unique for conducting its exploratory research missions entirely on the planet earth, and, in an industry typically fueled by a desire for financial, political, scientific, and geographical conquest, for undertaking all of its projects in a spirit of “disutility.” “The basic goal of each mission at BPL,” the company’s official website states, is simply “to do something”– and, through, the acquisition of knowledge and technical expertise linked to the demands of each operation, to develop a “parallel universe of pseudoexpertise,” applicable only to BPL operations.

The company’s third mission, scheduled for late August, 2009, will mobilize three handmade robotic spacecraft (a lander, a rover, and a hot air balloon) to retrace the path of Hudson River School painter Thomas Moran in his historic 1871 expedition to Livingston, Montana, near Yellowstone National Park. Until that landmark expedition, which people worldwide will be able to follow on the “Interweb,” people interested in learning more about BPL can drop by Parker’s box for a look at some of Steven Brower’s (patented?) inventions–including, but not limited to, the three spacecraft, a “cheap ass” laser night vision system, water color “surveys” of the Yellowstone terrain, and BPL souvenir merchandise. A bake sale fundraiser will be in effect through all of the gallery’s open hours, with delicious pies, cupcakes, and cookies baked daily by the company CEO himself.

Steven Brower, BPL Mission 003 : Pre-Launch Operations Test (PLOT)
Friday-Monday, 1-7pm, through June 21, 2009
Parker’s Box
193 Grand Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
Map

June 24: Montague Phantom Brain Exchange #18 in Western Mass

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The Montague Phantom Brain Exchange, a monthly art and thought happening in the slightly world weary old New England mill town of Turners Falls, seems to have become a prime destination for all things “weird and unusual” on the Western Massachusetts cultural front. Curated by “Mr. Cloaca,” whose use of a pseudonym here jibes perfectly with the “phantom” vibe, the MPBE describes itself as “a place where bodied and disembodied brains & nonbrains can safely gather to deconstruct solutions & create problems while soaking in an invigorating bath of provocative entertainments.” While Western Mass is positively overflowing with energetic brain-swappings of this kind (and you can check out the Happy’n’in’Valley blog calendar here if you doubt it), Cloaca’s series is unique for always pairing live performance, DJ transports, and moving images screenings with a fifteen minute lecture–that is, the MPBE’s signature “music-book-report-series-within-a-series,” founded by Bull Tongue co-mastermind Byron Coley last year.

Below is the missive for this month’s offering:

Continue reading →

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — AMADEO BORDIGA

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June 13 — AMADEO BORDIGA

Italian left communist, Prometheus Group leader.
Read articles by Bordiga on LibCom.

JUNE 13, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*U.S.: Children’s Day.
*National Juggling Day.

ALSO ON JUNE 13 IN HISTORY…
1865 — Irish poet William Butler Yeats born, Dublin, Ireland.
1889 — Italian left communist leader Amadeo Bordiga born, Resina, Italy.
1963 — Civil rights activist, martyr Medgar Evers dies, Jackson, Mississippi.
1979 — Sioux awarded $17.5 million for land taken in 1877.
1980 — Guyanese historian, activist Walter Rodney assassinated, Georgetown.
1986 — American Big Band leader Benny Goodman dies.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective

"I’LL DO WHAT I CAN TO PLUG THE HOLE IN FOREVER!"

Arthur editor Jay Babcock’s “extreme nostalgia” introduction to the Grant Morrison-written “FINAL CRISIS” hardcover, which collects the epic superhero comic book series in one volume, has been posted online over at the DC Comics blog.

Grant Morrison did a memorable spoken word performance at ArthurBall in February 2006 in Los Angeles. Babcock interviewed him for a cover feature for Arthur No. 12 (available from the Arthur Store).