Category Archives for Uncategorized

November 29th in BROOKLYN – MONO NO AWARE Super 8 & 16mm Film Festival

MONO NO AWARE IS AN INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION OF EXPANDED CINEMA PERFORMANCES. TAKING ITS NAME FROM THE JAPANESE EXPRESSION MEANING -THE PATHOS OF THINGS-. THE CONCEPT IS TO PRESENT WORK WHICH IS EPHEMERAL IN NATURE WITH AN EMPHASIS ON THE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE. RECENT ADVANCEMENTS IN TECHNOLOGY HAVE ALTERED THE AUDIENCE EXPERIENCE AND CONNECTIVITY ASSOCIATED WITH THE CINEMA. WEBSITES, TELEVISION, AND EVEN CELL PHONES HAVE BECOME AN EVERYDAY VEHICLE FOR FILM AND VIDEO. ALL OF THE WORK PRESENTED AT MONO NO AWARE CONSISTS OF ONE PART FILM PROJECTION AND ONE PART LIVE PERFORMANCE ELEMENT. 16MM OR SUPER 8MM FILMS ONLY, NO DIGITAL VIDEO. WE BELIEVE THERE IS A MAGIC IN SEEING THE FILM PRINT. THERE IS A PRESENCE A POET HAS READING HIS/HER OWN WRITING. THERE IS A FEELING THAT RESONATES IN YOUR CHEST WHEN YOU SEE A MUSICIAN PERFORM LIVE. EACH MONO NO AWARE PERFORMANCE IS ONE OF A KIND, SOME PARTICIPANTS HAVE GONE SO FAR AS TO DESTROY THE FILM WORK AFTER ITS FIRST RUN AT THE EVENT. WE INVITE YOU TO JOIN US SUNDAY NOVEMBER 29TH AT LUMENHOUSE IN BROOKLYN. THE EVENT IS FREE TO ATTEND. THANK YOU.

Sunday, November 29th 5PM – 11PM
LUMENHOUSE
47 Beaver St. / Brooklyn, NY 11206
F-r-e-e admission!

Read more about the selected films & performances here.

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — Hermann Gorter

gorter
NOVEMBER 26 — HERMANN GORTER
Pioneering Dutch Council Communist, poet.

NOVEMBER 26 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
U.S.: THANKSGIVING. BAHA’I: COVENANT DAY. FESTIVAL OF BIG TALK.

ALSO ON 26 IN HISTORY…
1792 — American anti-slavery and suffragist activist Sarah Grimke born.
1864 — Dutch poet, council communist Hermann Gorter born, Wormerveer.
1883 — Black emancipationist Sojourner Truth dies, Battle Creek, Michigan.
1969 — Military draft lottery established in U.S.

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

Today's Autonomedia Jubilee Saint — Ba Jin

BA JIN
NOVEMBER 25 — BA JIN
Chinese anarchist, lifelong revolutionist, novelist.
“I am a person always full of contradictions… It was hard to choose whether to devote myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer.”

NOVEMBER 25 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
Islamic HAJJ begins. USE EVEN IF SEAL IS BROKEN DAY.
FESTIVAL OF SHADOW ECONOMIES. Suriname: INDEPENDENCE DAY (1975).

ALSO ON NOVEMBER 25 IN HISTORY
1904 — Chinese anarchist novelist Ba Jin born, Chengtu, Szechwan, China.
1957 — Radical Mexican muralist Diego Rivera dies, Mexico City, Mexico.
1968 — American socialist novelist, politician Upton Sinclair dies.
1970 — Right-wing gay Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima dies by his own hand.
1974 — British folk-pop composer Nick Drake dies, Tanworth-in-Arden, England.

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

The Diggers Papers No. 28: "Gentleness In the Pursuit of Extremity Is No Vice: A Play In Infinite Acts"

DiggersPapers28

About this document:
Idea-rich early announcement broadside (there will be more) for an event that happened on either April 2, 1967 or April 9, 1967. Author is anonymous, as most of the best Diggers documents are, but one would guess that Peter Berg, Lenore Kandel and (perhaps?) Peter Coyote and Emmett Grogan had something to do with the specific text laid down here. The concept of “life-acting” is made explicit; street theater is made literal; life becomes play.

About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ’66 through ’67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here

NO WONDER ADVERTISING/MARKETING PEOPLE HATE THEMSELVES

Corporate marketers discover guerrilla gigs—and another assault on the public is born. From the New York Times:

Something to Rah-Rah-Rah About for Christmas
By STUART ELLIOTT
November 11, 2009

…The Gap campaign — created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky in Miami and Boulder, Colo., owned by MDC Partners — includes, in addition to the commercials, print advertisements, a presence on Facebook and a four-city tour by a troupe of cheerleaders and drummers who will “appear in unexpected places when you least expect it,” said Ivy Ross, executive vice president of marketing for the Gap brand at Gap in San Francisco. …

“We were very conscious of the environment we’re in,” she added, and the idea was to produce a campaign that was “optimistic and bold,” countering the concept that “some people say you can’t be happy this year because we’re going through a crisis.”

Because “we’re going through hard economic times,” Ms. Ross said, the goal was “to liberate our customers to celebrate the holidays.”

And “instead of holiday carols, cheers are the biggest call to action,” she added.

The fast pace of the commercials, and their choreographed cast members, call to mind successful Gap spots in the 1990s in which khaki-clad dancers performed to musical genres like swing.

“The element that is similar is the high energy,” Ms. Ross said. “It’s saying: ‘Smile a little bit, don’t be burdened by what you think you should be doing. There are no shoulds.’ ” …

The reason Gap will resume running Christmas commercials is that “we really felt we wanted to wait till we had something to talk about,” Ms. Ross said. …

To underscore those messages, one commercial will promote a “buy one, get one” sale on merchandise from Nov. 25 to Nov. 27.

The dancing cheerleaders spell out the retail acronym for such sales, chanting, “B-o-g-o!”

The Diggers Papers No. 27: "Beat the Heat"

DiggersPapers27

About this document:
Another wisdom broadside from an anonymous pen; best guess is it’s Chester Anderson.

About this series:
Arthur is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ’66 through ’67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here