On September 4-5, we will be discussing the Future of the Public School and continuing some of the conversations from The UC strikes and beyond and Continental Drift / Control Society / Metamorphosis. We're fortunate that Brian Holmes will be back in Los Angeles and proposed the class, which will "look at the cultural roots of the current university crisis, and in that light, to explore the role that experiments like The Public School could play in re-imagining education."
more..(Rough draft written in only a few minutes! For sharing at the beginning of our workshop)
Everyone now wants to know how to remove themselves from social networks. It has become absolutely clear that our relationships to others are mere data points in the aggregation of marketing data. Political campaigns, the sale of commodities, the promotion of entertainment – this is the outcome of our expression of likes and affinities. And at what cost? The reward is obvious: we no longer have to tolerate advertisements for things for which we have no interest. Instead our social relations are saturated with public relations. But at least it is all interesting!
Unlike the old days, when we could invent online identities daily, our social networks today require fidelity between our physical self and our online self. The situation is unbearable.
more..This Sunday, May 2nd at 2pm - just as the shade crosses Chung King Road. Bring a board if you've got one. Please RSVP on the class web page (http://la.thepublicschool.org/class/1450) so we know how many tables and chairs and things we need.
more..Thanks for the great class last evening. To quickly summarize a few of the points that I have continued to think about since then:
On the communiqué versus the manifesto: proceeding from the dictionary definition of communiqué does not give a sense of the alternative history and use of the form; nonetheless, it seems that the communiqué is a statement or report and that it somehow includes within itself a sense of its own distribution. (People who distribute the communiqué as co-authors, or part of the “we”). The communiqué is the line connecting reporter and receiver. The manifesto seems to be a little more declarative, a making public of principles, not necessarily in reference to a particular event. A surface, not a line?
more..i reread theory of the quasi-object chapter in michel serres' book, the parasite. it's an ambivalent proposition - even the use of the term quasi carries a certain ambivalence, doesn't it? only rather than being a doubling, it is partway between object and non-object. serres does end up doubling things though, over and over, for example the quasi-object is neither wholly object, not wholly subject, but a little of both. the parasite is both host and guest. is the parasite or the quasi-object "being or relation"?
what i find most exciting and convincing in the chapter is his conception of the "we" as something other than a group of "i"s, this relationship between the individual and the collective.
more..On Sunday, February 21, we are lucky to have Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson visiting us from Paris to screen their 2009 film, Facs of Life. The screening will begin at 7pm, but we invite you to come earlier for a conversation with Silvia and Graeme.
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Nonstophome will be in residence for the next week (beginning tonight at 7pm!) with their four-day listening, reading, and discussion-based seminar, The Last of my Time Makes a Cosmos: Rhythm and Space Analysis toward the de-gentrification of the Black Avant Garde. The class description is below, but a practical note: if you can't make it to the first meeting, feel free to come to the second class, on Thursday.
Schedule:
- Tuesday, 2 February at 7pm
- Thursday, 4 February at 7pm
- Sunday, 7 February at 7pm
- Tuesday, 9 February at 7pm
The tenth Fucked Up Drawing Party will happen at The Public School on Saturday from 5-8pm.
MANIFESTO:
The purpose of a Fucked Up Drawing Party is to get fucked up (i.e. intoxicated) and draw things that are fucked up (i.e. disturbing). What constitutes a Fucked Up Drawing is different for everyone. Some people discover the Fucked Up in aberrant sexuality or perverse violence, for others it may be politically charged. Styles range from abstract mark making to soft-core realism- being eccentrically overt or delicately subtle. The ultimate test is that when you look at a drawing, you think to yourself, "that's fucked up."
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On Sunday, January 31, we'll be meeting at 7pm for the second screening in the Cinecultural Practice and the Political Avant-Garde series. Everyone is welcome - synopsis and review are below:
Synopsis
In a South American country, a US official, Michael Santore, is kidnapped by left-wing guerrillas. His captors accuse him of being a CIA agent, responsible for training the local police in techniques of torture and anti-sedition. As the guerrillas attempt to extract a confession from Santore, the authorities, headed by an extreme right-wing government, are closing in on them...
Review (by James Travers, 2002)
more.."The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." If you read that sentence then you have done the assigned reading for the first meeting of Theory / Practice, which meets Sunday night at 7pm. The class will kick off with a discussion of all sorts of condensed examples of the historically uneasy relationship between theory and practice, so bring your own (for example, maybe: "Change we can believe in")
Immaterial Labor and Biopolitics meets on Saturday at 4pm. The class will be a discussion of concepts introduced in Part 3 of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's Commonwealth (you can find the reading here)
more..(from La Ventana Collective)
The actions of December 10th reflected an evolution on the campus of San Francisco State University.
While the ISO argues that the occupation was “undemocratic” it is important to note that in this particular case it was strategically valuable to have clandestine organization. This militant action will act as a spark for more expanded and informal organizing in the spring. Security is a huge issue on campus as the struggle to defend public education escalates in resistance. Additionally, the ISO’s organizing model is in many ways undemocratic in nature with centralized committees espousing orders that rank-and-file militants within their organization must follow, including the "party-line" and "platform" with which the ISO members must adhere.
Furthermore, to assume that outside support must be organized by a vanguard is to assume students on campus are incapable of acting on their own initiative to support an occupation that is an important step in mobilizing for power amongst students, employed members of the university, and the supporters of the community. They used the word "hastily" but the fact that a large number of students (the largest turn-out we have seen all semester) on their own volition decided to support this action the week before finals proves the potential of spontaneous self-organization. The students on this campus are willing to support actions that are outside the traditional framework of “activism” as defined on this campus (e.g. walks outs, marches, rallies, teach-ins). The thousands of students who showed up to support the occupation was what kept it alive for 24 hours. The "haste" of preparation for the occupation had nothing to do with the riot cops ability to break it up - they forced their way into the building by breaking windows at 3.30 in the morning, when many students were tired and on the verge of sleep.
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The text above was written as a response to a critique of the occupation (by the ISO) which is quoted below... The International Socialist Organization writes:
09 Dec 2009 11:13AM