CO-OP at b.j. spoke Gallery [Opening Reception, 9/8 report-back]

Photo Credit: Katherine Criss

Saturday, September 8 marked the opening of CO-OP in Huntington, Long Island at the venerable b.j. spoke gallery. CO-OP is the Occupy with Art experimental collective project to integrate the 99% art economy with the cooperative food economy. Many of the bj spoke artists in the front and back galleries displayed powerful political artworks for the exhibit. True to Occupy form, we started the evening with street protest, thanks to Occupy Huntington. The good people of Occupy Storefront contributed a couple of last minute entries to our exhibition component, which added a lot of color to the array. The food spread and beverages were terrific, shared by the bj spoke artist community, the OwA participants (Chris baked a great pie and tarts) and our generous sponsors, Blind Bat Brewery. We had a terrific crowd for the reception, starting before the door opened at 6pm and continuing well into the evening. At 7pm, I made a performance art, throwing darts at my portrait of Mayor Bloomberg. It was a hit (actually all of them were)! Then, Chris and I gave brief talks about the project and Occupy with Art. Thank you to all who contributed to what was a wonderful evening of sharing art, convivials + passionate resistance and/or creative insistence. Special thanks goes to Marilyn Lavi, bj spoke director, Katherine Criss, and the bjs crews and committees who were vital in the actualization of this worthy collaborative project. Artist-owned and operated co-operative businesses are essential in a healthy arts ecology, and bj spoke is a great example and demonstration of that fact! - PJM

CO-OP at b.j. spoke Gallery [TONIGHT!]

Occupy with Art and B.J. Spoke Gallery in Huntington, Long Island are pleased to announce the launch of CO-OP, an experimental collective art exhibit and exchange, on view from September 5-30, 2012. A reception will be held at the gallery on Saturday, September 8, from 6-8 PM. CO-OP will feature an array of OWS photos by Steve O'Byrne, works on paper by Konstant and Isaac Moylan, and 4D animations, paintings and multimedia pieces by Paul McLean. CO-OP will introduce a model gift-barter of art for food, prototyping the direct integration of the local art and cooperative food networks. 

Konstant

Exhibition: September 5-30, 2012

Opening Reception: Saturday, September 8, 2012 6-9PM

B. J. Spoke Gallery

299 Main St  Huntington, NY 11743

Gallery hours are Tuesday-Sunday 11-5 and Friday 11-9.

Phone: (631) 549-5106

Contact: Marilyn Lavi: manager@bjspokegallery.com

Website: http://www.bjspokegallery.com

Directions: 495 to exit 39N; Glen Cove Rd. north to 25A east; 25a about 14 miles to Huntington Village. Main St. is part of 25A.

Occupy with Art

Website: http://www.occupywithart.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/occupywithart

Co-organizers: Paul McLean [artforhumans@gmail.com + (615)491-7285] & Christopher Moylan [cmoylanc@gmail.com + (347)512-0833]

• Download the CO-OP book HERE.
• Download the CO-OP stencil HERE.
• See the CO-OP photoset HERE.
• Paul McLean's new essay for the Brooklyn Rail, "WTF America!"
• Steve O'Byrne's OWS photos at Flickr.

CO-OP installation view at bj spoke gallery.[EXHIBIT CONCEPT, NARRATIVE and DESCRIPTION]

CO-OP/Occuburbs/Occufest began in December 2011 as an Occupy with Art (OwA) initiative to bridge the apparent divide between Occupy Wall Street and artist-activists living in the suburbs of New York City - specifically, those who make Long Island their home. OwA co-organizers Paul McLean and Christopher Moylan, a Long Island-based educator, artist, poet and Occupier, discussed a range of measures they hoped might activate and unite Occupy with those sympathetic to the movement in Long Island, measures that included community-building cultural events and art exhibitions, in addition to mobilizing or organizing efforts. In so doing McLean and Moylan hoped to model innovative programs for sustainable, alternative art economies for the 99%, and to inspire those who engaged in activism in the past several decades to get involved with OWS actions, now. 

Drawing from Moylan's experience in co-operative food networks, the co-organizers developed the CO-OP concept into an exhibition with an art and food exchange component. Through the CO-OP exchange, OwA is developing a simple template for in-kind or barter-based markets that will help artists become more integrated in communities that lack accessible or available retail infrastructure for affordable art. After a search and inquiry phase, McLean and Moylan, found great partner organizations in Huntington - The Cinema Arts Centre, which hosted an OwA screening program on July 25th featuring the films of Liza Bear, and B.J. Spoke, a member-supported gallery with deep roots in Long Island, dating to the 70s.    

Moylan and McLean have written essays to platform the issues underpinning CO-OP, which have either been published in The Brooklyn Rail or the Occupy with Art blog. These include Moylan's CO-OP/Occuburbs/Occufest series, McLean's "ENOUGH [BASTA]!" and, more generally, McLean's "Soul of Occupy" sequence, which maps the sometimes (for the author) discomfiting parameters and expectations for art situated in the OWS protest movement, in its initial anarchic emergent state. 

[ABOUT OCCUPY WITH ART]

The CO-OP production builds on OwA programs and initiatives, such as "Occupy Printed Matter," OwA's collaboration with Yoko Ono entitled "Wish Tree for Zuccotti Park," the Spatial Occupation at Hyperallergic, "Wall Street to Main Street," "Low Lives: Occupy!" and the soon-to-open Occupational Art School Node #1 at Bat Haus in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NYC. Occupy with Art was founded in late September as Occupennial, and until recently existed as an affinity group for the Arts & Culture Working Group of the New York City General Assembly for Occupy Wall Street. Over the past ten months, OwA has operated in constant transition, serving initially as a nexus for communications and documentation of OWS-related arts and culture, then shifting into production and program development. Over its brief life span OwA has generated many opportunities for Occupy artists to share ideas and work, facilitated important discourse on the disposition of art and artists in the Occupation, and presented diverse programming exploring a spectrum of meaningful creative action. 

 

SAVE THE DATE: CO-OP at B.J. Spoke Gallery [9/5-30/2012][Opening Reception 9/9 from 6-8PM]

CO-OP/Occuburbs Kick-off, with Films by Liza Bear, and More: Save the Date!

[Save the date: July 25, 2012]

Occupy with Art and Cinema Arts Center present a selection of short films by Liza Bear, + an evening of discussion, poetry, music and more -- to kick off CO-OP/Occuburbs in Huntington, Long Island.

Occupy: Corporations Can’t Cry

Date:

• July 25, 2012

Showtime

• Wednesday, July 25 at 7:30pm

Film / Discussion / Public Forum / Music /  Poetry
Co-Presented by Occupy with Art and Cinema Arts Center

Join us for a lively and illuminating evening about Occupy Wall Street, featuring the films of Liza Béar (who has been at OWS since the first day of the occupation), music, poetry, and information about numerous Long Island activist organizations

• In Person: Filmmaker Liza Béar
• Music by Brian O’Haire
• Poetry by Christopher Moylan 

$10 Members / $15 Public
(includes reception)
Tickets also available by calling 800-838-3006, or at the CAC Box Office
Scholarship Tickets are available for those unable to pay – Contact Charlotte Sky at 631-423-7610 x22

Since Day One, September 17, 2011, Liza Béar has filmed the modus operandi of Occupy Wall Street at Zuccotti Park and at other New York locales. Shot over a 7 month period, these 65 minidocs or situationist videos combine dialogue between–and with—an eclectic range of OWS participants, members of the community and the security forces. The style is a mixture of verité filmmaking and a more proactive, direct cinema approach. The aim has been to dispel mass media stereotyping and facile judgments. To be screened tonight: OWS Day 5: “Corporations Can’t Cry”; “Zuccotti Gets Surreal”; “Occupy the SEC: Enforce the Volcker Rule,” “Occupy the Courts: Foley Square Rally to End Corporate Personhood”; OWSJ29: “Murder By SpreadSheet; Health Care for the 99%”; OWS M28 “The Trap of Violence” and others.

Liza Béar is a New York-based writer, filmmaker and media activist.  After arriving in New York in 1968, she cofounded the avant-garde artists’ magazine Avalanche 1970-1976 with Willoughby Sharp and was a co-producer of Communications Update, a public access artists’ tv show that also dealt with information politics. Her films have been shown at The Museum of Modern Art, the Edinburgh Film Festival, the Sao Paulo Biennial, and most recently at Torpedo Kunsthalle, Oslo, Macka Art Gallery, Istanbul and the ICA London. She is the author of “Beyond the Frame: Dialogues with World Filmmakers” (Praeger, 2007).  Learn more at http://lizabearmakingbook.blogspot.com and http://communicationsupdate.blogspot.com

Occufest, Part II: Spread the News

By Christopher Moylan

The contraction of Occupy Wall Street after the police stormed Liberty Square was to be expected, but with the return of longer days and warmer weather something peculiar happened. The movement remained in a dark chill while everyone else walked about in shorts and short sleeves complaining of the unnatural heat. Activists came back to the streets, the energy at demonstrations returned, yet little of this was reported in the news. For all anyone in the greater world knew, Occupy was dead.

To those who took part in the Million Hoodie March or the demonstration against police brutality, it was obvious that this media silence resulted from the collusion of forces more imposing than those of the editorial staff of Eyewitness News or, for that matter, The New York Times.  The police mobilizations at each protest were too large, the disruptions of traffic and business the protesters caused were too widespread and dramatic, the arrests too violent and arbitrary for all this to be too trivial for comment. If thousands marching down Fifth Avenue on a Tuesday evening rush hour could not draw attention, then what would it take?



Perhaps this is the wrong question. For one thing, it is obvious what it would take to grab the attention of corporate news: mass arrests, violence, smashed shop windows and burning cars. If Occupy activists allow the police and their corporate/political sponsors to write the narrative that would discredit the movement, then the narrative would receive plenty of attention. That could happen, but let’s hope it doesn’t.  So, isn’t this the question; if one could write an Occupy-related lead story for The Times, what would it say? Better yet, if it were possible to hold the attention of one disinterested person for a while—half an hour or an hour—what would one say? What would one hope to accomplish?

Click to read more ...

The Festival of Reason, the art of Common Sense

Graphic by Paul McLean

[NOTE: The following supporting text is the second part of a two-part essay by Chris Moylan for the OwA collab "CO-OP|occuburbs," slated for 2012 in Huntington, NY]; in this project we will be envisioning alternate art economies, inspired by the co-operative food and farm networks. Our point of origination as locus is the suburban (American) community, although we hope the applications can extend beyond that start-point.]

The Festival of Reason, the art of Common Sense

By Christopher Moylan

Plans are underway for an Occupy arts festival in the suburbs: Occufest in the Occuburbs. The initial contacts with different cultural organizations have been promising. People are enthusiastic; there are promises of space and other resources. Over and again, however, certain questions arise; what is this—the festival and Occupy Wall street-- about? What is the connection between Occupy Wall Street and the arts? What point would a festival make? What would it do?

One response is to turn such questions back on the person asking them; what does the Occupy movement mean to you? What kind of connection would you like to see between the arts and the Occupy movement? What point would you want such a festival to make? That kind of exchange tends to go only so far. People are asking for information and background, not for a daily dose of empowerment. To be fair, however, the Occupy movement has received a good deal of publicity and news attention; one would expect that most people would be familiar with the movement and what it is attempting to do. The discussion, then, probably has more to do with expectations based on personal history rather than with social policy or aesthetics.

 The subtext of such questions seems to be something like this; my experience with politics has been disillusioning, will this be any different? And, my experience with art --as in paintings, sculpture, installations, art in galleries--has been disappointing, and puzzling so will this be any better?

By way of attempting a constructive answer, one consistent with an inclusive Occupy spirit, the questions can be reframed to emphasize the central position of the .99 in everything that the movement does and attempts to do.

So, preliminary to discussing what an Occufest might be like, one might ask what does cultural democracy look like? Under what conditions might art for the .99 emerge, and how would we recognize such work if we saw it?

Click to read more ...