The Illuminator debuts March 3, during Low Lives: Occupy!

[From Thomas]





The Occupy with Art blog provides updates on projects in progress, opinion articles about art-related issues and OWS, useful tools built by artists for the movement, new features on the website, and requests for assistance. To submit a post, contact us at occupationalartschool(at)gmail(dot)com .
[From Thomas]
Piers 92 & 94, New York City
Saturday and Sunday, March 10th & 11th
1-4pm
FB event page
Occupy Museums invites all artists and non-artists to join a mobile exchange art fair on the sidewalk outside of this year’s Armory Show in New York City. Participants are encouraged to bring items such as paintings, drawings, sculpture, conceptual art, crafts, food, and other objects to exchange with Armory attendees and each other. We particularly welcome modes of exchange are not based on profit.
“Looking Down on Social Injustice” 60 x 40 inches, oil on canvas 2012
[From Michelle Rogers]:
Hi Paul
I'm a big fan of what you guys are doing, it is so incredibly inspirational. Over the last few months I have being doing this series of paintings about Occupy and the Arab spring. I live in Italy and have brought this work over to NY. I'm sending you some info about the show which opens Thursday at 516 w 25th St. Here is link to my street art project outside wall st stock exchange in 2010 protesting this crazy system:Really hope you can make the show!All the best,Michelle
Anonymous Heroes/ United Spirit: Occupy and the Arab Spring
Opening March 8th -16th New York City:
Ten new paintings by artist Michelle Rogers showing a world in change—an artist’s celebration of the anonymous heroes of Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. Two years after her poster project portraying stock traders in distress (article here) over the global economic meltdown they had created was placed outside the Stock Exchange on Wall Street, Rogers has returned to the theme of social unrest for her latest work.“We are living in exciting times with the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring. I want to convey in my artwork the energy, tension, hope and collective/personal courage that I find so captivating and humbling. We are witnessing an unstoppable, insuppressible desire for change in the world. Occupy is important because it underscores the deep injustices in our society and challenges everyone to envisage a new future. It is this revolutionary spirit and the unsung ordinary heroes that I want to pay homage to in my paintings about Occupy and the Arab Spring.”
Visionary Design and Non-Violent Civil Protest Organized by Nsumi Collective and School of the Future Presented by Trade School and the Museum of Art and Design, NYC http://madmuseum.org/ http://tradeschool.ourgoods.org/ The traditional techniques of non-violent civil protest have been practiced by people around th...e world in response to oppressive states, policies and proxies, going back as far as BCE 470–391 in China, when the Mohist philosophical school--who disapproved of war--cultivated the science of fortification. Today, the Occupy movement brings together multiple struggles and concerns under a common name, inciting new practices of collaboration and coordination. People are fighting against inequality, privatization, and exclusion and working to create alternatives to corporate control, the loss of public space, and the privilege of the one percent. With bold tactics and artistic innovations, Occupy has incited the global imagination. At the same time, and not surprisingly, it doesn't employ formal design processes. Also lacking are formal feedback systems, techniques of self-correction, and the formal rigor underpinning the best scientific and social research. Likewise, while the confluence of many different voices, subcultures and micro-communities collaborating together creates unique social opportunities and perceptions, a culture of “radical design innovation” has yet to surface. This workshop will examine these deficits as opportunities for growth. We will brainstorm new protest processes and systems, design tools, strategies, and techniques, based on feedback collected from Occupy meeting notes and from Occupiers and working groups from several cities. These challenges will be presented to workshop attendees, a group of self-selected designers, Occupiers, artists, scientists, engineers, activists, and researchers, who will collectively respond with new ideas and approaches.
Reading Group Session #5
Readings (both texts by David Graeber, and available for free download at Graeber’s Wikipedia page, HERE):
RSVP: ows-arts-and-culture-spaces@googlegroups.com
Sketch by Isaac Moylan
Occupiers, 99%-ers, Fellow Insurgents,
The rumors are true. Deep in the bowels of Brooklyn the plans were hatched, the forces gathered, the dream made real. The Illuminator has been given form and will ride out on its maiden voyage this Saturday night as part of Low Lives: Occupy! Its mission: To smash the myths of the information industry so that people might see for themselves what the 99% movement is fighting for. The Illuminator is a tactical media tool and spectacularization machine, a beautiful and useful instrument to be used to grow and strengthen the movement in New York City and around the country. We've got big plans. Go to the website, follow us on the social media outlet of your choice, and stay tuned.
To catch us on Livestream on Saturday night at 7:28, 8:26, or 9:24pm, check in on the Low Lives channel: http://www.occupywithart.com/llo-live-channel/
To catch us live, follow us on one of those aforementioned outlets.
See you in the Streets,
The Illuminator Team
The livestreaming channel is up, tested & ready for Low Lives: Occupy! - Saturday's [#m3] international performance art occu-x-travaganza at the Hemispheric Institute. We added a chat feature for viewers and participants to share comments, reactions and occu-interpretations in real time. The (approximate) order of appearance/sequence of performances is also posted on the LL:O Live Channel (and below). Click the link to check it out!
http://www.occupywithart.com/llo-live-channel/
LOW LIVES: OCCUPY! Performance Schedule*
*Please note that schedule times are not exact
Space Team & Hyperallergic present:
"Lapsed Logic"
Ingrid Burrington
Opening reception Saturday March 10, 6-9PM
@Hyperallergic
The Spatial Occupation @Hyperallergic is pleased to announce "Lapsed Logic," a solo exhibit by Ingrid Burrington of "works on paper made during uncertain times in preparation for disasters yet to come," opening Saturday, March 10 from 6-10PM.
Wall Street to Main Street [pre-publication draft]
By Paul McLean
"Americans don’t really think that other places are as real as America." [1]
"It is more and more difficult for us to imagine the real, History, the depth of time, or three-dimensional space, just as before it was difficult, from our real world perspective, to imagine a virtual universe or the fourth dimension [la quatrieme dimension]." [2]
Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
- Bruce Springsteen, "My Hometown"
1
In my hometown of Beckley, West Virginia’s downtown, “Main Street” is several streets coursing square-wise through Beckley’s nucleus. One of the streets is Main Street. Downtown for me was an afterschool and weekend destination, and I was willing to draw a few dollars from my dad’s wallet and dodge bands of hellions to get a burger at Fred Yost’s diner, comics and candy at the newsstand, or window-shop for guns and knives at the pawn shop. After I moved away Richard Haas was commissioned to do a trompe l'oeil painting on one side of the Federal building there. Like the Peck Slip one between Front and South streets here. I interviewed Richard once for an art radio program I hosted in Nashville. He talked about artists “looking at the same thing we’re all looking at, but looking at it so differently.”
I would suggest that American artists look at Main Street, the same way you look at a sunset.
Reading Group Session #4
Readings: Selections from Moby Dick [introduced by Chris Cobb]; + reading groupers are encouraged to bring 1-4 page printouts for the group to read, or to be read aloud, on the subject of food, plus other substantials/substances
ows-arts-and-culture-spaces@googlegroups.com
[NOTE: We've launched a section in our WS2MS Active Projects & Proposals area for 411 on the Catskill production, where you'll be able to find the latest updates and info on WS2MS art, artists, initiatives, events, activities, context, press and documentation. You can find out more about the WS2MS programming HERE.]
Updated on Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 04:10PM by
admin
(Concept sketch by Isaac Moylan)
[NOTE: Below is the BETA/Draft text for Mark Read's (99% Bat Signal) Illuminator project, which will debut at Low Lives: Occupy on March 3, 2012. The Illuminator promises to be one of the coolest things to emerge from OWS arts & culture, yet! Stay tuned for more exciting Illuminator updates from OwA. We will be creating a special section for Mark on our site soon.]
The Illuminator
Description and Mission Statement
By Mark Read
I am currently overseeing the design, fabrication, and deployment of The Illuminator, a mobile video projection system and library/info shop. Its primary function will be to serve as an outreach tool for Occupy Wall Street and the #occupy movement as a whole. I hope to shortly form an ad-hoc group comprised of representatives from various working groups that will ultimately decide how to use this powerful new tool. Working groups to be initially included on that Ad-Hoc committee will be Arts and Culture, Movement Building, Outreach, The People’s Library, Media, and PR. If other working groups feel they should be included they should let me know.
In design terms, The Illuminator is a modified Ford Econoline cargo van in which a video projector, soundsystem, and magazine racks have been installed. The projector and speakers rise out of the roof on a periscoping platform. The side doors of the van open up to create an infoshop alcove, with shelves or racks, mounted on the doors, and a bookshelf between the doors inside the van bolted to the van floor. The exterior of the van is un-modified so as to allow it to travel in “stealth mode.” When desired, large magnetic decals of the "99% bat signal" (white circle with 99% in the middle) are placed on the exterior of the van to announce its presence, and a banner can be attached to the outside. The Illuminator is, in essence, a shapeshifter and a transformer of public space. When it parks it becomes (1) a cinema, and (2) a library/infoshop.
Illuminator Cinema: The hatch opens, and a platform with a projector and speakers is raised. Instantly, a cinema setting is created.