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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 .

Entries by admin (551)

Sunday
May062012

OCCUPY THE LANDSCAPE

[CLICK IMAGE ABOVE FOR MORE INFO ON OCCUPY THE LANDSCAPE]

"People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take. - Emma Goldman

Twenty-One Days until OCCUPY THE LANDSCAPE

EVERY STEP WE TAKE TOGETHER COUNTS!

Register Today! [CLICK IMAGE BELOW]

"It takes some strength of soul—and not just individual strength, but collective understanding—to resist this void, this non-being, into which you are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard" - Adrienne Rich

Sunday
May062012

SoO: Intermezzo

OY!

_

BE

... _

Do Not OBEY!

_

Do FREE ART

OCCUPY

[NO]Ø

[BE]01

Friday
May042012

@CUE Art Foundation: Occupy Wall Street with Chris Cobb

 

Occupy Wall Street with Chris Cobb

April 28 - May 5

SHOULD THE ARTS LEAD, FOLLOW, OR GET OUT OF THE WAY?

A week of talks exploring leadership in the arts. Organized by Chris Cobb.

 

Click to read more ...

Thursday
May032012

What Is the "Soul of Occupy?" [Draft/BETA][Pt.3-1, Intermezzo]

By Paul McLean

[Video by Liza Bear]

[Narrative]:

New York City, May 1 2012-- Occupy Guitarmy musicians, led by Tom Morello, play Willie Nile's "One Guitar" before marchikng down Fifth Avenue to Union Square as part of May Day 2012. Filmed by Liza Béar, Squaring Off, Mobile Broadcast News. @owsmusicgroup@nothingofficial

[Morello/Guitarmy photo by Theodore Hamm]

3


I think a lot of the people involved in the globalization movement, myself included, felt this was a continuation of our efforts, because we never really felt the globalization movement had come to an end. We’d smash our heads against the wall every year, saying “Oh yes, this time we’re really back. Oh wait, maybe not.” A lot of us gradually began to lose hope that it was really going to bounce back in the way we always thought we knew it would. And then it happened, as a combination of tactics of trying to create prefigurative models of what a democratic society would be like, as a way of organizing protest or actions that were directed against an obviously undemocratic structure of governance. - "The movement as an end-in-itself?" An interview with David Graeber by Ross Wolfe http://platypus1917.org/2012/01/31/interview-with-david-graeber/

Planning for May 1 in New York began in January in a fourth-floor workspace at 16 Beaver St., about two blocks from Wall Street, [Marisa] Holmes said. The date serves as an international labor day, commemorating a deadly 1886 clash between police and workers in Chicago's Haymarket Square.
- "Banks cooperate to track Occupy protesters" by Max Abelson for Bloomberg [posted at SF Gate, and elsewhere] - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/26/BUTK1O9L88.DTL

The worsening of the artificial and coercive debt problem was used as a weapon to attack an entire society. It is proper that we speak here of terms related to the military: we are indeed dealing with a war conducted by means of finance, politics and law, a class war against society as a whole. And the spoils that the financial class wrestles away from the "enemy", are the social benefits and democratic rights, but ultimately it is the very possibility of a human life that is taken. The lives of those who do or do not consume enough in terms of profit maximization strategies, should be no longer be preserved. - Alain Badiou, Jean-Christophe Bailly, Étienne Balibar, Claire Denis, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Ranciere, Avital Ronell. Save the Greeks from their Saviors! February 22, 2012. Translation into English by Drew S. Burk and Anastazia Golemi. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/alain-badiou/articles/save-the-greeks-from-their-saviors/

If so, for the art world to recognize itself as a form of politics is also to recognize itself as something both magical, and a confidence game—a kind of scam. - "The Sadness of Post-Workerism..." by David Graeber


Ethnic Groups of Madagascar



David Graeber in his essay on Post-Workerism develops an argument about art in the section titled "the art world as a form of politics" that every artist associating herself with OWS should read, since Graeber is a self-described "author" and creator of central facets of it, or even the movement itself, if I understood him correctly at a talk I attended at NYU's Hemispheric Institute recently. Graeber's view of art is grim verging on toxic, but also thin as black ice in Madagascar, the island that he made his anthropological bones on, so to speak, and which is always going to be mentioned whenever Graeber talks or writes, it seems.

Madagascar.

Click to read more ...

Wednesday
May022012

ALAN MOORE with Kathy Battista

Art Gangs: Protest & Counterculture in New York City


[NOTE: The interview with Alan Moore was originally published in The Brooklyn Rail (click link below), on the occasion of the publication of his new book (click image above)]

[LINK]

[EXCERPT]:

I thought that creative people in the U.S., especially academics, became excessively timid under eight years of Bush. They could no longer insist on anything. What I always tried to say to folks was “get crusty.” Insist on what you want, because what creative people want is what other folks need. In that sense, I believe in the vanguard idea. Now, with the Occupy movement, people are again in motion toward their dreams. That is so encouraging! So now I think I have less to say to Americans and more to listen to.



Tuesday
May012012

WS2MS Wins AMO Grant Award!

OCCUPY WITH ART is pleased to announce that our project with Greene Arts, "Wall Street to Main Street" is one of the first Art Is My Occupation support grant recipients! Thanks to AMO (Gan, et al.) for your recognition and material assistance, and congratulations to all the other recipients!

Click HERE to see all the winners!

ArtIsMyOccupation

 

Tuesday
May012012

Free Download! OCCUPY Poster

Click the image to download John Malloy's beautiful [& free] Occupy poster

Monday
Apr302012

arOCCUPY May Day

arOCCUPY May Day

Augmented Reality Occupation of Earth May Day 2012!!

The global community is invited to view the augmented reality [AR] occupation of the earth this May 1st.

OCCUPY this upcoming MAY DAY with Augmented Reality! [and plz be active in the real world May Day as well]

Click to read more ...

Friday
Apr272012

What Is the "Soul of Occupy?" [Draft/BETA][Pt.2]

By Paul McLean

2

MEPHISTOPHOLES: Now we are already again at the end of our wits, where the understanding of you men runs wild. Why didst thou enter into fellowship with us, if thou canst not carry it out? Wilt fly, and art not secure against dizziness? Did we thrust ourselves upon thee. or thou thyself upon us?

FAUST: Gnash not thus thy devouring teeth at me! It fills me with horrible disgust. Mighty, glorious Spirit, who hast vouchsafed to me Thine apparition, who knowest my heart and soul, why fetter me to the felon-comrade, who feeds on mischief and gluts himself with ruin? - FAUST, A Tragedy, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


The protesters should beware not only of enemies, but also of false friends who pretend to support them, but are already working hard to dilute the protest. - "Occupy Wall Street: What Is To Be Done... Next?" by Slavoj Žižek 



Žižek, "The Elvis of Cultural Theory," has again weighed in on Occupy, now, and Adbusters celebrates, perceiving the text as a ratification of its alarms. May Day protests are fast approaching, and the mustering of forces against Occupy's foes is in full bloom. I'm really looking forward to the Guitarmy, myself. Who knows what will happen? The organizational problem seems to be defining who are the opposition, and the overarching question is who will answer the call for a general strike. The whole set-up smacks of Faust. The flaws in the stances of both Adbusters and Žižek typify the old Left that both the magazine and the colorful thinker fear.

Click to read more ...

Friday
Apr272012

WS2MS: April 28-9

This project would not be possible without the support of the Catskill Arts Initiative.  Thank you to the participating artists for their powerful work. Thank you to Catskill's generous building owners, merchants, the Village of Catskill, artists and neighbors. Immense thanks to the Hudson Valley's best digital printers; Frank Cuthbert, BRIK Gallery; Richard Edelman for Woodstock Graphics Studio; Chad Kleitsch Rhinecliff Printing Studio; Danette Koke Fine Art; Gilbert Plantinga Photo Graphics.  Thanks to the hardworking Jane Toby, Jenjoy Roybal, Ruth Leonard, Kico Govantes, Taha Awadallah, Adam Price, Sarah Barker and Paul Smart. Endless gratitude to interns, Chris Lannes, Sarah Brady and Kathleen Mentzer. The "It Takes a Village" prize goes to Pat Ruck, Laura Morgan, Nina Sklansky, Norma Tan, Ann Forbes Cooper and David Chmura.  We are grateful for grants from Art Is My Occupation and the Puffin Foundation. 

  

Extra special super duper thanks to the Wall Street to Main Street curators Geno Rodriguez, Paul McLean, Fawn Potash, Kate Menconeri, Jacqueline Weaver, Imani Brown, Boo Lynn Walsh, Sam Truitt and Arthur Polendo. 

   

 

           

Click here for a preview of next week's events... 
 

Curators are available for group tours and special appointments.  Call Fawn Potash, Director, Masters on Main Street to reserve at 518/943-3400.

 

Download your Catskill Main Street Tour here or pick one up at the GCCA Catskill Gallery, 398 Main Street.

 

Check out the Wall Street to Main Street Message, a news guide to exhibits and events.

 

Check out our photo album.



Wednesday
Apr252012

What Is the "Soul of Occupy?" [Draft/BETA][Pt.1]

[Photos of Magic Mountain & Novad actions courtesy Jez Bold]

What Is the "Soul of Occupy?" [Draft/BETA]
By Paul McLean


Now, I have said that the community by means of organisation of machinery will supply the useful things, and that the beautiful things will be made by the individual.  This is not merely necessary, but it is the only possible way by which we can get either the one or the other.  An individual who has to make things for the use of others, and with reference to their wants and their wishes, does not work with interest, and consequently cannot put into his work what is best in him.  Upon the other hand, whenever a community or a powerful section of a community, or a government of any kind, attempts to dictate to the artist what he is to do, Art either entirely vanishes, or becomes stereotyped, or degenerates into a low and ignoble form of craft.  A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.  Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is.  It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want.  Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman.  He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.  Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known.  I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known.  Crime, which, under certain conditions, may seem to have created Individualism, must take cognisance of other people and interfere with them.  It belongs to the sphere of action.  But alone, without any reference to his neighbours, without any interference, the artist can fashion a beautiful thing; and if he does not do it solely for his own pleasure, he is not an artist at all. - Oscar Wilde, "The Soul of Man"

As a matter of fact, setting aside strictly academic art, artists never fall entirely prey to aesthetic co-optation. Though they may abdicate their immediate experience for the sake of beautiful appearances, all artists (and anyone who tries to live is an artist) are driven by the desire to increase their tribute of dreams to the objective world of others. In this sense they entrust the thing they create with the mission of completing their personal fulfilment within their social group. And in this sense creativity is revolutionary in its essence. - from "The Revolution Of Everyday Life" by Raoul Vaneigem (a new translation from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith, The Brooklyn Rail, March 2012

It is the "fact" of the physicality of artworks, their necessary existence as objects with their apparent constancy, that in fact highlights the "inconstant," volatile, and transformative event at the core of art. - Krzysztof Ziarek, The Force of Art



1

What is the Soul of Occupy?



Adbusters, the Canadian anti-Capitalist magazine that by accounts issued the call for action which sparked the Occupy Wall Street movement in September of 2011, on April 12th 2012 [1] released another provocative proclamation on its blog,* titled "Battle for the Soul of Occupy." The text was illustrated with a black, red and white banner graphic depicting the ubiquitous Occupy clenched fist and the text "#DEFENDOCCUPY." The call-to-arms was issued by Culture Jammers HQ and encouraged Occupiers to "Jump, jump, jump over the dead body of the old left!" and warned of co-optation of the movement by MoveOn, The Nation magazine and ice cream producers Ben & Jerry, whose influence threatened, in Adbuster's estimate, to "turn our struggle into a '99% Spring' reelection campaign for President Obama."

I don't know about you, reader, but Adbusters' situating Ben & Jerry in a "cabal of old world thinkers who have blunted the possibility of revolution for decades" seems to me a stretch, and certainly doesn't incite any Robespierresque post-Occupy-revolutionary fervor. I sat next to Ben of Ben & Jerry at an organizational meeting for Mark Read's Illuminator, which B & J's ice cream fortune helped bankroll, and Ben Cohen in my view is not a blunter of revolution. He's a food businessman made good, retired, with cash in the bank, who's making an effort to support Occupy strategically, not steal its "Soul." If anything, the conundrum posed to such individuals who are sympathetic to the movement by the movement's schizophrenic response to efforts by "outsiders" to align with OWS is worth examining. [2, 3]

Click to read more ...

Monday
Apr232012

WS2MS: Upriser Calisthenics

Bread & Puppet theater performs "Upriser Callisthenics" in Catskill, NY.

Monday
Apr232012

All in for the 99%

[Project Link]

[Coverage at the Huffington Post and Wall Street Journal]

[From the video description]:

Hundreds of Angelenos unite to oppose "Citizens United vs FEC" - the 2010 Supreme Court decision that allowed corporations to make unlimited/undisclosed political contributions. Join our call for real campaign finance reform. Please share this video and Like "Stop Citizens United" on fb to help spread the word: http://facebook.com/StopCitizensUnited

Big thanks to Marisa Tomei and the hundreds of participants who came out on a Saturday morning (and stayed out in the rain for hours) to help make this video!


Produced by Interconnected
http://interconnected.is
http://facebook.com/interconnected.is
http://twitter.com/interconnectd
http://twitter.com/nirvan (director)

In collaboration with Air Evidence, GOOD, and Spectral Q
http://facebook.com/airevidence (octocopter wizards)
http://GOOD.is
http://SpectralQ.com (John Quigley - Aerial Artist)

Music: "Kopeika" from "The Agency of Missing Hearts" by et_
CC/NC/SA

SteadyCam: http://twitter.com/AmzaMoglan

99% Jelly Bean art by Mark Blackwell

Made at http://allinforthe99percent.org

http://StopCitizensUnited.org

Saturday
Apr212012

Occupy Forever

[Photo by Paul McLean]

Alicia McCarthy's painting (made in the 90s) on view at the newly renovated & re-opened Sugar in Bushwick/Brooklyn/NYC. As Richard Timperio said, "Occupy Forever!"

Worthy of note: Occupy with Art just passed the 100,000 mark in page views by 30,000 unique visitors, since September 2011.

Saturday
Apr212012

WS2MS: The People's Collection

Thursday
Apr192012

WS2MS: Stage 2 [Press Release]

PRESS RELEASE

For Release in All Media

April 18, 2012

WALL STREET TO MAIN STREET
STAGE 2


Catskill, New York – The second stage of the landmark exhibition cycle Wall Street to Main Street [WS2MS] commences in April and continues through the end of May 2012. WS2MS will offer a variety of creative, fun and educational opportunities for the communities of OWS and the Hudson River region to explore, evaluate and imagine 99% alternatives to the status quo.

Installations along Catskill’s Main Street have sparked sometimes-intense responses from the town’s citizens, since the festival opened here on March 17. The programming of WS2MS demonstrates the organizers’ and artists’ sustained commitment to establishing common ground for lively and spirited exchange. Our goal is to encourage democratic art and free speech. To that end we are trying to be responsive and responsible to our generous hosts, the people of Catskill.

The art in Wall Street to Main Street communicates the amazing breadth of emotion, vision, and drama that is Occupy, which Naomi Klein characterized as “the most important thing in the world now.” Art and artists have been central to OWS since the occupation of Liberty Plaza in the financial district of Manhattan on September 17, 2011. WS2MS offers viewers a window into the ideas, dreams and inspirations arising from the movement that has spread across the globe.

In Stage 2 of WS2MS, we will engage in skill-sharing workshops, demonstrations, performances, discussions, panels, tours and more.  Almost all the WS2MS Stage 2 events are being offered for free. As the program evolves through April and May, WS2MS, like OWS, will continually evolve and re-shape. That means more art exhibits, concerts and events will be launched over the remaining weeks in our schedule. See the WS2MS sampler listings below for details, or visit www.greenearts.org/ws2ms for the complete, up-to-date calendar.

  • WS2MS is proud to present the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s presentations “Practice Where You Occupy” with the Mobile Design Lab team discussing their water, food and energy solutions for Zucotti Park from 11am-1pm and “Solution Sets for Main Street” from 2-4PM (April 21, 408 Main Street).
  • The following Saturday, April 28, will feature “Change Is in the Air,” a seminar with Glenn Leisching based on our relationship with nature and familial ancestral heritage.
  • If you’re interested in making art, sign up for Emily Bruenig’s free screen printing and bookmaking workshop (462 Main Street on April 29 from 1-3PM).
  • If you’re just out for a walk and a great overview of WS2MS, join New York based artist and educator Ellen Levy and Occupy with Art organizer Paul McLean for a walking salon tour of the gallery and window spaces of WS2MS. The tour meets at the arts council, 398 Main Street, on Sunday May 6 at 11AM.
  • Green workshops include Franc Palaia’s Eco-Bulb demo/class, a 100% solar option for sheds and other buildings (May 12 from 1-3PM, 408 Main Street).
  • Canadian artist Joel Richardson will offer a two-day stencil painting workshop to help you create your own designs and a custom Suitman illustrating Catskill’s economic history (May 12 and 13, 10AM-2 PM, 473 Main Street - $50, with advance registration). 
  • For the literary crowd, on May 12 the poet Sparrow will host “Speaking to the Gods,” a reading and conversation about our relationship to the great poets at Occupy Books, 450 Main Street from 4-6PM. He will also host “Silence Poetry”  from 2-4PM.
  • “Awaken the Dreamer/Changing the Dream” on May 13 (10 AM-3 PM, 344 Main Street) will present a vision for an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just human presence on earth.
  • Poet, author and educator Sam Truitt will lead a day of panel discussions and workshops at Occupy Books on Saturday May 19 from 11 AM-4PM and with a reception from 5-7pm (details TBA on the GCAC website and here, closer to the launch date). 
  • Community artist extraordinaire Matt Bua will teach a sustainable living/drawing workshop, envisioning life off-the-grid (May 26 from 4-6pm).

For more info, contact:

  • Fawn Potash: fawn@greenearts.org
  • Paul McLean: artforhumans@gmail.com


View Larger Map

Wednesday
Apr182012

Visionary Design & Nonviolent Civil Protest #2: Outreach

Dear friends,
Following up on the first iteration of Visionary Design and Non-Violent
Civil Protest at the MAD Museum last month, we are continuing the series,
this time focusing on the theme of "Outreach".

This topic is based on the notes and ideas generated at the last meeting.

Following this, we will launch a wiki where these insights can be further
developed. The full schedule is below. You may join us for the full event
from 3 to 7pm or just for the think tanking segment from 4-6pm. There will
be readings and materials available for inspection prior to the formal
think tank. In addition to the barter items listed on the trade school
website, feel free to bring some flowers in honor of it being earth day on
Sunday.

We look forward to seeing you on Sunday.
School of the Future & Nsumi Collective

Sunday, April 22nd, 2012
139 Norfolk Street, NYC
Between Rivington & Stanton


Hosted by Trade School

3pm: doors open, informal reception, readings available
4pm: Formal think tank process
6pm: Post event reception, informal discussions

To register:
http://tradeschool.coop/newyork/class/#263

Wednesday
Apr182012

Thought for the Day [a18]

Photo enhancement by Paul McLean

From "The Soul of Man" by Oscar Wilde:

We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity.  Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful.  They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious.  They are quite right to be so.  Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives.  Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table?  They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it.  As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute.  Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue.  It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.  Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty.  But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting.  It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.  For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral.  Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal.  He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing.  As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg.  No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him.  He is at any rate a healthy protest.  As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.  They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage.  They must also be extraordinarily stupid.  I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life.  But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.

However, the explanation is not really difficult to find.  It is simply this.  Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise such a paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering.  They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them.  What is said by great employers of labour against agitators is unquestionably true.  Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community, and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them.  That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary.  Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation.  Slavery was put down in America, not in consequence of any action on the part of the slaves, or even any express desire on their part that they should be free.  It was put down entirely through the grossly illegal conduct of certain agitators in Boston and elsewhere, who were not slaves themselves, nor owners of slaves, nor had anything to do with the question really.  It was, undoubtedly, the Abolitionists who set the torch alight, who began the whole thing.  And it is curious to note that from the slaves themselves they received, not merely very little assistance, but hardly any sympathy even; and when at the close of the war the slaves found themselves free, found themselves indeed so absolutely free that they were free to starve, many of them bitterly regretted the new state of things.  To the thinker, the most tragic fact in the whole of the French Revolution is not that Marie Antoinette was killed for being a queen, but that the starved peasant of the Vendée voluntarily went out to die for the hideous cause of feudalism.

Tuesday
Apr172012

Murphy’s Dissent



[Originally published in The Brooklyn Rail, 3.2012]

 
Jason Flores-Williams reads from “Battle of the Open Heart” (Rail, Nov. 2011) at Liberty Square on March 16, 2012. Photo by Zack Garlitos.

[LINK]

[EXCERPT]:

The real crackdown, of course, was at Liberty Square late that Saturday night [3/17/2012]. On dubious grounds, the N.Y.P.D. closed the plaza that is supposed to remain open 24 hours. There were 73 arrests, with some folks treated roughly. The next morning at a Left Forum panel, two students from a New England college told me how they had been detained by cops away from the plaza, and during the course of their grilling, they were asked, “Why do you want to jeopardize your education by coming down here?”

Such is the climate of intimidation towards OWS currently being created by the N.Y.P.D. Consider the threat issued to protesters by the person who is ultimately most accountable for police behavior: “You want to get arrested? We’ll accommodate you,” Mayor Bloomberg vowed, two days after the St. Patrick’s night crackdown. In the end, the mayor’s romance with the First Amendment has proved to be rather ephemeral.

As a wide range of police practices came under fire, during the previous week the mayor seemed most concerned about the folks at Goldman Sachs, whose feelings were hurt by an op-ed written by a turncoat. Meanwhile, at a City Council hearing, Ray Kelly angrily defended his department’s stop-and-frisk policy, which in 2011 saw 684,000 encounters (overwhelmingly with young black and Latino men) yield 8,000 guns, a staggering rate of inefficiency that would be accepted nowhere else in the numbers-obsessed Bloomberg administration.

Tuesday
Apr172012

OWS Painting by Andres Garcia-Pena

To see more of this artist's work, click HERE.

 

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