Occupy Museums & Occupy 477 Stand against Foreclosures - Dec 6, 2011

477 W. 142nd Street is a landmark building on Alexander Hamilton's former estate. The building has served for decades as a residence for low-income families and been a key site of the black community in New York City. The house is currently facing foreclosure by Madison Park Investors LLC and E.R. Holding. Brutal tactics have been used to try and force residents out, including the sabotage of the building's boiler as the winter months approach.

December 6th marks the international day of action for Occupy Wall Street against the foreclosures led by the 1%. On this historic day Occupy 477 and Occupy Museums join forces to stand against gentrification and stand up for the right to housing for all!

It just so happens that The Museum of Finance on Wall Street is housed in the former headquarters of the Bank of New York, founded by Alexander Hamilton—America's first Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton created the country's financial system. On December 6th, we will march a replica of 477 W. 142nd Street to the Museum of American Finance, and offer it as an exhibit of the damaging effects of Wall Street’s financial system on American’s everyday lives.

December 6th,

12:00 PM ----Meet at 477 West 142nd st. HDFC
3:00 PM----Arrive at Museum of American Finance, 48 Wall Street, New York

Occupy Museums protests the anti-democratic policies of Lincoln Center and Bloomberg at Satyagraha

Occupy Museums to protest the anti-democratic policies of Lincoln Center and Bloomberg on the last performance of Satyagraha Thursday December 1, 2011 at 10:30PM.

It is no doubt timely that Philip Glass' opera 'Satyagraha'--which depicts Gandhi's early struggle against colonial oppression in South Africa--should be revived by the Metropolitan Opera in 2011, a year which has seen popular revolutions in North Africa, mass uprisings in Europe, and the emergence of Occupy Wall Street protests in the United States.

Yet we see a glaring contradiction in ‘Satyagraha’ being performed at the Lincoln Center where in recent weeks protestors from Occupy Wall Street have been arrested and forcibly removed for exercising their First Amendment rights to peaceful public assembly.

It’s also a striking irony that Bloomberg L.P is one of the Lincoln Center’s leading corporate sponsors. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has stifled free speech, free press, and freedom of assembly in an aggressive campaign against Occupy Wall Street protestors in New York City that has influenced a crackdown on the protests nationally. The juxtaposition is stark: while Bloomberg funds the representation of Gandhi's pioneering tactics of nonviolent civil disobedience in the Metropolitan Opera House, he simultaneously orders a paramilitary-style raid of the peaceful public occupation of Liberty Park, blacking out the media, while protestors are beaten, tear-gassed, and violently arrested.

Satyagraha is a Sanskrit word meaning "truth-force," and we at Occupy Wall Street, by exercising tactics of nonviolent direct action inspired by those championed by Gandhi, have insisted that the truth be told:

Our commons have been stolen from us to profit the wealthiest 1%. We have lost homes, jobs, affordable education, natural resources, and access to public space. Our culture has been co-opted by a corporate elite. Many suffer so a few may thrive.

Previously, Occupy Museums and other OWS groups came to Lincoln Center to protest the "generous philanthropy" of David H. Koch, the funder of the Tea Party and of anti-global warming research, who uses philanthropic contributions to the former New York State Theater to whitewash his misanthropic reputation and write off his taxes. We will return again to Lincoln Center, where 'Satyagraha' has inspired us to once again challenge the ruthless nexus of power and wealth and reclaim our public space and common dignity.

We would like to announce two actions:

✔A General Assembly at 10:30 PM at Lincoln Center. Join us in an open conversation about the effects of increased privatization and corporatization of all aspects of society, and the use of nonviolent civil disobedience around the world to reclaim the commons.

* Composer Philip Glass will join the general assembly and mic-check a statement.

✔If permission is not granted to protest on Lincoln Center plaza by Thursday evening, some members of Occupy Wall Street will enact a hunger strike. They will not end this strike until their demands are met, starting with the demand that Lincoln Center and the City of New York guarantee the freedoms of speech and assembly on the city-owned plazas and walkways of Lincoln Center.   Occupy Museums stand in solidarity with these hunger strikers and offer support for this courageous form of protest.

The symbolic opening of this space for protest stands for the spaces all over the city and country that we vow to liberate from the control of the 1% for the full use of the public.

Nov 20: Yes Men Lab drum circle at Bloomberg's personal townhouse: 17 East 79th Street.

Massive 24-hour DRUM CIRCLE and JAM SESSION party starting tomorrow, Sunday at 2pm, outside Mayor Bloomberg's personal townhouse: 17 East 79th Street.

Tie-dye, didgeridoo, hackeysack welcome! No shirt, no shoes, no problem! And if you don't have talent, don't worry: FREE DRUM LESSONS offered! Also on offer: collaborative drumming with the police!

Even though this is a 24-hour drum circle, don't be late! The mayor loves evictions. Who knows what'll happen? In any case, there'll be an afterparty in world-famous Central Park right afterwards.

www.yeslab.org/drumcircle

October 30, 2011 - "About Falling" at Liberty Plaza

Artist Ehud Darash presented his planned intervention at 16 Beaver last night.

Please join him in making this action happen:

What: About Falling in OWS

Where: The red cube, across from Zuccotti park

When: Sunday, October 30th, 12PM.

Description: We are going to fall, very slowly - from standing to laying down, in the vicinity of Zuccotti Park. It is an artistic action that is adressed *to* OWS, celebrating the diversity of this movement by introducing to it a temporary "otherness" - a different way of being.

We will meet at the red cube for a short teach-in and an explanation of the background of this gesture and practice.

The following is an example of previous renditions of the action:

Re-functioning the Semi-Public in Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin

A group of artists, curators and art critics are planning an action at the Berlin Deutsche Guggenheim on the 7th of November at 3pm. 

Re-functioning the Semi-Public in participation with the Deutsche Guggenheim: 

Deutsche Guggenheim as Questions Platform 

The Deutsche Guggenheim has people who walk around with little signs that read, "Ask me a question" or "Frag mich." So, that's exactly what we will do. We plan to enter the Museum incognito and at a specific moment take out signs from bags or from under our clothes and silently hold them up. Each sign will ask a question related to contemporary art world and the inequalities thereof, one side in German, the other in English.

We found this to be the most appropriate form of protest as it is both physically non-violent and ideological non-violent, simply posing questions in an institute that claims to be for the public benefit and has hired people walking around asking for questions. 

The Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin is a small room on the ground floor of the skyscraper of the bank, above 100 art works are found on display. Overall, the museum functions as a lobby of the bank exhibiting its most creative form of fund-diversification. I have one friend who work at the DeutscheGuggenheim. No one is being "assaulted." This has been a major concern of ours from the beginning- not to accuse anyone of anything, even though there is a lot of accountability at hand. The point is trying to subvert the very mechanisms of the museum, and by doing so critically calling into question the museum's and the Deutsche Bank's role in the great inequality of workers in the arts, how the vast majority make barely a living wage while a tiny fraction make sickening amounts of money. Or should we simply accept that 99% of artists are mediocre, perhaps they are, but should this boundary one must cross from being a bad artist to being a "good"(commercial successful) artist be so extreme? 

 

Perhaps a concern is that we will not actually be open for dialogue/ asking extremely passive aggressive questions that deny a possible answer, or attempt at/ a beginning of answering. This is not our intention and we believe this relatively minor action could ultimately be of some benefit for the museum. 

Below is a link to a model of successful "questioning" that is not accusatory, even when dealing with people who normally would be on the other side of the fence, and that ultimately makes people, simply put, think. That doesn't force them to identify with a certain group and that does not put them on the defensive. This too is our goal. Otherwise, we can only expect the expected. 

Occupy Museums: Speaking out in front of the Canons

The game is up: we see through the pyramid schemes of the temples of cultural elitism controlled by the 1%. No longer will we, the artists of the 99%, allow ourselves to be tricked into accepting a corrupt hierarchical system based on false scarcity and propaganda concerning absurd elevation of one individual genius over another human being for the monetary gain of the elitest of elite. For the past decade and more, artists and art lovers have been the victims of the intense commercialization and co-optation or art. We recognize that art is for everyone, across all classes and cultures and communities. We believe that the Occupy Wall Street Movement will awaken a consciousness that art can bring people together rather than divide them apart as the art world does in our current time…

Let’s be clear. Recently, we have witnessed the absolute equation of art with capital. The members of museum boards mount shows by living or dead artists whom they collect like bundles of packaged debt. Shows mounted by museums are meant to inflate these markets. They are playing with the fire of the art historical cannon while seeing only dancing dollar signs. The wide acceptance of cultural authority of leading museums have made these beloved institutions into corrupt ratings agencies or investment banking houses- stamping their authority and approval on flimsy corporate art and fraudulent deals.

For the last few decades, voices of dissent have been silenced by a fearful survivalist atmosphere and the hush hush of BIG money. To really critique institutions, to raise one’s voice about the disgusting excessive parties and spectacularly out of touch auctions of the art world while the rest of the country suffers and tightens its belt was widely considered to be bitter, angry, uncool. Such a critic was a sore loser.

It is time to end that silence not in bitterness, but in strength and love! Because the occupation has already begun and the creativity and power of the people has awoken! The Occupywallstreet Movement will bring forth an era of new art, true experimentation outside the narrow parameters set by the market. Museums, open your mind and your heart! Art is for everyone! The people are at your door!

Intervention at #OccupyOakland

Liesa Lietzke performed an intervention during #OccupyOakland:

"I started this work by pondering how to fit sculpture to the topography of Frank Ogawa Plaza, the city center of Oakland. My purpose, as always, was an aesthetic intervention that introduced playful absurdity into the everyday setting. When I heard that #OccupyOakland was going to happen in the plaza, I thought how much more fun it would be to install the work as a launch for the Oakland Occupennial (The first occupennial was organized by #OccupyWallStreet--the word references biennial art fairs). Being a lone rogue artist is, after all, a tired trope.

I installed the work before the first event on 10/10 and watched as people gathered over the course of the afternoon to fill the plaza, the space itself renamed by a large banner reading "Welcome to Oscar Grant Plaza--on Ohlone land."

The work was completed by people's participation. Some examined and squeezed the sculptures. One piece was labeled with a sign reading "Octopi Oakland." Looking at the same multi-legged piece, another occupier commented, "I don't get it. Is it making the point that suits are dicks?""