FREE U LOG

Over two weekends at the People’s House a seminar on militancy will take place. The seminar is an reaction to the events in Copenhagen over the last year with a series of violent confrontations between protesters and the police. The group of organisers felt that the activist scene needed an occation to reflect on the current events and an opportunity to write the history ourselves. The seminar has got the title We are all Militants and the intention was to redefine the notion of militancy as a much broughter frontline including more aspects of our daily struggle than the acute situations with the direct confrontation in the streets.

Wiki: http://vierallemilitante.wikispaces.com/

Watch G13 Real TIme - 2 hours 10 takes tonight on tv-tv. G13 Real TIme is the experience on street level of a protester under heavy influence of tear gas. Watch the protesters climb the urban landscape of Copenhagen in the this massive disorbience action with more than 6000 people trying to squat an old water works intended for a new Youth House.

Today the G13 action will take place in Copenhagen. G13 is an abbreviation of the address of the future Youth House. Since the politicians can’t get their heads around a political solution we will take the house ourselves. The house, situationed at Grøndalsvænges Allé 13 at Outer Nørrebro, will be squated today by means of a mass action. This intended squating action has been openly declared for months and the sheer amount of protesters will make it imposible for the police to stop. More info on http://aktiong13.dk

Control Magazine is pleased to announce the launch of a new edition of Control Magazine to be held at Vilma Gold, 6 Minerva Street, London E2 9EH on Sunday, 2nd September from 3 - 5pm

Control Magazine has always been a forum for artists to discuss their practice as a catalyst for the progression of ideas and in his editorial for Issue Seventeen, Control Magazine’s editor Stephen Willats explains the rationale behind the new issue, by asking a diverse group of artists to explain an aspect of their practice that looks at its social function, meaning and its expression of counter consciousness to the mainstream determinism of the contemporary culture of society’s institutions.

Previously, Control Magazine presented a two-day seminar, Art Intervention, at Vilma Gold bringing together a group of artists to look at the future of art practice and the development of approaches to meaningful ways of operating that related the artist to the social setting. This seminar was also seen as forming the basis of Control Magazine Issue Seventeen.

Building on the Magazine’s purpose to provide an ongoing means of exchange of ideas among artists, there will be a short discussion by some of the artists that have contributed to Issue Seventeen starting at 3pm.

Tea will be served after the discussion, and, for those attending, the new issue will be available for purchase at a special discounted price.

Control Magazine Issue Seventeen – contributors:

Chris Hammonds | Nils Norman | Johnny Spencer | Langlands & Bell | Elly Clarke | FrenchMottershead | Emma Hedditch | Fritz Haeg | Dan Kidner | Miriam Steinhauser | Jakob Jakobsen | Stephen Willats

Expect Anything Fear Nothing - Seminar Online

At the beginning of March 2007 a seminar on the Situationist Movement in Scandinavia took place in Copenhagen. At this event artists, activists and academics met and discussed the Scandinavian branch of the Situationist movement and its ambition to renew society through art.

Today at the 50 years anniversary of the founding of the Situationist International (July 28 2007) we launch a website with all the presentations of the seminar as video streams. Watch the presentations by Jacqueline de Jong (NL), Karen Kurczynski (US), Stewart Home (UK), Thomas McDonough (US), Peter Laugesen (DK), Hardy Strid (SE), Lars Morell (DK), Mikkel Bolt (DK), Jakob Jakobsen (DK), Gordon Fazakerley (UK/DK), Fabian Tompsett (UK), Zwi Negator (DE) and Carl Nørrested (DK).

Go to http://destroysi.dk

Learning behaviour, learnt action, unlearning knowledge: a weekend of thinking and acting

Saturday 23 - Sunday 24 June, 1 pm - 6 pm, Serpentine Gallery, London

Studio Voltaire has been collaborating with artist and writer Emma Hedditch, who maintains the women’s film and video distributor, Cinenova. Discussions have followed a shared interest in self-organising and organisational politics, feminist and queer politics, representation/visibility and the artist’s position in society. The weekend will include screenings and discussions with guest speakers, whilst considering the Local Operations proposition as an autonomous space, asking: can we or do we want to act autonomously? Cinenova is a non-profit organisation dedicated to distributing films and videos made by women. >>>

This is part of Local Operations (23 May - 1 July 2007) is a free series of self-organised events, talks, screenings and workshops by writers, curators, theorists, independent groups, not-for-profit spaces and students at The Sackler Centre of Arts Education at the Serpentine Gallery. All discussions will be available as free podcasts from www.serpentinegallery.org after the events.

No reservations, first-come, first-served AT: Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, London W2 3XA T 020 7402 6075 Nearest Undergrounds: Knightsbridge, Lancaster Gate and South Kensington, Buses: 9, 10, 52, 94, 148

PROGRAMME:

Saturday 23rd June

1-1.30pm Meeting and reading together.

1.30pm Exploration and Unlearning

Henriette Heise and Jakob Jakobsen, Copenhagen Free University. Exploration and Unlearning is the title of a series of videos we have produced together with our daughter Solvej between 2004 and 2006. The first video was produced when she was just turning five years old and the last one when she was six. The series was produced for television and the reflection in the videos upon this mode of distribution developed and changed from production to production, for Solvej as well as for us. The technologies of representation, from the camera to the screen, were continually an object of contestation during the production of the videos. Sometimes it was the object of play and happy transgression, at other times an object of dispute and outright war. With one camera we had only one ‘eye’ to share between us, and what kind of ‘eye’ was going to become ‘the camera eye’?

In the Exploration and Unlearning Series we are moving through a series of themes around these conflicts between play and social meaning. Hamburg Town, which was the first production, is thematising the use of the camera as a tool of communication, as well as an object of investigative play. In the Blackbird the focus moves to the medium of television as the main subject; it uses the news broadcast as a genre for a playful investigation.

Henriette and Solvej will be here to introduce the screening.

3pm Metallica (title in progress)

Jimmy Robert, Documentation of a performance,10mins.

A minimalist yet baroque intervention. This piece is iniatially a sculpture it comes directly from a formal study made of sheets of paper, following my concerns with movement and representation, the different manifestations and ways of recording performativity it somehow felt necessary to attempt a collaboration with a dancer : Werner Nigg conceived the movements with the object in mind. To further the juxtapositions, layering of readings, like a futurist origami, the body of the performer will follow the movements of the sculpture and find its own balance/place in relation to the lines of the object, creating some sort of drawing in space, the piece will be performed in the metal workshop where the metal sheets were folded to achieve their final shape, commenting at once on masculinity and the idea of work force versus fragility, manual labour against mannerism.

Jimmy Robert is Brussels based artist who’s works create a dialogue between various elements, bringing together film, drawing, text, collage, installation and performance to explore the performative potential of materials, amongst which the body becomes an applicable object.

5pm How to tell when the Rebels have won

Emily Roysdon reads from her introduction to ‘Revolutionary Warfare: How to tell when the rebels have won’ by Eqbal Ahmed, which first appeared in The Nation (New York) August 30, 1965 and has been re-published in conjunction with LTTR V Positively Nasty, 2006. Emily is a New York based artist and member of the feminist gender queer artist collective LTTR. LTTR was founded in 2001 and produces an annual independent art journal, performance series, events, screenings and collaborations.

Sunday 24th

1-1.30pm Meeting and reading together.

1.30pm

Screening: Face Value, Jo Spence, UK, 1981, 20mins

‘I started looking through my old photographs and realised what a pack of lies they were, that they just constructed a view of me that was a fiction and most of the things that ever happened in our family or to me weren’t there in the photographs… You can build an image of yourself in your head in which it’s only the good things that are valuable about you, and that’s absolutely epitomised in the photos you keep.’ (Jo Spence) Questioning why we value these images – contrived as they are - Jo Spence talks of how she saw herself as a young woman and the effects of ageing. ‘How you look is crucial in our culture …photographs collude to keep this myth going - that unless you’re young and beautiful, you’re a non-starter.’ Jo Spence takes us through photographs from her ‘family album’, blowing the dust off and looking a bit harder at the things society ignores so that we may confront ourselves and accept what we usually cover up.

Choosing Children

D Chasnoff, K Klausner, USA, 1984, 45mins

A video which focuses on interviews with six lesbian-led families, living in different parts of the USA; the women are African-American, white, Latino; the families include couples, single women, a lesbian and gay man co-parenting, and a group of women who share parenting responsibilities. All the women in the film became parents after coming out as lesbians. They talk of how ways of getting pregnant: some used artificial insemination, some children were conceived in what one mother refers to as ‘the old fashioned way’ - sleeping with a man; and one woman preferred to adopt.

Toilet Training

Tara Mateik and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, USA, 2003, 30mins

Toilet Training is a documentary video and collaboration between transgender videomaker Tara Mateik and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, an organization dedicated to ending poverty and gender identity discrimination. The video addresses the persistent discrimination, harassment, and violence that people who transgress gender norms face in gender segregated bathrooms. Using the stories of people who have been harassed, arrested or beaten for trying to use bathrooms, Toilet Training focuses on bathroom access in public space, in schools, and at work.

3.30pm

David W Lawson Human Evolutionary Ecology Group Department of Anthropology University College London

Homosexual behaviour is widespread across human cultures, where it takes up many different forms, wrapped up in different conceptualisations and identities. This presents a puzzle to researchers who take a Darwinian approach to the study of human behaviour, as why would evolution by natural selection favour a phenotype that at face value would seem to dramatically decrease the likelihood of leaving direct genetic descendants. In a short presentation, David will communicate the key tenets of the Darwinian approach to human behaviour and then apply this model to the evolution of homosexual behaviour, covering the main hypotheses and highlighting some recent studies. This talk will be followed by a group discussion, where participants are invited to voice their response to the work presented. A list of suggested further readings for those interested in learning more about evolutionary approaches to human behaviour in general, and homosexual behaviour specifically, will be available.

4.30pm

Debi Withers will be leading you through a collective lesbian rebirth journey as she takes you, by the hand, through the epic movement of Kate Bush’s ‘9th wave.’ the journey takes a humorous look at heteronormative socialisation, feminist and lesbian critical theory. No previous experience is necessary & all are welcome. Debi Withers is an academic/ activist/ artist. She is currently finishing her phd which uses the work of Kate Bush as a vehicle for exploring ideas about subjectivity and the body. She hopes to write many more exciting things in the future.

Sunday May 13 at 7pm the composer Else Marie Pade will visit the CFU and tell about her work with the television program ‘En dag på Dyrehavsbakken’ (One day at the amusement park) that was produced for the Danish National Television in 1955. The program is a television collage as well as the first Danish piece of electronic composition music. The screening of the program will be followed by the screening of EMP 18.10.2005, a portrait of Else Marie Pade produced by Henriette Heise a.o.

Listen to Else Marie Pade’s music here >>>

On tv-tv tonight at 11pm FreeUtv will show ‘Uden så meget som at kaste en grankogle’ (Without as much as throwing a spruce cone) about Niels, who was arrested and put to jail on March 1. He tells about how he in the afternoon went to a protest against the eviction of the Youth House that had happened the same morning, and how he went along with about a thousand the protesters in a demonstration heading for the house. Suddenly the protest was attacked by the police and Niels together with about 50 other mostly bystanders were rounded up and arrested. Subsequently he was put to jail in 10 days. The program shows the peaceful atmosphere of the protest through recordings by Jakob who also took part in the protest with his video camera, and how things were escalated slowly by the police beofre the full on attack. The program is produced by FreeUtv/Henriette and Jakob, 35 min.

Tonight at 11pm on tv-tv we will screen Free Class on Urban Gardening and Environmental Activism in the City about the garden of the Youth House in Copenhagen, that has now gone due to bulldozers and incompetent politicians. In the program we meet Jonas Olsen, a guerrilla gardener and a member of the garden group of the house. We discuss urban politics and the lack of ‘free spaces’ in the city landscape of Copenhagen, dig some holes and plant some plants.

Follow the development in Copenhagen on http://indymedia.dk/newswire & http://www.emoware.org/ungdomshuset.asp

Make a greeting to our friends in jail. Come to the Peoples House today and make a personal video letter for one or all of the 200 people who are in jail. It is hard to keep communication flowing to the prisoners due to various restrictions, but there are television in the cells and we will screen your video letter on tv-tv on Wednesday March 7 at 11pm. Nobody is forgotten!

Monday february 26 at 8pm we will screen In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni by Guy Debord from 1978. The film was Debord’s sixth and last film and is a mix of autobiographical material and thoughts on the extreme development of the Society of the Spectacle in the 1970s. The film will be shown with English subtiles and lasts 100 min.

“Just as the projection was about to begin, Guy-Ernest Debord was supposed to step onto the stage and make a few introductory remarks. Had he done so, he would simply have said: ‘There is no film. Cinema is dead. No more films are possible. If you wish, we can move on to a discussion.” - Voice 5, Hurlements en faveur de Sade, Debord 1952

Monday February 5 at 8pm we will screen Hurlements en faveur de Sade produced by Debord in 1952. This time we will take the debate during the film. The film is in French with English subtitles.

Monday January 22 at 8pm we will screen two of Guy Debord’s films: Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps (1959) and Critique de la séparation (1961). Art historian Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen will make an introduction to the films and the situationists approach to filmmaking. The films are French with English subtitles.

Read Mikkel Bolt’s text Situationisternes antifilm here >>>

Launch of Infopool No. 8 with Emma Hedditch at the Barbican Centre.

Join us Tuesday January 2 from 7.30pm near a bar on level 0 at the Barbican Centre for the launch of Emma’s text Stay Away, Don’t Stay Away, a personal introduction to the work and practice of Adrian Piper. This text was originally written for the book ‘Afterthought: new writing on conceptual art’ edited by Mike Sperlinger, but was not included.

“When Mike Sperlinger suggested the idea of writing about Adrian Piper’s work for a book, I was surprised because we had not discussed Adrian Piper’s work before. Perhaps because to my knowledge it has not been widely exhibited or referenced in London in the past three years, and this is how long I have known Mike. I felt some discomfort at the thought of writing about the work of an individual artist who I did not know, when my thoughts are with social strategies and the disassembling of the individualised artist and art institutions, including the way artists’ work is written about. I want to show in my writing how Adrian Piper’s work has done much towards acting on such concerns, and how her work activates or encourages the practice of writing and articulating one’s position where possible, by articulating some of my own position.” (From Stay Away, Don’t Stay Away)

Infopool No. 8 also includes a follow-up conversation with Mike Sperlinger.

All are welcome

Best

Emma Hedditch and Jakob Jakobsen

Telephone Emma on 07958211954 or Jakob on 079410227808 if you can’t find us.

Go to infopool.org.uk >>>

HELP SECURING THE COPENHAGEN YOUTH HOUSE AGAINST SHUTDOWN

Sign here and help influencing the Copenhagen politicians and the Danish Parlament >>>

Your signature can help securing and legalizing the Youth House in Copenhagen, which is about to be closed.

All signatures will be transferred to the Municipal authorities in Copenhagen and to the Parlament.

To help spreading the message to everyone around the world, it would be nice if you could mail your friends or put links to our site - but remember: the time is now!!

Thank you for your help!

WHILE upscale universities open bio-technological parks sponsored by big pharmaceutical companies.

WHILE software companies and corporate record labels entertain themselves with the futile exercise of hunting down so-called copyright delinquents.

WHILE all forms of knowledge get privatized and the access to them becomes even more elitist…

Universitat Pirata in Barcelona opens its doors >>>

Mediaburn Archive >>> hosts a massive archive of activist television from the 1970s and onwards. Here you can watch TVTV (the video activists project of the early 1970s), Videofreex, Weekend Television, and more. As a new facility you can now produce a custom made DVD with video material from the archive and get it send to your address. Really cool that this material is being made accessible!

We have arranged two weeks of tv-tv with films and videos about urban struggles in Copenhagen. Films about Christiania, the People’s House and Park, Garden in One Night, the adventure playground ‘Byggeren’ and more. Full schedule on tv-tv.dk. The two main autonomous centres in Copenhagen, Christiania and the Youth House, are currently under threat from the normalising pressures of neoliberal society. If nothing is done we will loose them.

This goes together with the premiere of the Free Class television series in 4 parts; ‘Free Class on street art and the battle for public space’, ‘Free Class on urban gardens and environmental activism in the city’, ‘Free Class on sex and the public sphere’ and ‘Free Class on DIY architecture and autonomous communities’. Free Class was a nomadic class, using urban spaces as its framework and its subject. With Free Class, we sought out environments where artists and activists are working critically to redefine the city and public space. Collectively, we filmed a selection of our excursions in order to produce a four-part TV series. The series depicts some of the battles concerning urban spaces which we encountered during our travels in Copenhagen in 2006. More info (in Danish) friklasse.dk

We have uploaded a polyphonic text that we wrote last year called: Taking Power, Refusing to become Government - 17 Theses on Knowledge Production. It can be found in the On Knowledge Production Section >>>

Two new entries in the ABZ:

DUST

Ordinary house dust is a mixture of dead insect parts, flakes of human skin, shreds of fabric, minerals, seeds, pollen, feather, hair, blood, excrement and many other materials.

STARBURST

The Copenhagen Free University is a temporary self-institution that for a period of time gather and formalise a community of individuals and groups around a certain struggle. Sooner or later the CFU will abolish itself with the intention of the formation of more informal networks and a redistribution of power. This strategy of temporary formation and subsequent abolition of autonomous institutions has been called the starburst strategy.

Have a look at the new ABZ >>>