Anarchist Bookfair: London, Saturday 24th October 2009
October 13, 2009
“As capitalism collapses around us in the market of ideas the anarchist pound is bouyant and the 28th London Anarchist Bookfair is back at Queen Mary College in London’s East End…”
for more details: http://www.anarchistbookfair.org/
Riot diary. g20 pictures and videos, 1-4-2009
April 2, 2009
This is a video i took after gaining access to the RBS Building (Royal Bank Of Scotland – notorious for incompetence, hubris and corruption) with twenty or so other individuals. The offices were quickly set alight and i made my escape up the fire escape persued by a number of portly riot cops, who, encumbered by shields, batons, armour, helmets and excessive body fat took several minutes to make the ascent. The short fideo clip shows the banking district of the City Of London occupied by massed anarchist hordes.
where’s the riot?
March 31, 2009
In advance of tomorrows events: a ‘print-out and keep’ map of all the happenings c/0 Indymedia:
see you’s there…
“Summer of rage” round one: G20 Meltdown
March 3, 2009
“Anyone who was working in the City in 1999 will remember how awful those riots were. There were riot police banked outside my office and all the tube stations closed so I had to walk for miles through what was effectively a war zone. It was absolutely terrifying and I’m afraid I can’t believe there is anything more behind it than a desire to cause as much damage and mayhem as possible. The mindset is no better than that of football hooligans, if not worse. I for one will be taking April 1st as a day’s holiday rather than risk putting myself through anything like that again.”
London Evening Standard march 2009
how to be invisible
January 11, 2009
I’ve always been of the opinion that people over concerned with surveillance and data security are displaying the first stages of clinical paranoia. It’s well known, for those that care to look, that the UK police and military have in their possession technology which enables them to track individuals movements visually and electronically (think of google maps ++), trace your behaviour (spending, travelling, health, political persuasion), listen in to conversations and so-on – our only real defence against this intrusion has been the plod/MOD’s incompetence at cross referencing and interpreting the mass of data they’ve so carefully collated.
Britain is one of the world’s most surveyed society; It is estimated (2002 figures) that the United Kingdom is watched by over 4.2 million CCTV cameras. This equates to one camera for every fourteen people; each UK subject is recorded on average by up to three hundred cameras a day. Surveillance has become part of our lives; we’ve become used to accepting surveillance as a shield against crime and terrorism, sacrificing our privacy for the apparent greater good. However a recent trend is the movement of commercial organisation into the field of surveillance and “dataveillance” – using similar unregulated techniques and technologies global corporations are starting to watch you. Is it time to get paranoid?
“Live Series 2″ & the London Ambulance Station
November 28, 2008
To Londoners, The old Kent rd has been for many years a byword for poverty; the cheapest, dismal brown coloured property on the monopoly board and in reality a grimy thoroughfare providing the boundary of two of the most neglected regions of London, Peckham and Bermondsey. Once the heartland of a solid white working class population the area was bombed close to complete destruction during the war and then rapidly rebuilt with monolithic high-rise housing estates which by the 1980s had begun to be abandoned and crumble.
In the cold winter of 1984 we – bourbonese qualk and crew – occupied the Ambulance station, an empty five story castle-like building on the Old Kent Road. Our ambition was to create a radical ‘cultural-political centre’ (though we would never have used that term) and a general base for our activities – performance space, recording studio and office for the Recloose organisation label – in the middle of this piece of un-picturesque South East London. After lengthy renovation (removing 1 meter deep layers of dead pigeons, replacing piping, windows and tiles on the vertiginous roof) The top two stories were converted into artists studios, the middle storey our living quarters. The first floor was taken up as meeting space for anarchist groups, a free cafe and offices for the local squatters organisation, ‘S.N.O.W’ (who housed more people in 1985 than the local council). The ground floor was changed into a large performance space and bar as well as a recording studio, sculpture studios and print workshops.
Noise England: London; ” Unsuitable for human habitation”
August 1, 2008
Image: Street advert in Hoxton, London, displaying real-time decibel level. March 2008.
“Let us cross a great modern capital with our ears more alert than our eyes, and we will get enjoyment from distinguishing the eddying of water, air and gas in metal pipes, the grumbling of noises that breathe and pulse with indisputable animality, the palpitation of valves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags. We enjoy creating mental orchestrations of the crashing down of metal shop blinds, slamming doors, the hubbub and shuffling of crowds, the variety of din, from stations, railways, iron foundries, spinning wheels, printing works, electric power stations and underground railways.”
Luigi Russolo excerpt from “L’arte dei Rumori” 1913
Russolo’s eulogy to the sonic city was inspired by the urban clamour of turn of the century Milan. “L’arte dei Rumori” betrays a fascination with novelty of noise, the signature of modernity and the promise of the future in the form of the industrial city. Russolo argued that music has reached a point where it can longer excite when pitted against the real world sonic complexity of new metropolis. In turn, this statement led to the formation of a new type of music based on machine inspired atonality and stochastic composition.
Space Now
June 19, 2008
13 June – 26 July 2008
mon- fri 10-6pm, sat 12-6pm
SPACE celebrates 40 years with an exhibition selected by Caroline Douglas, Head of Arts Council Collections.
Axel Antas, Josh Baum, Amanda Benson, Anne Bristow, Chila Kumari Burman, Leigh Clarke, Julie Cockburn, Ben Cove, Richard Crawford, Layla Curtis, Deborah Dawkin, Natalie Dower, Paul Eachus, Nigel Ellis, Julia Farrer, John Frankland, Peter Fraser, James P. Graham, Paul Green , Mark Harris, Peter Hawksby, Claude Heath, Mustafa Hulusi, Jim Jack, Rannva Kunoy, Ann-Marie LeQuesne, Hew Locke, Camilla Lyon, Andrea Medjesi-Jones, Fiona Merchant, Natasha Morland, Jost Münster, Adriette Myburgh, Saskia Olde Wolbers, Laura Oldfield Ford, Peter Peri, Sarah Perritt, Joanna Price, Bridget Riley, Suzanne Roles, Pascal Rousson, Piers Secunda, Yinka Shonibare, Martin Shortis, DJ Simpson, Walid Siti, Aerial Sparks, Fergal Stapleton, Michael Stubbs, Anthony Sullivan, James Faure Walker, Mark Wallinger, Ben Washington, Jackson Webb, William Wright.
This selling show has been selected by Caroline Douglas who toured all our studios visiting 600 artists to select this rich and diverse group show. It celebrates the strength of London’s artistic & creative community, and demonstrates the value of studio provision to London’s competitive edge and position in the international art world. SPACE has played a key role in establishing this position and continues to underpin its success. SPACE NOW launches a fund-raising campaign to support future SPACE studio developments.
Location; Space triangle
Noise Mapping England Pt2
May 19, 2008
The much anticipated Noise Maps version 2 was released by our favorite government agency, DEFRA, last week. This version includes a noise source filter (road, rail, industry and air) – which ‘kind of’ works – and day and night switch. The maps spread beyond London to ‘agglomerations’ of over 250,000 people…everyone else will have to wait until 2012 for round two – or make do with pdf of ‘major roads’ and airports.
Is it worth it?
January 30, 2008
Economies of Value: A Seminar interrogating the roles, levels and definitions of value in media arts practice and partnerships.
SPACE, 129-131 Mare Street, Hackney, London E8 3RH
Tuesday 5 February
2008 10.30 am – 5 pmDistributed South invites you to join us in a seminar which will examine issues of value and its measurement, paying particular reference to Media Arts sector and partnership working. We will focus on resource exchange and the value of research conducted by artists and organisations, through the development of work, residencies and placements.
Contributions from key economists in the field of cultural and creative management will enable us to look at systems that are being modelled to measure value in networks and groups. Alongside these systems, projects designed to focus on measuring value and exchange through social networking and information/resource exchange will demonstrate new methods of measurement
Economies of Value will be of interest to those working in the media, media arts, ICT and business people looking at new models of working.Like all events related to Distributed South it aims to move and inform policy in the media arts sector to drive forward new approaches to working and developing the field.
“…as a follow-up example, bourbonese qualk put their entire catalog online for free a while back. i was ecstatic, since their stuff was very hard to find anyway. i DL’d all of it, and got hold of them to see what i could do in return. they asked for a donation to Médecins Sans Frontières rather than any payment to them. a few minutes later, MSF had $50 from me.”
