Continental Drift - with Brian Holmes, Neil Brenner, Jamie Peck, Nik Theodore, Andy Bichlbaum, Claire Pentecost, Neil Smith, Hakan Topal, Marty Lucas, Jeff Halper, Scott Berzofsky, Dane Nester, Nicholas Wisniewski :: February 15-17, 2008 :: 16 Beaver Group, 16 Beaver Street, 4th / 5th fl., New York, NY :: Free and Open to all.

In 1845, Karl Marx, in his short fragments published posthumously as the “Theses on Feuerbach,” wrote the following oft quoted statement: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” These were working notes for Marx and in some way represented a call, an appeal, a reminder, a hope, a provocation to himself. What is the relation between what we understand about the world, the questions we can formulate, and what we can do to change our reality?

And when we initiated Continental Drift with Brian Holmes and our rag-tag bunch of activist-artist-thinkers, we felt that interpreting the world and changing it went hand in hand. That in order to change the world, we also needed to embark on the challenging task of understanding the immense shifts that have been transpiring since 1989. We also needed to create a more structured possibility for bringing together a growing number of individuals whose work does not quite fit in any prescribed competence (i.e., activist, artist, researcher).

If there has been one consistent response for us, it has NOT been to make our self-organized conversations AN END in themselves, but a constituent part of our political being and our steady assumption of a power for collective utterances.

This year is another opportunity to take this collective project forward, as we not only initiate this session in New York, but take our Drift to Zagreb in May and the Radical Midwest Cultural Corridor hopefully this summer.

We are seeking anyone and everyone who may be interested in joining us. We have been attempting for some years to foster a space that will open more dialogues between artists, activists, and intellectuals. And we would like ours to become one of a multiplicity of spaces in which these three necessary figures of resistance can begin to touch and inform one another’s practices/thinking.

We sincerely hope you will join these discussions. Please forward to friends who you think may be interested.

2. Something like a Summary

We will begin Friday evening with a talk and discussion with Henry C K Liu. It is a rare opportunity to exchange thoughts with someone who has very extensive insights into economic dynamics with a particular focus on Asia. Henry is a regular contributor for Asia Times and wrote a widely influential text about Dollar Hegemony. The evening’s talk is entitled:
“The Case Against Market Fundamentalism.”

For this entire session and particularly Saturday, we will consider the different resonances of “from the ground” “on the ground” or simply “ground.”

Ground as the contradiction and tragic failure of capitalism right now: –ground rent, for everything that concerns housing –ground to the bone, for flexible labor –ground as the earth itself, overheating and poisoned –ground zero wherever a bomb goes off and people die

We will begin with a discussion of a text entitled about Neoliberal Urbanism and then be joined by Andy from the Yes Men, who will be discussing their work in New Orleans. Claire Pentecost who will address how the growing environmental /climate change/water preciousness/ food consciousness is effecting urban organizing. We will (hopefully) be joined by a group attempting to resist the Columbia University’s plan for Harlem. We will conclude the day with a talk by Neil Smith entitled “Mega Gentrification.” Neil as most of you might know, is someone we have for some time been wanting to invite, and we felt this was a great context.

Sunday, will be an attempt to cross many terrains from Malawi and Anatolia to East Jerusalem and East Baltimore. It will include presentations by Hakan Topal, Marty Lucas, a video with Jeff Halper, Scott-Dane-Nick, and will conclude with Brian’s talk entitled: “Escape the Overcode: Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Cartographies, or the Pathic Core at the Heart of Cybernetics.”

3. Introduction by Brian Holmes (2008)

A continent is a name for immensity without reserve: a mass of land so large you can never imagine the end of it, the ground of everything. Yet the questions we want to raise are intimate ones, which over the course of recent decades have crept their way into the thoughts and feelings of individuals, associations, cultural groups, professional or political formations and even nations, when they are faced with the emergence of a society beyond all borders, a non-place where the continents themselves begin to loose their moorings.

How to conceive of a world society? When and why do people begin to speak of it? Where to locate it, how to perceive it? For whom does it appear, whose interests does it serve or threaten? What are its origins, its laws and regularities, its chances of lasting till next year? Does it have a taste or a color, a wavelength or a rhythm? Above all, should I be part of it? Should we be part of it? How to take that decision – or assert that refusal?

In 1997, Ulrich Beck published a book in the form of a question: What is globalization? His answer: it is a world society without a world government, where outdated national institutions tend to dissolve between the twin extremes of transnational capital and hyperindividualism. Yet Beck is not a fatalist. Rejecting the belief in globalism as a fait accompli whose only agents are giant corporations, he suggested an examination of the transformational processes affecting communications, culture, economics, labor organization, civil associations and the ecology. He conceived world society as a “multiplicity without unity,” and believed its emergence could be measured by the degree to which distinct social groups become aware of and debate these transformations: their origins, causes, spatial distributions, effects and susceptibility to change and redirection. The political question would be this: “how, and to what extent, people and cultures around the world relate to one another in their differences, and to what extent this self-perception of world society is relevant to how they behave.”

So far, so good. Become aware of social change, and find the languages that can express it! But Beck still refers to self-perception “as staged by the national media.” We’re looking for something different: the consciousness of the present as expressed by artistic inventions, on “stages” ranging from museums, universities and theaters to social centers, hacklabs and cabarets, the Internet and the streets. Rather than relying on studies and scientific procedures, let’s see how these expressions of the present are debated in the forums, circuits, institutions, self-organized meetings and counter-public spheres that have proliferated across the planet in recent years. What’s elusive are ways to sound out multiplicity, solidarity and resistance, all of which don’t only arise in words. Form, image, concept, rhythm, experiment, intervention, rupture: these are aesthetic devices for touching the world, and taking part in a world conversation.

Throughout the twentieth century the visual languages of modernism offered a means of communication, culminating more recently in a massive overflow of biennials, traveling shows, exchange programs and markets – contested from below by an explosion of autonomous interventions, self-organized circuits and alternative modes of production. Since the end of hegemonic modernism in the 1960s the definition and value of art has been a subject of intense dispute, resulting in a focus on process rather than object, a shift towards activism and group experimentation. This questioning of frames and contexts has led to the inclusion of sociological, philosophical, economic, political and psychological concepts within the very contours of the works. But this whole development is deeply ambiguous. Even as artistic circles have extended their geographic and discursive reach and tended to morph into sites of generalized experimentation, public consciousness has retained the twentieth-century definition of art as the signifier of individualism, legitimating an endless range of formal innovations, of cultural and individual eccentricities. This proliferation of choices is exactly what allows for the increasingly deep integration of art to the market, not only as a luxury object or attribute of personal distinction, but also as the prime example of innovative, value-adding production processes in the risky environment of the information economy. The upshot being that art seems to mirror and internalize the global transformations, in their mix of multifarious complexity and one-dimensional standardization.

to continue reading introduction please visit:
http://www.16beavergroup.org/drift/intro2008.htm#email

4. Working Schedule

The idea for the schedule is that it should be subjected to change based on our needs and desires over the course of the event.

FRIDAY EVENING 02.15.08

18:00 - 18:30 Informal Introductions
19:00 - 20:20 Henry C K Liu: The Case Against Market Fundamentalism
20:20 - 21:30 Question + Answer + Conversation
21:30 - 23:00 Dinner & Drinks

SATURDAY 02.16.08

12:00 - 12:30 Tea, Coffee
12:30 - 13:30 Open Session / Discussion of Reading Neoliberal Urbanism: Cities And the Rule of Markets (Neil Brenner, Jamie Peck, Nik Theodore)
13:30 - 14:00 Andy Bichlbaum: Yes Men in New Orleans.
14:00 - 14:30 Coalition of Groups Fighting Columbia Gentrification of Harlem (To be confirmed)
14:30 - 15:00 Claire Pentecost: How the growing environmental /climate change/water preciousness/ food consciousness is effecting urban organizing.
15:00 - 17:30 Neil Smith: Mega Gentrification

SUNDAY 02.17.08

12:00 - 12:30 Tea, Coffee
13:00 - 13:30 Hakan Topal: Possibility of Justice and Justification of Artistic Production
13:30 - 14:00 Marty Lucas: Cyber-Urbanism in Southern African
14:00 - 14:30 Video interview with Jeff Halper -Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions Good Architecture
14:30 - 15:00 Scott Berzofsky, Dane Nester, Nicholas Wisniewski Practicing Ecosophy in East Baltimore
15:00 - 16:00 Break
16:00 - 18:00 Brian Holmes: Escape the Overcode: Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Cartographies, or the Pathic Core at the Heart of Cybernetics.
19:00 - 21:30 Final Discussion: “Prospects” for upcoming Continental Drift in Zagreb and the Radical Midwest Cultural Corridor
+ thinking about further NYC prospects (over dinner)

For full details on all presentations here.

5. How to participate

There are two possible ways of joining us:
a. to physically attend in NYC
b. to participate via webcast

We will provide more details about the webcast online as the event approaches. For those who will be attending the events in New York City, please write to cdrift {the at sign} 16beavergroup.org to enroll.

Friday February 15 — 6:00 PM - 11:55 PM
Saturday February 16– 12:00 AM — 6:00 PM
Sunday February 17– 12:00 AM - 11:55PM

All events unless otherwise announced will take place at 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor - NY, NY. The participation fee is 10-30$ (sliding scale). We will waive the fee for anyone who has great difficulty in paying but has a strong desire to participate. As we did last year, we will also have some collective dinners at the space. The entire program is organized with our efforts and is not affiliated with or funded from any organizations or institutions.