Dedicated to critical cultural production at the intersection of art and activism.

Experimental geographers who were able to attend last night’s event, and others who couldn’t be there, can download the template of the Notes for a People’s Atlas of Greater Boston map below.

Download the Notes for a People’s Atlas of Greater Boston PDF here

Submissions can be made in hard copy until September 1st and only digitally thereafter.  Please mail to the address below, or send your map as a PDF via e-mail.

Groundswell
991 Massachusetts Ave #1
Cambridge MA 02138

You are encouraged to map out sites that are significant to you as someone who lives, work and plays in this city. You can map out sites of past or current political struggles, lost histories, cultural spaces, environmental devastation, personal histories, real estate speculation, social movements of the past, places of formal/ informal education, sites of gang violence, where to get the best coffee, places where tourists do not go, the periphery of the city, proposals for alternative uses of public space, distribution of wealth, anything. You are encouraged to combine, intersect, contrast, flip upside down themes or topics of your maps. You are encouraged to map out personal histories and points of interests as well as what else they relate to, why are these points important, and to whom are they important to?

Many thanks to the Design Studio for Social Intervention for hosting, and to the attendees and participants!

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The same rebel cyclists who swarmed COP15 and lived to tell the tale in Groundswell’s journal are bringing their postcapitalist utopian strategies to Hamburg.

The Lab of ii prepares for COP15

The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination‘s (Lab of ii) FLOOD< FLOW> SWARM will include: a pedal powered cinema performance, bike swarm trainings for experimental and aspiring cyclists, and a distributed sound swarm on the final day, intervening in the city with a mass of bike-mounted sound systems conducted by DIY radio waves.

The Lab of ii reports:

All events are free just like life should be lived > > >
FLOW: Come help pedal-power our utopian road movie, a fictional documentary based on a 7 months journey through a post-capitalist Europe of liberated zones. The world premiere of the film part of our bookfilm project Paths Through Utopias. Free popcorn for all !

August 20th & 21st – 19:00
SWARM: Bring a bike (and FM radio) and get involved in our preparations for the final intervention, Sunday’s cycle sonic adventure across the city, FLOOD. Based on our Bike Bloc trainings in civil disobedience used in Copenhagen during the UN climate summit you can practice the art of flowing like water, swarming like bees and being in a bike gang.

Sunday August 22nd – 19:00
FLOOD: The Grand Finale. Bring a bike, an FM radio and the desire for collective adventure, invite your friends and rebel cyclists, the more the merrier…

Go forth and swarm!

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Some months ago, 16Beaver publicly stated that they were having trouble renewing their lease.  The group, which has put on more than 400 invaluable events in their eleven years, was in need of funds, and in their usual fashion, reached out to their community for support.  We helped spread the word then, and, now we’re pleased to spread some good news – 16Beaver has renewed their lease until 2014!  Trouble is, they still need $20k by this August to make it happen.

16Beaver is not a nonprofit, and doesn’t plan to be.  Like Groundswell, they exist outside of those traditional funding structures.  To make it through this turmoil, they’ve enlisted the fiscal sponsorship of Fractured Atlas to process donations and the likes.  Click here to make your donation to 16Beaver.

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A Romantic Sunset Dinner in
the Wake of an Ever-Nearing Future

Join us for a Fundraiser and Dinner for School of the Future on June 11th from 7 -10pm at Solar One in NYC (E. 23rd St. @ the East River). School of the Future is an intergenerational free school that will open this July for one month in Brooklyn.

Everything will seem insignificant next to the sunset by the river and will reverberate off of the FDR, including:
Live music, djs, optimism, tamales, summer salads and sangria will be served while the sun sets along the East River in Stuyvesant Cove Park.

SLIDING SCALE/ MAXIMUM ENJOYMENT:
$0 Old school hip hop, folk songs, a sense of community, a marching band, and sunset on the river
$5 All of the above plus sangria and a view
$10 All of the above plus hot tamales, summer salads and a view
$20 gets you all of that PLUS homemade ice cream and infinite gratitude

To learn more about how to support and get involved in School of the Future please visit www.schoolofthefuture.org
Directions: Take the 6 to 23rd Street and walk to the River (Map and Directions Here)
Special thanks to Solar One for hosting this event for us!

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Adam Friedman’s “No Vestige of a Beginning, No Prospect of and End” (2010)

Big Shots | Take a look at the rich, white men at the top rung of the NYC cultural ladder. [NYTimes]

DIY WPA | The Work Projects Administration is experiencing a revival, at the hands of public artists and community organizers. [WPA]

Reason to Interfere | Invitations are being solicited for work combining art, politics, and protest, for Interference 2010. [Artsadmin]

Preference & Prejudice | Tackle the issue of bias where art and politics  meet. [The Arts Politic]

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