common places

Rising and Falling: How We Walk in Tampa is a publication that resulted from our 8 month effort to work with walking, in a city that renders disposable bodies not confined to vehicles. This small book is our way of reflecting on our work, but it is also meant as a teaching and learning tool for young people in Tampa who may form their own walking communities. Contributors: Laura Bergeron, Rozalinda Borcila, Martin Bosman, Robert Brinkman, Desiree D’Alessandro, Sarah Hendricks, Sarah Lewison, Lou Marcus, Alan Moore, Raul Romero, Victoria Skelly

The book contains 5 durational walking projects and 6 walk/talks, folded in a handmade box. We have made a limited number of hardcopies (running out of the energy and time to make more boxes !!), and are distributing to friends and allies; please contact Rozalinda at borcila@arts.usf.edu if you would like us to mail you one. A hires pdf is available online at

http://www.commonplacesproject.org/rising_falling_weblarge.pdf

This is a large file, please be patient. The book layout puts the walking conversations in relation with the durational walks; it includes images and descriptions of the walks and documents their translation in a number of different public exhibition situations. I am working on translating the booklet into a web-friendly presentation, with links to images and videos.

Below are excerpts from the Introduction, a transcribed introduction to a walking seminar with Sarah Lewison and the first walk/talk with Martin Bosman.
Many cheers

Rozalinda

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Filed under: Places: Florida (US), Walking and Not Walking, articles
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Radical Culture Research Collective
from http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1196340894

Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics (Les presses du réel, 1998; English translation 2002) undeniably has been an effective generator of debate. In the wake of critical responses by Claire Bishop (in October in 2004 and Artforum in 2006) Grant Kester (in Conversation Pieces, 2004, and in Artforum in 2006), Stewart Martin (in Third Text in 2007) and Julian Stallabrass (in Art Incorporated, 2004), the strengths and limits of Bourriaud’s book will be no secret. Our remarks at this point will not be new, but we think it may still be helpful to formulate some critical propositions with a sharper political orientation.

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Radical Culture Research Collective

from http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1189078355

Radical Culture Research Collective (RCRC) is a group of activists, artists, researchers and writers in Berlin, Hamburg, London (England), Montreal, London (Canada), New York, San Francisco, Tampa, Weimar and Vienna aiming to build structures and processes for critiquing the capitalist art system, reflecting on politicized artistic practices, and developing modes of a militant praxis within and without the field of art.

Our recent discussions have revolved around the ways in which criticality is recuperated through neo-liberal managerialism.  This text, written for Radical Philosophy, briefly sketches some aspects of this problem using Documenta XII as a case study.

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by What, how and for Whom/WHW , from
http://printedmatter.org/researchroom/essays/whw.cfm

What, How & for Whom (WHW) is a non-profit organization for visual culture and curators’ collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, Croatia. Its members are curators Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević , Natasa Ilić and Sabina Sabolović , and designer and publicist Dejan Krsić . Since May 2003 WHW has been directing the program of Gallery Nova – a non-profit, city-owned gallery in Zagreb.  (more…)

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We are posting this in anticipation of our series of lectures and discussions with Brian Holmes, organized by the Center for Getting Ugly. Many thanks to Brian for his generosity.

“Reverse Imagineering: Toward the New Urban Struggles,
Or: Why Smash the State When Your Neighborhood Theme Park Is So Much Closer?”
Brian Holmes

“What are the steps in the creation of a Disney attraction? According to literature sent out by WDW [Walt Disney World], the steps are: storyboard, script, concept, show models, sculpture, show set design, graphics, interiors, architectural design, molds and casting, wardrobe and figure finishing, electronic and mechanical design and manufacture, show sets and prop construction, animation, audio, special effects and lighting, and engineering.” [The Unofficial Walt Disney Imagineering Page (www.imagineering.org).]
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Joanne Richardson

This is the first of a three-part series of essays: (1) the radical left in the postcommunist epoch; (2) the neoliberal & the neofascist right in Romania; (3) protest movements, social forums and the myth of civil society. It argues that the radical left begins from an affirmation of the real democratization of the economy, politics and culture, which means rejecting both postcommunism and communism. This democratization is based on a unity of principles, not on sharing identical visions, practices or goals.

They say we had a revolution in Romania. Ceausescu was executed. And with his death, a society of bureaucratic privilege and control over the economy, politics, culture and most details of daily life began to wither away. According to the cliché that now passes for a self-evident truth, the left = communism = totalitarianism = antidemocratic. After 1989, public opinion was unified in praising the new “right” wing government that came to power in the wake of Ceausescu’s regime because whatever was not communist had to be on the side of freedom and democracy. (more…)

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article by Gene Ray
(full article with endnotes)

“Like enfants perdus, we live our uncompleted adventures”. Debord, Howls for Sade

“It is certainly true that if the problem of the group’s functioning is not posed to begin with, it will be too late afterward”. Deleuze, “Three Group-Related Problems”

One day long ago – back in 1960s, or was it the 1970s? – the radical avant-gardes became a formal object of institutionalized art history. Sometime in the wake of dada’s belated post-1945 “reception,” the histories of militant art groups from the early twentieth century were absorbed by the academy, and the precedents were established by which every groupuscule working in the shadows and border zones of culture – if it ever once emerges into visibility, if it fails to utterly cover its tracks – is fated to eventually have its history written. Before that, the cultural establishment had simply ignored them. (more…)

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