Re: [-empyre-] Resilient Latin America: Reconnecting Urban Policyand the Collective's Imagination

2012-03-28 Thread Ana Valdés
Thank you Alejandro for an interesting text! And Brian and Teddy!
After reading all those posts regarding the city and it's possibilities and
challenges I was thinking about the origin of the cities. Who made the
cities and for whom the cities were built? I think I need to go to Diegos
rich text to reflect further about settlers versus nomadic. The Greek built
cities to protect themselves from pirates and robbers, the state was born
from these cities or settlements. The cities organized (and still does) the
people's dwellings and workplaces to facilitate the conmuting between
workplace and house, the idea of Owen's falansterium (it was Alicia Migdal
who put my thought in this direction, thanks for it), a development of the
cloister as unity of production is precisely to avoid or make unnecessary
those movements.
People should sleep, eat and work in the same place. I has lived in Sweden
for almost whole my adult life, the housing in Sweden is related to the
working places and the collective transport and the motorways are grided to
make conmuting easy and fast.
The idea is to tailor the city to working people, giving them leisure when
they are free and using them as consumers.
The housing for the poor is always conditioned to the needs of the rich (it
means the security issues of the rich make them unconfortable, the poor
hount them, they can be robbed or assaulted by them, people downtown Rio de
Janeiro say: we are not safe if the people living in favelas (around the
hills) come down.
How can we make a city with urban planning for all and not only for the
rich and wealthy?
Ana


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Re: [-empyre-] Resilient Latin America: Reconnecting Urban Policyand the Collective's Imagination

2012-03-28 Thread Brian Holmes

On 03/28/2012 04:52 AM, Ala Plastica wrote:


In contrast to this idea of natural understanding, an intervention in
the environment is often conceived as an occupation based on the idea of
transport corridors. In this way, zones are divided according to
economic interests and the imagery is guided by commercial means of
communication and financial institutions with only a few spaces of
brilliant modernity. This can be defined as an ego-system, a system that
generates social and environmental toxicity affecting life quality and
health conditions seriously.


This is exactly what we wanted to poke fun at when we started talking 
about the Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor! It's what my friend Angela 
Melitopoulos calls corridorical thinking. But this notion of 
ego-systems is more clear, it goes straight to the heart of the issue. 
The world is now full of huge, top-down infrastructures, carried out 
through state planning processes, just to support the illusion of ego 
cut off / freed from the others. Mind you, I am not sure that all the 
projects Teddy talks about really fall into this category, I think it's 
important to look closely when people (even politicians) really try 
something different...



Unfortunately, what is not included in this matrix is the point of view
of desirable social human relationships that links the economic and
social system with the place vocation. To a great extent, the
development of ego-systems occurs in societies due to the break of the
flow of social doing -the ability to do things. When this social flow of
doing fractures that power of doing turns into the opposite, the
power-over who conceives but does not execute, while the others execute
but do not conceive.


This whole text is beautiful, and what's more, spot on. Thanks for this, 
Alejandro. Did you write it? In what context does it fit?


In echo I am going to paste in a text which our group (the Compass) used 
as a kind of invitation or convocatorio for people going to the US 
Social Forum in Detroit in 2010. We wanted to meet people and hear their 
stories, to enlarge the process of co-creation. The echo is very strong, 
you'll see:


CARTOGRAPHY WITH YOUR FEET

Driven by the pressures of corporate competition, Midwestern capital 
elites envision a network of high-speed trains linking the scattered 
cities of flyover land into a dense urban grid. Oblivious to 
territories, histories, and peoples, you whisk your way from center to 
center like a roulette ball spinning through the global casino. What 
gets lost in these dreams of power are the connections between the city 
and the country, the earth and the sky, the past and the future.


What kinds of worlds are installed on the ground by the neoliberal 
planning processes developed in the technocratic universities? Why do 
these projects fail even before they begin? How to start building a 
cultural and intellectual commons that can seep into the fabric of 
everyday existence? The Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor is a call for 
longer, slower, deeper connections between the territories where we 
live. It’s a cartography of shared experience, built up by those who 
nourish lasting ties between critical groups, political projects, 
radical communities and experiments in alternative living. Why not help 
build the commons by overflowing your usual daily routines? Why not make 
the journey to the US Social Forum into a chance to discover the worlds 
we can create right here in our own region?


This workshop draws from the inspiration of Grace Lee Boggs and the 
travels of the Compass Group on our Continental Drift through the 
Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor. The idea is to propose an act of 
collective discovery and creation, to be carried out by anyone who’s 
heading to the Social Forum. Multiple caravans each chart their 
particular pathways and organize their own activist campaigns, artistic 
exchanges, skill-sharing sessions, solidarity dinners or whatever else 
they desire on the roads to Detroit, then converge at the Allied Media 
conference and the US Social Forum to share stories, images, and 
artifacts from their detours through the Midwestern labyrinth. 
Meanwhile, those with different priorities can invent their own forms of 
travel and exchange, explore diverging temporalities, set up “stationary 
drifts” in the neighborhoods they inhabit and continue the projects 
they’re pursuing, while the moving worlds pass through them.


By taking the time for a conscious experience of the territories we are 
continually traversing, we can build up what Stephen Shukaitis calls an 
“imaginal machine”: a many-headed hydra telling tales of solidarity and 
struggle, daily life, and outlandish dreams in the places that power 
forgets, leaving their inhabitants free to remember living histories and 
work toward better tomorrows. The Compass Group will present images, 
narratives, and documents from our Continental Drift in 2008, then open 
up the concept to input 

Re: [-empyre-] Resilient Latin America: Reconnecting Urban Policyand the Collective's Imagination

2012-03-28 Thread Ala Plastica

Thank you for your considerations Brian and Anna.

I presented these ideas about the vocation of the place 
http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=258 in April 2004 in 
Baltic, New Castle at the symposium called ARTISTS AS AGENTS FOR SOCIAL 
CHANGE conceived by Helix Arts. The text refers to our feelings about our 
own experience and that of people and contexts where we work (the estuary of 
the Río de la Plata, the Parana Delta) but I think that can be applied to 
other contexts


Saludos
Alejandro


- Original Message - 
From: Brian Holmes bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com

To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Resilient Latin America: Reconnecting Urban 
Policyand the Collective's Imagination



On 03/28/2012 04:52 AM, Ala Plastica wrote:


In contrast to this idea of natural understanding, an intervention in
the environment is often conceived as an occupation based on the idea of
transport corridors. In this way, zones are divided according to
economic interests and the imagery is guided by commercial means of
communication and financial institutions with only a few spaces of
brilliant modernity. This can be defined as an ego-system, a system that
generates social and environmental toxicity affecting life quality and
health conditions seriously.


This is exactly what we wanted to poke fun at when we started talking
about the Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor! It's what my friend Angela
Melitopoulos calls corridorical thinking. But this notion of
ego-systems is more clear, it goes straight to the heart of the issue.
The world is now full of huge, top-down infrastructures, carried out
through state planning processes, just to support the illusion of ego
cut off / freed from the others. Mind you, I am not sure that all the
projects Teddy talks about really fall into this category, I think it's
important to look closely when people (even politicians) really try
something different...


Unfortunately, what is not included in this matrix is the point of view
of desirable social human relationships that links the economic and
social system with the place vocation. To a great extent, the
development of ego-systems occurs in societies due to the break of the
flow of social doing -the ability to do things. When this social flow of
doing fractures that power of doing turns into the opposite, the
power-over who conceives but does not execute, while the others execute
but do not conceive.


This whole text is beautiful, and what's more, spot on. Thanks for this,
Alejandro. Did you write it? In what context does it fit?

In echo I am going to paste in a text which our group (the Compass) used
as a kind of invitation or convocatorio for people going to the US
Social Forum in Detroit in 2010. We wanted to meet people and hear their
stories, to enlarge the process of co-creation. The echo is very strong,
you'll see:

CARTOGRAPHY WITH YOUR FEET

Driven by the pressures of corporate competition, Midwestern capital
elites envision a network of high-speed trains linking the scattered
cities of flyover land into a dense urban grid. Oblivious to
territories, histories, and peoples, you whisk your way from center to
center like a roulette ball spinning through the global casino. What
gets lost in these dreams of power are the connections between the city
and the country, the earth and the sky, the past and the future.

What kinds of worlds are installed on the ground by the neoliberal
planning processes developed in the technocratic universities? Why do
these projects fail even before they begin? How to start building a
cultural and intellectual commons that can seep into the fabric of
everyday existence? The Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor is a call for
longer, slower, deeper connections between the territories where we
live. It’s a cartography of shared experience, built up by those who
nourish lasting ties between critical groups, political projects,
radical communities and experiments in alternative living. Why not help
build the commons by overflowing your usual daily routines? Why not make
the journey to the US Social Forum into a chance to discover the worlds
we can create right here in our own region?

This workshop draws from the inspiration of Grace Lee Boggs and the
travels of the Compass Group on our Continental Drift through the
Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor. The idea is to propose an act of
collective discovery and creation, to be carried out by anyone who’s
heading to the Social Forum. Multiple caravans each chart their
particular pathways and organize their own activist campaigns, artistic
exchanges, skill-sharing sessions, solidarity dinners or whatever else
they desire on the roads to Detroit, then converge at the Allied Media
conference and the US Social Forum to share stories, images, and
artifacts from their detours through the Midwestern labyrinth.
Meanwhile, those with different priorities can invent their own forms

Re: [-empyre-] Resilient Latin America: Reconnecting Urban Policyand the Collective's Imagination

2012-03-28 Thread Brian Holmes

On 03/28/2012 12:48 PM, Ala Plastica wrote:

Brian, Muy bueno e inspirador el texto CARTOGRAPHY WITH YOUR FEET.
Gracias por compartirlo.

Alejandro


Encantado que te gustó. El texto iba tan perfectamente con lo que tu 
dijiste, me pareció como un eco desde lejos.


Sin embargo, hay todavía una pregunta sobre la relación entre la 
resistencia y las fuerzas progresistas de la política constituida, ¿no? 
Hace mcho tiempo, en Paris en mitad de las noventa, la traducción 
francesa del libro de Miguel Benasayag y Diego Sztulwark, Política y 
situación, de la potencia al contrapoder, me hizo un efecto bastante 
impactante. Ellos decían que había que distinguir entre situaciones de 
resistencia y situaciones de gestión. Esto no quería decir que uno no 
podía, y incluso, no debía pasar de una a otra, de la resistencia a un 
tentativo de gestión más justa (o sea, un tentativo de urban policy). 
Solamente, lo importante era no confundir las dos, y jamás pensar que 
uno puede actuar de la misma manera en una situación de gestión como en 
una situación de resistencia. Trabajar con esta diferencia parece ser la 
base de toda política pragmática. Saber mantener la diferencia, incluso 
en las palabras que uno emplea, parece ser la única manera de evitar la 
retórica engañadora. Y más aún, de mantener abierta la grieta entre 
demanda popular y respuesta administrativa, de donde sale la fuerza viva 
de las pocas y raras relaciones democráticas que haya en el mundo social 
contemporáneo.


***

OK, translation time --

I just couldn't help sending that text because it went so perfectly with 
Alejandro's.


That said, isn't there still a question about the relation between 
resistance and the progressive forces of official politics? A long long 
time ago, in Paris in the mid-90s, the French translation of the book by 
Miguel Banasayag and Diego Sztulwark, Política y situación, de la 
potencia al contrapoder, had a great effect on me. They said you have 
to distinguish between a situation of resistance and a situation of 
management. This did not meant that one couldn't, or shouldn't, go from 
one to the other, from resistance to an attempt at a more just form of 
management (or what we're calling policy in this discussion). But the 
important thing was not to confuse the two, and never to act, when you 
are in a situation of management, in the same way as you would act in a 
situation of resistance. Working with this difference seems to be the 
basis of any pragmatic politics. Knowing how to maintain the 
distinction, even in the words that one uses, seems to be the only way 
to avoid a manipulative rhetoric. And even more, it's the only way to 
keep open the crack between grassroots demand and adminstrative 
response, from which emerge those few and very rare democratic social 
relations that we can occasionally experience in the contemporary world.


all the best, Brian




- Original Message - From: Brian Holmes
bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com
To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Resilient Latin America: Reconnecting Urban
Policyand the Collective's Imagination


On 03/28/2012 04:52 AM, Ala Plastica wrote:


In contrast to this idea of natural understanding, an intervention in
the environment is often conceived as an occupation based on the idea of
transport corridors. In this way, zones are divided according to
economic interests and the imagery is guided by commercial means of
communication and financial institutions with only a few spaces of
brilliant modernity. This can be defined as an ego-system, a system that
generates social and environmental toxicity affecting life quality and
health conditions seriously.


This is exactly what we wanted to poke fun at when we started talking
about the Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor! It's what my friend Angela
Melitopoulos calls corridorical thinking. But this notion of
ego-systems is more clear, it goes straight to the heart of the issue.
The world is now full of huge, top-down infrastructures, carried out
through state planning processes, just to support the illusion of ego
cut off / freed from the others. Mind you, I am not sure that all the
projects Teddy talks about really fall into this category, I think it's
important to look closely when people (even politicians) really try
something different...


Unfortunately, what is not included in this matrix is the point of view
of desirable social human relationships that links the economic and
social system with the place vocation. To a great extent, the
development of ego-systems occurs in societies due to the break of the
flow of social doing -the ability to do things. When this social flow of
doing fractures that power of doing turns into the opposite, the
power-over who conceives but does not execute, while the others execute
but do not conceive.


This whole text is beautiful, and what's more, spot on. Thanks for this,
Alejandro. Did you write

Re: [-empyre-] Resilient Latin America: Reconnecting Urban Policyand the Collective's Imagination

2012-03-28 Thread Ala Plastica
Brian, Muy bueno e inspirador el texto CARTOGRAPHY WITH YOUR FEET. Gracias 
por compartirlo.


Alejandro



- Original Message - 
From: Brian Holmes bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com

To: empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 11:58 AM
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Resilient Latin America: Reconnecting Urban 
Policyand the Collective's Imagination



On 03/28/2012 04:52 AM, Ala Plastica wrote:


In contrast to this idea of natural understanding, an intervention in
the environment is often conceived as an occupation based on the idea of
transport corridors. In this way, zones are divided according to
economic interests and the imagery is guided by commercial means of
communication and financial institutions with only a few spaces of
brilliant modernity. This can be defined as an ego-system, a system that
generates social and environmental toxicity affecting life quality and
health conditions seriously.


This is exactly what we wanted to poke fun at when we started talking
about the Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor! It's what my friend Angela
Melitopoulos calls corridorical thinking. But this notion of
ego-systems is more clear, it goes straight to the heart of the issue.
The world is now full of huge, top-down infrastructures, carried out
through state planning processes, just to support the illusion of ego
cut off / freed from the others. Mind you, I am not sure that all the
projects Teddy talks about really fall into this category, I think it's
important to look closely when people (even politicians) really try
something different...


Unfortunately, what is not included in this matrix is the point of view
of desirable social human relationships that links the economic and
social system with the place vocation. To a great extent, the
development of ego-systems occurs in societies due to the break of the
flow of social doing -the ability to do things. When this social flow of
doing fractures that power of doing turns into the opposite, the
power-over who conceives but does not execute, while the others execute
but do not conceive.


This whole text is beautiful, and what's more, spot on. Thanks for this,
Alejandro. Did you write it? In what context does it fit?

In echo I am going to paste in a text which our group (the Compass) used
as a kind of invitation or convocatorio for people going to the US
Social Forum in Detroit in 2010. We wanted to meet people and hear their
stories, to enlarge the process of co-creation. The echo is very strong,
you'll see:

CARTOGRAPHY WITH YOUR FEET

Driven by the pressures of corporate competition, Midwestern capital
elites envision a network of high-speed trains linking the scattered
cities of flyover land into a dense urban grid. Oblivious to
territories, histories, and peoples, you whisk your way from center to
center like a roulette ball spinning through the global casino. What
gets lost in these dreams of power are the connections between the city
and the country, the earth and the sky, the past and the future.

What kinds of worlds are installed on the ground by the neoliberal
planning processes developed in the technocratic universities? Why do
these projects fail even before they begin? How to start building a
cultural and intellectual commons that can seep into the fabric of
everyday existence? The Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor is a call for
longer, slower, deeper connections between the territories where we
live. It’s a cartography of shared experience, built up by those who
nourish lasting ties between critical groups, political projects,
radical communities and experiments in alternative living. Why not help
build the commons by overflowing your usual daily routines? Why not make
the journey to the US Social Forum into a chance to discover the worlds
we can create right here in our own region?

This workshop draws from the inspiration of Grace Lee Boggs and the
travels of the Compass Group on our Continental Drift through the
Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor. The idea is to propose an act of
collective discovery and creation, to be carried out by anyone who’s
heading to the Social Forum. Multiple caravans each chart their
particular pathways and organize their own activist campaigns, artistic
exchanges, skill-sharing sessions, solidarity dinners or whatever else
they desire on the roads to Detroit, then converge at the Allied Media
conference and the US Social Forum to share stories, images, and
artifacts from their detours through the Midwestern labyrinth.
Meanwhile, those with different priorities can invent their own forms of
travel and exchange, explore diverging temporalities, set up “stationary
drifts” in the neighborhoods they inhabit and continue the projects
they’re pursuing, while the moving worlds pass through them.

By taking the time for a conscious experience of the territories we are
continually traversing, we can build up what Stephen Shukaitis calls an
“imaginal machine”: a many-headed hydra telling tales