While we're sorry to have taken so long, we think the current moment is no less urgent.
by New York Year Zero
back to dispatch page
Dear Comrades, and Editors of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest,
October 2013
We would like to now, 2 years later, finally respond to your call for "a
movement journalism project among Occupy Wall Street". While we're sorry
to have taken so long, we think the current moment is no less urgent. And
perhaps, indeed, such an exchange is ever more relevant and necessary,
now, precisely because of its taking place in the absence of any apparent
evental or ruptural context; when the challenge to confront all of those
counter-insurgent forces among (and within) us is that much greater.
We'd like to begin with some questions of our own:
1. Why was your initial inquiry around the Occupy Wall Street event and
movement focused on "(self-)education"?
Often we see, or hear, or read about some glimpses of revolt in places and
times other than our own, and we're left wondering, what the fuck was
that? What was happening? Why? Who? How? And worse than this initial
general confusion is not knowing how to find out, from whom, from where.
So we recognize the importance of, and are sympathetic with, calls,
projects, and exchanges such as what you initiated almost 2 years ago.
One of the reasons we'd like to respond now is our realization, and
perhaps we can even call it a self-critique, that despite the near
simultaneity of mass uprisings throughout the world in 2011, we did not
come away with a significant amount of meaningful connections with
comrades engaged in struggle in cities other than our own. Even within the
United States this was true: we knew there were Occupy camps and general
assemblies in towns and cities throughout the country, but this newfound
appearance, visibility, and even normalization of resistance did not, in
our opinion, satisfactorily lead to the materialization of new radical
networks which might later be used in the aid of national and
international struggle. Though we knew many others were struggling around
the world, did we know who, and did we hear from them as to why, how, and
what they learned in the course of their activity? We think it's important
and critical that more exchanges like this take place, and indeed not just
exchanges between individuals, but among collectivities, groupings, cells,
communes, etc, so that the forms of organization and life that came out of
past struggles can be better prepared for those still to come.
2. We're curious now, 2 years later, about your thoughts on this research
project? Both its results, as well as the thinking that motivated it.
3. Looking back, it seems on the same day we received your request to
participate in this project, is when the Occupy Los Angeles camp began.
How did watching what was happening in New York (and Spain, and Greece,
and Egypt, and Tunisia, and Wisconsin) influence what would happen in LA?
What were you able to learn from Occupy Wall Street that influenced Occupy
Los Angeles, and in which ways do you think Occupy Los Angeles was
distinct from what was happening in NYC, and elsewhere?
Our interest in Occupy Wall Street, now, is not one of nostalgia, but in
thinking seriously and critically about contemporary struggle. The
question today is not just of the struggle we want, nor of the struggle we
think needs to be, but in engaging in the struggle we've seen, the
struggle we've known. Within the last 2 years this has meant, among other
things, Occupy Wall Street, in the last 5 the Greek insurrection (2008),
in the last 10 Argentina's economic collapse (2001).
4. How did your collective activity from 2001-2011, in Los Angeles and
elsewhere, prepare you for Occupy Wall Street? How were you able to use
whatever collective resources you acquired and built in that decade to
assist in your participation in the movement and the moment? How did
having something resembling organizational infrastructure--a name, a
website, a mailing list, the ability to put out calls, etc--help when it
came time to Occupy Los Angeles?
For now,
New York Year Zero
Below Is our (Journal of Aesthetics & Protest's) responses:
1. Why was your initial inquiry around the Occupy Wall Street event and
movement focused on "(self-)education"?'
We focused on self-education because of what we've come to understand about the process of political change in general and about what seemed to be happening at occupy in particular.
Generally- Outside of direct or indirect conflict (in the streets, meeting halls, and ballot boxes) we've come to understand that one of the main things that movements/the-whole-political-thing is about is about the constituting. Constitution is an ongoing process of conversation, dialog, protest, aesthetic presentation, etc… thus at its base, "politics" is a process of learning. It is a process of learning who I am/ who we are/how we desire to be/ how things are/what power is etc… education in real time.
Specifically- Occupy's strength was that it was posited initially as a place of not knowing.
"We don't know what our agenda is"- this to us seemed to be one kernel which mediatically distinguished it from other recent interventions into the public sphere; imagine if a group with an "agenda" (some left party or NGO) had begun the occupation. Be serious in considering the potential then for popularity if it were otherwise and ask how long Occupy would that have.
Occupy seemed, to us, to be about a learning of how we might, together under this particularly broad "democratic" formation, make change. It was a test, a collectively organized proposition about what we as a people could do- legally, socially, politically, and very concretely in these streets, on this block, with these neighbors, with this money etc…
2. We're curious now, 2 years later, about your thoughts on this research
project? Both its results, as well as the thinking that motivated it.
We loved the concept of the project but found it impossible to organize from a distance.
We had a very surprising potential collaboration for this project, a come-on from a major research institution, but turned them down because we were unsure of both how we as an independent journal might interface with such an institution and equally because we were not so confident in our analysis that we could actually trust that we could responsibly collaborate at a distance.
We feel that this project and other projects that consciously use tools of militant research hold massive potential for social movements- as both an organizing tool within the movement and for research after-the fact. We are inspired by the work of Ultra-red who do aim to use said tools in social organizing, and of course hybrid intellectual/activists who bring their knowledge into social movements.
Overall, though, this project ended up being a model and a tiny snapshot.
Were we able to develop and hold on to a structured research team, it could have really generated something. Alas.
That said, our awareness of its potential has definitely spawned an ongoing (as yet unpublished) research interests on how contemporary "autonomous" movements generate both self-understanding and mediations (in protest images, movement culture, but also broader artistic and mediatic creations) that continue to effect their self-understanding and the understanding of others at a distance.
3. Looking back, it seems on the same day we received your request to
participate in this project, is when the Occupy Los Angeles camp began...
We were writing you from Germany, not Los Angeles.
Our interest in Occupy Wall Street, now, is not one of nostalgia, but in
thinking seriously and critically about contemporary struggle....
In a way, each struggle is isolated to its particular context.
While there are individuals and groups whose organizing and experiences connect each moment, and while there are definite tools (rhetorical, tactical, organizing-wise etc…) generated at one site then refined at others, it is difficult to connect struggles in one clean, short narrative.
That said, our current interest in how participants in autonomous movements act as both readers and writers of within an autonomous news network (see above, question 2) has been sparked because of these current conditions… conditions which obviously help generate on a global scale these outbreaks of resistance and disobedience.
4. How did your collective activity from 2001-2011, in Los Angeles and
elsewhere, prepare you for Occupy Wall Street?....
Ten plus years of experience as an organization are difficult to summarize in a short text.
We were not specifically involved in LA's Occupy because we weren't in town.
That said, we can talk about how our experiences as an institution helped us in our participation in the West Coast for-runner of Occupy; that is, the University of California (UC) Occupations and antagonisms of 2009/2010.
As a Journal, we'd been publishing and organizing around issues of precarity, cultural capital, the neoliberal absorption of social and creative labor, issues around the university, collectivity etc… We'd participated in agitations, conversations, panel discussions, exhibitions and other things on related topics for several years, noticing that though we'd been imbedded within a rich flow of thought on these contemporary topics few of our peers within the broader arts community understood the topics as little more then another topic.
In addition to being directly impacted by the situation in the UC's, we understood as a Journal that this crisis could be articulated in a manner that could organize a large response from within our community. We understood how the UC Occupations could help present, front-and-center, ideas and issues central to our collective lives in a concise formulation containing both symptom and cure.
Because of our many years working in situ, we understood how, in collaboration with other like-minded individuals and organizations, we could organize a convergence which would support both students and professionals involved at the UC's and other schools and disseminate ideas.
Also because of our history, we were able to identify extant resources that'd be helpful. Other resources came to us (in terms of money and volunteers and eyeballs) with the expectation that we might be able to use them. Finally, through experience, we tried to deal with the usual issues of specific access (leveling out of professional and scene-specific hierarchies, dealing with timing issues, learning issues (in that we had a full-body holistic approach) and to particular power relations).
Eventually, we embedded a three-day convergence within a month-long of activist calendar leading to a UC day of action. While much of the UC organizing elsewhere focused on campuses, we were decidedly off-campus- making connections between our abstract workspace (our temp jobs at universities) and our concrete work-place of the social/political/cultural sphere of the broader LA fine arts community. We became, through this action to become a clearing house for information not only on the specifics of the crisis, but also of contemporary thought and on-campus organizing tools (posters we'd and others had made, and thought-tools), and of course a calendar with protest and related events.
Having a name, a website and a mailing list along with a social history with others involved in the project all were key to the project's success.