Radical media, politics and culture.

Announcements

October 20, 2005 - 8:25am -- jim
Announcements
Independent Media

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Multitudes, Creative Organisation and the Precarious Condition of New Media Labour

Fibreculture Journal

Edited by Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter

Broadly speaking, this issue of Fibreculture Journal is interested in the problem of political organisation as it relates to the overlapping spheres of labour and life within post-Fordist, networked settings. It's becoming increasingly clear that multiple forms of exclusion and exploitation within the media and cultural industries run along the lines of gender, ethnicity, age, and geography. New forms of class division are emerging whose locus of tension can be attributed to the ownership and control of information.


The mobile capacity of information corresponds, in many instances, with the flexible nature of work across many sectors of the media and cultural industries. And it is precisely the informatisation of social relations that makes political organisation such a difficult – even undesireable – undertaking for many. Without recourse to traditional institutions such as the union, new technics of organisation are required if the common conditions of exploitation are to be addressed and transformed.


Precarious labour practices generate new forms of subjectivity and connection, organised about networks of communication, cognition, and affect. These new forms of cooperation and collaboration amongst creative labourers contribute to the formation of a new socio-technical and politico-ethical multitude. The contemporary multitude is radically dissimilar from the unity of “the people” and the coincidence of the citizen and the state. What kinds of creative organisation are specific to precarious labour in the era of informatisation? How do they connect (or disconnect) to existing forms of institutional life? And how can escape from the subjectification of precarious labour be enacted without nostalgia for the social state or utopian faith in the spontaneity of auto-organisation? These are some of the key questions the articles gathered here set out to addresss.

October 19, 2005 - 12:35pm -- stevphen
Announcements
Economy

Manifestos for the Business School of Tomorrow

Fucking, weaving, boxing, masturbation and laziness. Did you ever wonder what is
happening in the university business school? According to the authors of Manifestos
for the Business School of Tomorrow, recently published by Dvalin Press, there is a
revolution – or a whole series of revolutions – currently going on within Higher
Education. This is a most curious and perverse publication. According to the authors
of this study we should learn to embrace and celebrate these recent innovations in
the curriculum of business studies. Tony Blair is not going to be happy. You may
have thought that the business school was a sober and serious, industrious
institution – your children safely installed in classrooms learning all about strategic
planning, Net Present Value, the 5Ps of marketing, recruitment and selection or
Human Resource Management. But all is not what it seems. Students of business and
management studies today are actually learning all about desire and animality,
indifference and evil, vulgarity and masturbation. They are learning how to be queer
and jackass, how to self-abuse with horse tranquillizer, how to cultivate laziness. ‘It
is not as if this is anything new in terms of the business school’, writes Dr Campbell
Jones, one of the editors of this volume, ‘lecturers in business and management
studies have always taught a curriculum of insane irrelevance and utter stupidity’.
‘What is unique’, co-editor Dr Damian O’Doherty continues, ‘is that many have
suddenly woken up to this fact and have begun to make a virtue of this futility and
folly. Forget financial planning and personnel management. From boxing to
vulgarity this book might actually teach students how to survive in Blair’s Britain
and the world of military imperialism and global capital’.

The experience of reading this book is one that will almost certainly leave you
profoundly disturbed. You will undoubtedly be left feeling a little queasy and lightheaded.
As one reviewer wrote: ‘this book is dangerous and should be treated with
extreme caution. The editors and authors are deranged if not certifiable… but the
problem is, they might be right!’ If pre-sales interest is anything to go by this book is
likely to be a best seller. With only a limited print run of this volume planned by the
editors and publishers, e-bay is currently trading advance signed copies of the book
at offers over £500. In response to selling out of the first edition, the editors and
publisher have now released an electronic version that is free to download from
Dvalin Press. As an antidote to corporate rhetoric and
government spin that ceaselessly intones about the importance of enterprise, hard
work, productivity and efficiency, this book is timely and critical, offering an
important series of essays and reflections on the state of the business school and
higher education in general. The Department of Education and Skills who advertise
their services with the Orwellian mantra ‘creating opportunity, realising potential
and achieving excellence’, have so far refused to comment on the implications of this
publication.

October 18, 2005 - 2:27pm -- stevphen
Announcements
Theory

Fibreculture Journal - issue 5

"Multitudes, Creative Organisation and the Precarious Condition of New Media Labour"

Edited by Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter

Broadly speaking, this issue of Fibreculture Journal is interested in the problem of
political organisation as it relates to the overlapping spheres of labour and life
within post-Fordist, networked settings. It's becoming increasingly clear that
multiple forms of exclusion and exploitation within the media and cultural
industries run along the lines of gender, ethnicity, age, and geography. New forms
of class division are emerging whose locus of tension can be attributed to the
ownership and control of information.

The mobile capacity of information corresponds, in many instances, with the flexible
nature of work across many sectors of the media and cultural industries. And it is
precisely the informatisation of social relations that makes political organisation
such a difficult - even undesireable - undertaking for many. Without recourse to
traditional institutions such as the union, new technics of organisation are
required if the common conditions of exploitation are to be addressed and
transformed.

October 17, 2005 - 12:34pm -- jim
Announcements
Events

"Cultural Production and the State" Conference
Albuquerque, New Mexico, April 8-11, 2006

Papers are currently being accepted for the Southwest/Texas Popular
Culture & American Culture Association’s Annual Conference being held in
Albuquerque February 2006.


This year a new Area has been developed entitled “Cultural Production and
The State.” This Area has been created to explore the ways in which
cultural production reproduces and/or undermines the State.

This Area is currently seeking new and provocative papers that illustrate
the critical role popular culture assumes in constructing our collective
understandings of the political landscape(s) in which we live.


Abstracts are due November 15, and must be 150-250 words. Please include
any technical needs.

WHAT: Southwest/Texas Popular Culture/American Popular Culture Annual
Conference

WHEN: April 8-11, 2006

WHERE: Hyatt Regency Albuquerque

For more information on this Area please contact Michelle Stewart at
mlstewart@ucdavis.edu.

For more information on the conference and other Areas please visit here.

October 17, 2005 - 9:59am -- jim
Announcements
Events

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Surviving the Dirty War

Patricia Isasa

Larkskpur, California, Nov. 3, 2005

Argentina kidnap victim Patricia Isasa will discuss her abduction and torture and present her documentary film on Thursday, November 3, at the Redwoods Presbyterian Church, 110 Magnolia Avenue, Larkspur, at 7:30 PM.


At the time of her kidnapping in July of 1976, Patricia Indiana Isasa was a 16-year-old high-school student in Santa Fe, Argentina. She was taken by a commando group of the state police and “disappeared” for three months. She was then taken to a military barracks and held prisoner without trial or due process for two years and two months.


Her 50-minute film "El Cerco" documents the investigation she initiated in 1997, which led to the discovery of the identities of some individuals responsible for violent repression of civil rights during the seventies. Thanks to Ms. Isasa's relentless efforts, today eight people are in jail and awaiting trial, including an ex-federal judge, an ex-assistant secretary for security of Santa Fe, and several ex-policemen (one of them a graduate of the School of the Americas).


The program is sponsored by Marin Interfaith Task Force on the Americas. A $5-10 donation is requested. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. This venue is wheelchair accessible. Refreshments will be served. For more information, please call 415/924-3227 or email mitf@igc.org

October 17, 2005 - 8:52am -- jim
Announcements
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes:

Draft Timetable for "Continental Drift" Seminar 2

Brian Holmes

New York City, Oct. 20-23, 2005

Tentative Program

1. Hours

2. Invited guests

3. Program properly speaking

For those not on the list, you may subscribe by just sending the word
subscribe in the subject line and body to: drift@16beavergroup.org
Also check 16beavergroup.org for the address and stuff. It's just 16
Beaver Street, at Bowling Green metro stop in the financial district of
Manhattan.

1. HOURS


Rene and Ayreen, who have amazzzing stamina for essayreading,
workshopping, videostreaming, letterwriting, notetaking and many other
things that are beyond my ken, have proposed these hours:


Thursday 2–6, 7–10

Friday 2–6, 7–10

Saturday 1–8

Sunday 1–8

I'd suggest we consider Thursday–Friday 2 to 4, and Saturday–Sunday 1 to
3, as a true workshop time, where those who wish to come will talk about
"What is to be done?" and take immediate action on a micropolitical
level. This might allow us to start work a project. Every day could also
include an eating hour in the late afternoon; and an eating-drinking
hour at the end is natural enough, but I guess it'll be outside during
the weekend.


Sessions would start promptly at 4 PM on Thursday–Friday and at 3 PM on
Saturday–Sunday, so be there or enjoy something else!

2. GUESTS


Thursday night:
Kolya Abramsky, who is working at the Fernand Braudel Institute for
world-systems theory in Ithaca, and whom I know from activist circles in
Europe, is going to come on Thursday to discuss his paper "Disentangling
the Future from the Past: Internationalism, World Revolution and World
War." It's a long but extremely interesting text and I encourage you to
read it. We will then be able to have the discussion that we did not
have last time, on the usefulness and limits of the Marxist language
(because Kolya is not tied to this kind of language, in fact, he has
worked much more with contemporary social movements). We will also no
doubt take a further look at the debates over the concepts of Empire and
Multitudes. The text is in a PDF at www.u-tangente.org in the
Continental Drift section (16 Beaver sesssions), or directly at the
address below (please don't hesitate to write me if you have any
difficulties downloading it):

http://ut.yt.t0.or.at/site/index.php?option=com_co ntent&task=view&id=265&Itemid=125


Friday afternoon:
Mackenzie Wark, whom many of you know, the author of the Hacker
Manifesto and of a thousand great things you can find on the web, is
going to develop an extremely interesting idea of his, which is an
analysis of the way that the US right wing — what I would call the
hegemony of the military-industrial complex and the fundamentalist
Christians — has created a parallel public sphere of media and
institutions, culminating in the mind-pollution of Fox News. This may
likely end up a kind of idea-generating session, so bring everything you
know about right-wing think tanks, Christian political militancy on the
right and brain-numbing corporate media. And then we'll make a party
with all that, 'cause unfortunately, they already have one and it's
sitting in the White House....

3. "THE PROGRAM PROPERLY SPEAKING"


(...being a tentative proposal with names, hours and dates and still
some holes...)


(This is also up at www.u-tangente.org, so please send changes and
proposals ASAP to the Drift list and we will adjust, we can also add
hours if we need, don't be shy, present something we all need to
hear/see/touch/join)

Thursday

2–4 PM: Opening Session

4 PM: Jim Costanzo: Data Map

5 PM:...

7-9 PM: Kolya Abramsky/BH: The Language of World Revolution

(howd'ya like that for a title? for the idea, see above no. 2)

Friday

2–4 PM: Working Session

4–6 PM: Ken Wark: Parallel Public Spheres of the American Right

7–8 PM:.... (hopefully Emily who's hopefully coming)

8–9 PM: Maribel and Sebastian: Research Riots (or when the Naked City
really starts to cut loose)

Saturday

3 PM: Rozalinda Borcila: Title to be Announced (another hit from the
spontaneous titles dept.)

4 PM: Peter Walsh/Marty Lucas: Public Art and Political resistance

6–8 PM: Brian Holmes: Network Maps, Energy Diagrams

Sunday

3 PM: Claire Pentecost: Plastic Greenhouses by the Sea/BH: The
Urbanization of Blindness

4 PM:.... (maybe the Gabri boys?)

6 PM: Brian Holmes: The Artistic Device (some more reflections on
activism & art)

7 PM: EVERYBODY: Closing Debate

PLEASE DON'T HESITATE TO WRITE BACK AND AMEND/CHANGE/EXPAND/RENEW THIS!

October 17, 2005 - 8:28am -- jim
Announcements
Events

Rethinking Marxism 2006 Conference

Amherst, Massachusetts, Oct 26–28, 2006

Rethinking Marxism, a journal of economics, culture & society is pleased to announce its 6th major international conference, to be held at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst on 26-28 October, 2006. The conference is entitled Rethinking Marxism 2006.


Rethinking Marxism's five previous international conferences have each attracted between 750 and 1200 participants, and they have included keynote addresses and plenary sessions, formal papers, workshops, art exhibitions, video presentations, activist sessions, and performances. Versions of all of these events are planned for Rethinking Marxism 2006.

October 13, 2005 - 9:05am -- jim
Announcements
Drug War

greenfever writes

UK To Host 2006 Global Marijuana Music Awards

GET READY to ROCK & ROLL at the 2006 GLOBAL MARIJUANA MUSIC AWARDS!!


The 2006 GMMA is open to all music across the globe with a marijuana
theme. Winners announced at 2006 Cannabis Rally, London. Entries
accepted in English, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, German, Japanese, Greek,
French, Hebrew & Arabic. With 14 music categories to choose from
including Poetry & Video and a cash prize for Pot Song of Year,
marijuana is something to sing about!
Wanna be a Potstar? Check out here to enter the
2006 GMMA!

October 12, 2005 - 3:56pm -- jim
Announcements
Independent Media

"goscilo" writes:


Stalinka Digital Library Online

The University of Pittsburgh team of Susan Corbesero, Helena Goscilo, and
Petre Petrov takes pleasure in announcing the launch of their STALINKA, a
comprehensive digital library of Staliniana for educational purposes.
STALINKA comprises both visual and verbal texts. The latter, currently
under construction, includes biographical history, annotated bibliographies
of Joseph Stalin's works, a "Who's Who" of individuals and organizations
central to his activities, and critical scholarship on Stalin/ism. The
visual part of the collection (now approximately 370 images) encompasses
representations of Stalin in various genres: portraits, sculptures,
graphics, photographs, and material objects. Hosted by the DRL (Digital
Research Library) within the University Library System (ULS), these images
may be accessed here.

We welcome anyone and everyone to the site, but emphasize that all the
images are copyrighted and may not be disseminated or used outside the
classroom without permission. Enjoy!


Helena Goscilo for the S-Team

October 11, 2005 - 1:51pm -- jim
Announcements
Culture

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Godpolitics" Information Sought

This is a request for people to forward articles, information and ideas regarding the rise of religious literalists in public spheres, for the blog/site:
http://www.bewareofthegod.com/

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