Please join us for the launch of our new programming series, Open Sourcing the City: Invited and Uninvited Participation.

Urban Utopia or Luxury City
Representing and Redeveloping New York in the Bloomberg Era
With Miriam Greenberg
Tuesday, August 24, 7:30pm

In her talk, Miriam Greenberg analyzes the use of city marketing alongside redevelopment by the Bloomberg administration, and the peculiar type of urban commodity this has helped produce. Under Bloomberg, there has been a significant increase in the scale and scope of city marketing, which now includes year-round global operations alongside hundreds of local campaigns aimed at residents and business. This has coincided with the Mayor's equally ambitious economic development plan for New York. Informally dubbed "luxury city," this is a plan for high-end commercial and residential development throughout all five boroughs.

Yet interestingly, "luxury city" is nowhere to be found in official marketing. Rather, in a style that harkens back to the 1970's-era "I Love NY" campaign, and that taps into post-crisis desires and anxieties, current efforts are profoundly utopian. They emphasize New York's diversity, creativity, and unity, and present the city as an open, post-class terrain in which all may participate.

These themes are backed up by user-friendly and extremely popular tech services-from user-driven websites to the 311 help line-all powered by Bloomberg terminals. How do we square this utopian messaging with the reality of the luxury city? If the former celebrates diversity and participation, the latter shows the social exclusion these terms can facilitate in the current period.

About Miriam Greenberg
Miriam Greenberg is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz. Greenberg's work lies at the intersection of urban studies, media studies, and political economy. She is the author of Branding New York: How a City in Crisis Was Sold to the World (Routledge, 2008) and the forthcoming Crisis Cities: Disaster and Redevelopment in New York and New Orleans (Oxford).

August 24 - October 28, 2010

Global urbanism is one of the most significant trends of this century. For the first time, a majority of people on the planet now live in cities. As populations shift to urban centers, space – which is already at a premium in most cities and dwellings – becomes an even more pressing concern. Short of growing our architecture ever higher and spreading the creep of concrete, we seek solutions that consider size constraints alongside questions of environmental, social and economic sustainability.

Artists and designers, developers and planners, activists and architects respond to these challenges with creative solutions. But our fixed gear bikes and rooftop farms, geo-location apps and LEED certified lofts are lifestyles cum commodities, quickly subsumed into brand campaigns, used to sell a spatial agenda. Kill your Facebook profile, grow your food, you are still a walking talking advertisement for gentrification whether you like it or not.

Inevitably, where people converge, spatial conflicts arise. The ideas and desires of one group come at the expense of another. While social media and technology are heralded as cost-effective means to open-source the city, this participation is only partial, presenting an imagined consensus that obscures deeper forms of social exclusion. Too often, participation affirms a system rather than challenging it. And our contemporary system contradicts sustainability principles with a fundamental and fatal design flaw: that of impossible, unlimited growth.

Given these conditions, how can cultural creatives and spatial practitioners participate productively? What are constructive forms of critical engagement? What does an architecture look like that acts not to serve a community but to produce it? How might we open-source the city in invited and uninvited ways?

Series Schedule
(save the dates)

Tuesday, August 24, 7:30pm - 9:30pm -- professor/author Miriam Greenberg (Branding NY: How a City in Crisis Sold Itself to the World)

Thursday, September 16, 7:30pm - 9:30pm -- artist/activist Emily Forman (Department of Land Space Reclamation)

Monday, September 27, 7:30pm - 9:30pm -- architect/writer Markus Miessen (The Nightmare of Participation)

Friday, October 8, 7pm - 9pm -- artist Rick Lowe (Project Row Houses)

Thursday, October 14, 7:30pm - 9:30pm -- artist Shaun Slifer (Howling Mob Society) and artist/academic Gregory Sholette (Repo History)

Late-October (date TBA) -- Michael Cataldi, John Houck, David Kelley, Hans Kuzmich, Jens Maier- Rothe, Jeannine Tang (Parallel Lines project)

We know more and more about digital activism with each new example of online "people power", yet we understand very little about the fundamentals. We have been asking the same questions about digital activism's effect on political power around the world, yet we remained locked in the same debates between optimists and pessimists, each armed with their own anecdotes. How can activists, practitioners, and citizens move the discourse of digital activism forward?

Join us on Tuesday, July 20 at 7:30pm for a participatory discussion led by Mary Joyce, co-founder of the site DigiActive.org and editor of Digital Activism Decoded, and contributors Katharine Brodock , Brannon Cullum, Sem DeVillart, Dave Karpf, Dan Schulz, and Brian Waniewski.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Citizens around the world are using digital technologies to push for social and political change. Yet, while stories have been published, discussed, extolled, and derided, the underlying mechanics of digital activism are little understood. This new field, its dynamics, practices, misconceptions, and possible futures are presented together for the first time in Digital Activism Decoded.

Tuesday, June 29, 7:30pm (free)

Please join us for an artist talk and multi-media presentation by Spanish artist/activist Leonidas Martin. We'll get a visual tour of some of the most creative art/activist interventions performed in the context of the counter-globalization movement, and in contemporary urban struggles in Barcelona and beyond, including Las Agencias, Yomango, Pret a Revolter, and New Kids on the Black Bloc. Leo will explore the relationship between art and activism, how creativity can be a powerful tool for social transformation, how we can have fun while fighting back, and why direct action is one of the fine arts.

ABOUT LEONIDAS MARTIN
Leonidas Martin is a Professor at Barcelona University where he teaches video, new media and political art. For many years he has been developing collective projects between art and activism, many of them well known internationally. He also writes about art and politics for cultural blogs, journals and newspapers. As a video maker he has created several documentaries and movies for television and internet. He is a member of the cultural collective “Enmedio” (http://www.enmedio.info). Last but not least, he is an expert telling jokes, often using this divine gift to get free beers and to avoid police arrest.

Please note: we've reached the maximum number of attendees for this workshop, however DoTank may be hosting more in the future. If you're interested in hearing about future urban agriculture skillshares sign up here.

Please join us at The Change You Want To See Gallery this Saturday for a hands-on urban agriculture workshop with hosts DoTank Brooklyn. From worms to seed bombs to vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window farms, you'll gain new tools to help you engage in and enhance your urban environment.

Bring curiosity, cameras, and a pen and notebook.

Saturday June 5, 1-3pm
$15 entry to cover materials
Capped at 30 attendees for the best hands-on experience

RSVP
Click here to RSVP if you intend to pay at the door
(does not guarantee your spot)
Click here to RSVP and Pre-Pay by card
(guarantees your spot)

ABOUT DOTANK BROOKLYN
DoTank is a public vessel for interdisciplinary exploration, engagement and enhancement of our urban environment through means outside of the formal urban planning process. We make rapid and meaningful change by exploring and testing in our laboratory: Brooklyn, NY. By catalyzing local intellectual capital, we carry out interventions meant to improve the built environment. We connect, capture, build, design, and produce, and above all else, we Do.
http://dotankbrooklyn.org

ABOUT WINDOWFARMS

For the next Upgrade NY! event we present a panel and discussion on “multiple singularity”: when a group of people makes work or takes action under a singular name. Panelists Marco Deseriis, Leónidas Martín Saura, and Janez Janša will present and discuss radical strategies in the construction of singularity by tracing a genealogy of collective pseudonyms and "multiple-use names" such as Ned Ludd, Alan Smithee, Monty Cantsin, Karen Eliot and Luther Blissett, and connecting it to contemporary experiments such as Yomango! and Janez Janša.

Upgrade! is an international network of autonomous nodes located throughout the world that are united by art, technology, and a commitment to bridging cultural divides. Upgrade! NY is a monthly programming series co-produced by Eyebeam and Not An Alternative. The 2010 curatorial theme explores open source activist and creative practices. http://upgradeny.net

May 10, 7pm - 9pm (free)
Eyebeam Art & Technology Center
540 W. 21st Street, NY, NY
And streamed live: http://eyebeam.org/live

Panelists:
Marco Deseriis (New York University)
Leonidas Martin Saura (Artist and Professor, Yomango! and Enmedio)
Janez Janša (Artist, Janez Janša Janez Janša Janez Janša)

“That is art beyond media: the impossible –
And you are dealing with it.”

-Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei and Jonas Staal, Follow Us Or Die (Atropos Press, 2009)

Thursday, April 29, 7:30pm (free)
Artists Vincent van Gerven Oei and Jonas Staal explore the relationship between art, morality and society. In their work, they transform a court session into a performance, fragments of car bomb wrecks into jewelry, while a suicide terrorist is judged on his composition techniques.

Their video pamphlet “Follow us or Die” is a reflection on so-called ‘high school shooters’, young people who kill their teachers and classmates in a brutal manner. The visual and textual legacy of these ‘shooters’- the pre-recorded videos and texts circulating in the media after the events – function as central elements in the video.

The corresponding book presents short stories, poetry, theater pieces, visual outputs and essays that deal with the heritage of these young shooters – who saw total annihilation as the only possibility to express themselves – to point to core fears and desires in contemporary society.

On Thursday, April 29th we’ll be joined by Vincent W. J. van Gerven Oie for a book reading, screening and artist talk that will situate these subjects in a broader social and artistic context.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei studied composition, linguistics and conceptual art in Den Haag and Leiden, The Netherlands and Amherst MA, USA. He is a PhD candidate in the Media & Communications department at the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland. His research targets the borders and interfaces between art, technology, activism and theory and encompasses installations, pamphlets, essays and lectures. Van Gerven Oei works and lives in Den Haag, The Netherlands.

Story-based Strategies for Action Design
Multimedia presentation and training
with smartMeme

Monday, March 29, 7:30pm (free)
Streamed live for out-of-towners at http://livestream.com/notanalternative

Story telling is an ancient and powerful form of human expression. Today, however the power of story is mainly used by advertisers, PR flacks and political propagandists. In order to make change, social movements must tell new stories that challenge assumptions and shape new possibilities for action and change.

How can activist and artists use story-based strategies to design "image events": actions, images or stories that simultaneously destroy and construct new meaning? How can we either replace existing sets of symbols or re-define their meaning? Can we connect organizing struggles with the ethereal world of culture, media and narrative?

The story-based strategy approach is grounded in a narrative analysis of power––the recognition that humans understand the world and their role in it through stories and thus all power relations have a narrative component. Every issue already has a web of existing stories and cultural assumptions that frame public understanding. Story-based strategy provides a process to understand the current story around an issue and identify opportunities to change that story with the right framing, messages, messengers and creative interventions.

Join Doyle Canning and Patrick Reinsborough, cofounders of smartMeme and authors of Re:Imagining Change for a provocative, multi-media presentation and hands-on training that will explore the power of memes, creative action and new strategic frameworks for affecting social change and the transmission of culture.

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Seattle World Trade Organization protests, please join us:

This Is What Democracy Looks Like (2000) and Battle in Seattle (2007)

Screenings, Drinking and Discussion
With Rick and Jacquie of Big Noise Films
Sunday, November 29, 6pm - 10pm

The Change You Want To See Gallery
http://www.thechangeyouwanttosee.org
84 Havemeyer St @ Metropolitan Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Recommended reading: "Copenhagen: Seattle Grows Up" by Naomi Klein for The Nation

The early 90s were a low point for the Americas. NAFTA had passed, the guerrilla had been murdered in the mountains, the unions were being broken. . . history had ended.

But 10 years ago, we opened a tear in the fabric of that political reality. Suddenly it was possible to imagine futures that we had not allowed ourselves to see, and remember pasts we had been trained to forget.

On the 10th Anniversary of the protests that shut down the WTO in Seattle, join your friends from Big Noise Films and Not An Alternative as we reflect back and look forward. Celebrate the anniversary of our victory, hang out and play drinking games while we laugh at Ray Liotta playing Mayor Paul Schell with a bit too much eyeliner, and Andre 3000 cribbing lines from Hop Hopkins. Join Seattle vets and the Copenhagen-bound as we trace the trajectory from then to now, and beyond.

BYOB encouraged, popcorn provided.

Monday, November 23, 7:30pm (free/by donation)
The Change You Want To See Gallery
84 Havemeyer St, at Metropolitan Ave, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Branding is a complex communications system of signifiers that leverages psychoanalytical principals of irrationality and desire. While products are made in a factory, brands are created in our minds. A typical response to the persuasion industries on the part of the Left has been to reject them as manipulative, or servicing an unsustainable system of consumption.

Baudrillard defines consumption as “an active mode of relations…a systematic mode of activity and a global response on which our whole cultural system is founded.” This consumption refers not only to material goods in the classical sense, but also to concepts, images and messages. We are surrounded by systems of language and exchange.

In this series we’ve explored the history and mechanics of branding and advertising, multi-billion dollar industries that seek to expand influence over culture. We have also raised the question: are the tools the problem, or is it the ends to which they are employed? What might it look like to sell something beyond propaganda or products?

In this final installment, consultant Loid Der, former creative director of the world’s largest branding agency, will present the tricks of the trade. From research and design, branding briefs to implementation and analysis, Loid will walk us through the methodologies and processes he’s used in developing brands.

This is an A to Z curriculum, customized for our crowd (like a pro market researcher Loid has attended every event in the series). We’ll unpack case studies from corporations, non-profits, and the political world. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to peek under the hood and arm yourself with the tools of persuasion.

ABOUT LOID DER
Loid Der is creative consultant specializing in developing and managing strategic brand solutions for corporations and non-profit organizations. Until he began his own practice, he was a creative director at the world's largest branding agency, Interbrand for the last four years, leading creative teams from strategy, concept, design through implementation, and was responsible for creating the brand identities for AT&T, Microsoft and Xerox. His non-profit clients and projects include Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest), the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the Yes Men, Alternet and Not An Alternative. and He has collaborated with artists and writers on book and installation projects to explore issues of surveillance, security and seduction, female interrogation and torture techniques , kitsch and death. He has won numerous awards from Communication Arts, Graphis, Art Directors Club New York, Critique, Type Directors Club, and Idea Magazine. His work has been included in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Design.