Not An Alternative Programming

NO↔SPACE
GOODBYE WILLIAMSBURG
RENTRIFICATION PARTY
Saturday, September 17
84 Havemeyer St at Metropolitan Ave

$10 suggested donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)
All proceeds go to the move and build-out of our new space.
Cash bar with local beer and wine served.

Please join us for our last event ever at No-Space (formerly called The Change You Want To See Gallery) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After 7 years and hundreds of artist talks, film screenings, workshops, festivals, block parties, panel discussions and projects, a 240% rent increase sends us packing for new pastures. But first, we play.

We'll kick off the evening screening films shot in Williamsburg over the last 30 years, depicting a changing landscape, both physically and culturally. After that, a benediction by Reverend Billy of the Church of Earthaluliah, and then a dance party with DJs Angel Nevarez, DJ N-Ron, and the Hungry March Band.

This isn't goodbye, this is goodbye Williamsburg. Stay tuned for an inaugural party in the NEW No-Space sometime in October!

Film Screenings: 6pm - 9:30pm
6pm: Metropolitan Ave (1985, 52 mins)
7pm: Made in Brooklyn (1993, 55 mins)
8pm: Up on the Roof (2008, 58 mins)
9pm: Scenes from a Movement: The Fight to Halt Williamsburg's Over-Development (2011, 9 mins)
An Academic Discussion of Gentrification (2011, 6 mins)
Queen of Williamsburg (2009, 10 mins)

Benediction: 9:30
Reverend Billy of the Church of Earthaluliah
Dance Party: 9:30pm - 2am
DJ Angel Nevarez, Hungry March Band, and DJ N-Ron

Special party thanks to Sarah Nelson Wright, Angel Nevarez, Noel Hidalgo, Daniel Perlin, Angela Tran, Sasha Sumner, Jason Cadler, all our friends who are volunteering on Saturday, and most of all you, our audience and collaborators.

ABOUT THE FILMS
Metropolitan Ave (1985, 52 mins)
Metropolitan Avenue is an inspiring film about community, about the changing role of women, and about how powerful ordinary people can be when they join together to fight for something they believe in. The film focuses on a lively Brooklyn neighborhood which, like many urban areas, faces problems caused by racial tensions and cutbacks in municipal services. But in this case, a group of "traditional" homemakers from varied ethnic backgrounds rises to the challenge and forms coalitions to fight for the community's survival. Directed by Christine Noschese.

Made in Brooklyn (1993, 55 mins)
Made in Brooklyn examines the decline of New York's industrial base as economic policy makers shift their focus to a service-based economy. Focuses on the history and current vitality of Brooklyn's manufacturing community, and its implications for New York and the entire country. Interweaving historic photographs and archival footage, it traces Brooklyn's history as an industrial supplier and home to such business giants as Domino Sugar Refinery and the Eberhart Faber Pencil Factory. Directed by Isabel Hill.

Up on the Roof (2008, 58 mins)
The pigeon keepers of New York have been in the spotlight recently, and now a new JL Aronson documentary, Up on the Roof, looks at the gentrification of Williamsburg through their experiences. Up on the Roof follows several devoted pigeon breeders in one predominantly Latino section of Brooklyn through the rigors and rewards of a quintessential New York tradition. All along the waterfront, and throughout blue collar Brooklyn, pigeon fancying has been an active pastime for centuries, handed down from one group of residents to the next, and Williamsburg has long been the center of the action. But as with so many once blighted and now hip districts throughout the world, Brooklyn and Williamsburg in particular is being scrubbed of its old world character to make way for a new urbanism. This colorful, urban-wildlife doc considers what we lose in the process of urban renewal and treats the audience like an insider in an unseen and in many ways vanishing world. Directed by JL Aronson.

Scenes from a Movement: The Fight to Halt Williamsburg's Over-Development (2011, 9 mins)
Footage from the 2005 Williamsburg/Greenpoint rezoning protests' creative actions. Features Not An Alternative, the Williamsburg Warriors, Reverend Billy, the Hungry March Band and neighbors and friends. Directed by JL Aronson.

An Academic Discussion of Gentrification (2011, 6 mins)
Interview with Dr. Winifred Curran, an urban geographer with interests in gentrification and urban change, labor geographies, race and gender. Her dissertation work looked at the effect of gentrification on small scale manufacturers in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. Includes archival footage and excerpts from Jonas Mekas' film "Williamsburg, Brooklyn", and Diego Echevarria's film "Los Sures". Directed by JL Aronson.

Queen of Williamsburg (2009, 10 mins)
Leonora Russo is a widower who has been living in the same rent controlled Williamsburg apartment for the past 60 years. This short documentary follows her on an average day, as she walks down Bedford Avenue, past the funky boutiques and expensive cafes. Leonora is known as "The Queen of Williamsburg" (though some call her "The Mayor") and is widely acclaimed for both her unique style and for her advocacy work for the People’s Firehouse. Directed by Klara Egei.

ABOUT THE MUSIC
Angel Nevarez is an artist, musician, and DJ. He, and his longtime collaborator Valerie Tevere, have produced works which investigate contemporary music, dissent, and public fora, and move between the spatial simultaneity of performance and enunciation, reflecting upon the projection of political agency through transmission and song. He is also a faculty member at MIT in the program of Art, Culture, and Technology.
http://www.nevareztevere.info

Daniel Perlin , aka DJ N-RON, is an artist and producer based in Brooklyn, NY. His work includes production for David Byrne's label Luaka Bop records, mixes for Sound-Ink Records, and as a recording artist for Tax records, Broklyn Beats, Apple Core and Giant Corporate Records. Recent releases include collaborations with Dj/Rupture, Dj Small Change, Geko Jones, Anti-pop consortium and Vito Acconci. N-RON's The Collaborator was voted a best mixtape of 2007 by Kid Kameleon in XLR8R magazine. His sound has been heard at the The New Museum, Guggenheim Museum NY, Centre Georges Pomediou, Temporary Contemporary Gallery, London, TN Probe, Tokyo and at festivals such as Pireneos Sur, Spain, Berlin Film festival, Cannes and CMJ.
http://soundcloud.com/djnron

The Hungry March Band
Straight outta Brooklyn, HMB is a community group with a membership as diverse as our music. The band is an ever evolving musical experiment influenced and inspired from Brooklyn’s backyard with Latin flavor, punk rock noise, hip hop beats and the music of the streets. Put on your dancing shoes and break out the fancy threads because we’ve got the party going on – a blazing parade of flesh, blood, steel, brass and wood. We are the music of the people!

HMB has a repertoire of originals and traditionals that borrows from global brass band traditions, including, but not limited to, Balkan gypsy brass bands, Indian wedding bands, and New Orleans second line. The band also references punk rock; techno, hip hop; various jazz traditions, including free jazz and bop; reggae; and chance music. They cite Sun Ra, Charlie Parker, John Cage, the Shyam Brass Band, Fanfare Ciocarlia, Rebirth Brass Band, the Skatalites, Sonic Youth, Weird Al Yankovich and Black Sabbath as influences.
http://www.hungrymarchband.com

Not An Alternative is participating in a panel on "precarious power" this Saturday, July 16, investigating the intersections of labor organizing, art, and direct action. The panel is part of an upcoming exhibition "The Making of the Chinese New Working Class", curated by the Culture and Art Museum of Migrant Workers in Beijing and hosted by Ludlow 38 in NY. Associated programming is organized by artist Marty Kirchner and The Public School in various NYC venues.

Symposium: Precarious Power: Syndicalism, Solidarity, and the New Organizational Paradigm
Saturday, July 16, 2011, 4-6pm, free
@ Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies
25 West 43rd Street, between 5th and 6th avenues, 19th Floor
The reorganization of production along global supply chains, often through a complicated pattern of subcontracting, has provided significant challenges for the labor movement. Temporary and contingent employment has undermined labor rights protections worldwide. However, in both China and the West, the last few years have seen a proliferation of dissident worker movements, new kinds of workers organizations and workers’ rights campaigns. Some of the most dynamic and innovative have combined elements of community and labor organizing, cultural production, and direct action.

Immanuel Ness, professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York will facilitate the discussion. His writing focuses on social and revolutionary movements, labor militancy and migrant worker resistance to oppression.

Invited guests include the following participants:
Jeff Becker, International Labor Rights Forum
Daniel Gross, IWW/Brandworkers International
Carrie Gleason, Retail Action Project
Not An Alternative

Please join Picture The Homeless at NO↔SPACE in Williamsburg (and other meeting points around Brooklyn) as they lead a vacant property count aimed at confronting the City's division of real estate, property and space. Brooklyn has the highest density of vacant properties in New York City, and the greatest number of people entering into homelessness.

Saturday, June 11, 10am
@ NO↔SPACE (and other Brooklyn locations, see below)
84 Havemeyer St, at Metropolitan Ave

This is a massive borough-wide effort with multiple meeting points. When Picture The Homeless conducted a similar count in Manhattan in 2006 they were able to show that there are more vacant properties in Manhattan alone than the entire homeless population in all 5 boroughs of New York City.

FROM PICTURE THE HOMELESS
On Saturday, June 11th, hundreds of Brooklynites will pound the pavement and walk every block of eight community boards in search of vacant buildings and lots.

Why? Because they know that their community needs housing, gardens, jobs, and open space - and they know that there's a ton of vacant buildings and lots and storefronts that could help transform their neighborhoods in ways that help everyone - not just rich developers.

AND WE NEED YOU! VOLUNTEER SATURDAY, JUNE 11th, AT 10AM, FOR THE BROOKLYN VACANT PROPERTY COUNT at the following locations:
John Wesley United Methodist Church (260 Quincy Street, A/C to Nostrand)
Pratt Area Community Council (226 Lefferts Place; A/C to Franklin)
Neighbors Together (2094 Fulton Street; A/C to Rockaway)
No-Space (84 Havemayer St, L to Bedford or Lorimer)
Office of Council Member Diana Reyna: (217 Havemeyer Street: J/M/Z to Marcy…
Brooklyn Public Library: Clinton Hill Branch: 380 Washington Avenue (G train to Clinton-Washington)
Brooklyn Public Library: Brooklyn Heights Branch: 280 Cadman Plaza West (A/C to High Street)
Brooklyn Public Library: New Lots Branch: 665 New Lots Avenue (2/3/4/5 to New Lots)
Brooklyn Public Library: Brownsville Branch: 61 Glenmore Avenue (L Train to Sutter Ave)

Thursday, May 12, 7:30pm

With the wave of opposition to austerity measures in the UK, many new creative political groups and projects have appeared. Not only the high-profile actions of UK Uncut, but others such as the University of Strategic Optimism, Arts Against Cuts, Precarious Workers Brigade, the Really Free School, and the Free University of Liverpool.

On Thursday, May 12, UK-based academic and art/activist Gavin Grindon will present stories and films from recent groups and activities that experiment with new creative approaches to activism’s materials and performance. From the Book Bloc’s very literate means of protecting crowds from police batons, to The University of Strategic Optimism’s critical theory lectures in high-street banks; from Liberate Tate’s oil spills inside the Tate galleries to encourage them to drop BP sponsorship, to the Space Hijackers driving a tank into an arms fair, and the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination&`;s reverse-engineering of hundreds of bikes into a swarming mass of direct action machines.

Gavin will introduce some of these groups and activities, tell some ridiculous stories of general troublemaking and daring misadventure, show some videos and do his best to answer any of your questions.

Gavin Grindon is a postdoctoral research fellow at Kingston University of London. His research focuses on the history of activist-art practices, and art in social movements in the twenteith century, through both objects and performance, and how these can be theorised and historicised in relation to the institutional bases of art history. He has written articles for the Oxford Art Journal, Third Text, Art Monthly and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, and is a sometime member of the art-activist group the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination.

Thursday, October 28, 7:30pm

Parallel Lines is a collaborative project that looks critically at the impact of the construction of the High Line park in Manhattan's west side. Since the High Line opened to the public in June 2009, it has become a frequently celebrated example of public space for community, culture, innovative design, and urban renewal. As the High Line becomes a public space, Parallel Lines critically investigates its processes and structure, its surrounding neighborhoods and history. Through dialogue, observation, research and action, the project works to illuminate the blind spots of unchecked gentrification and find ways to occupy the city in a manner that is conscious, creative and vigilant.

Join us this Thursday as we continue our series on Open Sourcing The City with a screening and performance titled A Public Hearing, by members of the Parallel Lines project. A Public Hearing borrows from the physical and communicative structure of public hearings -- open forums held in New York City to introduce community input into urban development and planning processes. The performance aggregates a number of documents from the public record, to consider developments regarding the High Line and its surrounding neighborhoods. These documents form part of Parallel Line's ongoing research into changes affecting neighborhoods such as the West Village, Chelsea, Meatpacking and Hells Kitchen, and include records and board meeting minutes of public hearings and community input forums, legal depositions, newspaper articles, and fundraising publicity over the past five years. Selections from these sources will be read aloud, to explore how communities struggle over space, perform public speech, and produce notions of “the public record.” This research is conducted at a time when neoliberal urban development and its racial, gendered and economic distributions are increasingly uneven and contradictory.

For the next installment of our programming series "Open-Sourcing the City: Invited and Uninvited Participation", we explore the issue of natural gas drilling on rural upstate land, and how it affects our understanding of “the local” here in NYC.

Thursday, October 21, 7:30pm - 9:30pm
Suggested Donation $5-10

Join us for a special screening of the Sundance award winning film GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown, the poetic and rousing film documents astonishing consequences of the gas drilling process known as hydro-fracking.

With more than 200,000 new wells proposed for upstate New York and Pennsylvania, the local farms we love and the water we drink may be at risk. Stick around for a post-screening pow wow with Alice Zinnes of the upstate group Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, and be ready to brainstorm creative ideas for collaborative cultural efforts to fan anti-fracking flames.

And pssssst, clear your calendar! On the weekend of November 6-7 we're planning a "Fall Foliage, Farms, and Fracking Tour" in a veggie-oil bus. Agri-artists, activists, urban farmers, FEASTers, foodies, etc. are invited to join us for a drive to the beautiful Delaware River valley in NY/PA to tour an active drill site and meet local Catskill farmers fighting fracking on their land. Interested? Drop us a line: info@notanalternative.net. We're raising funds to offset costs, please donate what you can to help make it happen! All contributions are tax-deductible.

Thursday, October 14, 7:30pm
w/ Greg Sholette, Shaun Slifer and Jim Constanzo
@ No-Space (formerly known as The Change You Want To See)

At the beginning of this series we announced plans to change the name of our venue from The Change You Want To See Gallery to No-Space. This week’s event offers us as good a time as any to formalize this, as the notion of the No-Space relates nicely to artist/theorist Greg Sholette’s description of Dark Matter.

No-Space is an aspect of architecture, a systematically overlooked invisible and absent variable that gives form to every structure. A room is made up of walls, a floor, a ceiling, and also the space in between. You can't draw this space on its own, it’s nothing after all, but it's something at the same time, one of the somethings that define a room.

In his forthcoming book Sholette describes a related concept of Dark Matter. In cosmology this unseen matter constitutes most of the universe. In terms of cultural production, an invisible world of artistic activity gives shape to the recognized art world. It has a gravitational pull and a power overlooked.

On Thursday we consider the role of dark matter as it applies to history and the city. Through interventions in urban space, art collectives Repo History, Howling Mob Society, and the Aaron Burr Society map excluded histories, radical readings of what is there but unseen. Ultimately these are cartographic projects, as architect Eyal Weizman suggests: geography as defining history in space. Through authorized and unauthorized means, they explore the exchange between media and the cityscape, between the past and the present, and a power that lurks in the shadows.

ABOUT THE PROJECTS
REPOhistory began in Manhattan in 1989 as a study group of artists, scholars, teachers, and writers focused on the relationship of history to contemporary society. It grew into a forum for developing public art projects based on history and a platform for creating them. For more than ten years REPOhistory's goal was "to retrieve and relocate absent historical narratives at specific locations in the New York City area through counter-monuments, actions, and events". Uncomfortable memories of New York's half-forgotten past were written directly on the skin of a gentrified city using its own system of public signage.  REPOhistory's subject matter included workers, abolitionists, slaves, radicals, native Americans and children whose lives were lost in sweat shops and streets that 'drank their tender tears.' As global neoliberalism turned urban spaces into zones of managed consumption and ubiquitous surveillance, REPOhistory believed the battle for public memory had to be played out from within the city’s own repertoire of semiotic management. Eventually REPOhistory ran afoul of municipal and cultural authorities. By the end of the 1990's its subaltern archive was slammed shut once more. http://www.repohistory.org

The Howling Mob Society was a collaboration of artists, activists and amateur historians who convened in 2007 with a commitment to unearthing stories neglected by mainstream history. HMS hoped to bring increased visibility to the radical history of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania through a series of independently researched and installed historical markers with a focus on The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, a national uprising that saw some of its most dramatic moments in our city. While the mainstream media—both past and present—frame events in terms of their effect on national economic interests, the Howling Mob investigated history through the experiences of common, working people. http://howlingmobsociety.org

The 2nd Whiskey Rebellion is the Aaron Burr Society’s latest public artwork designed to expose the Myth of the Free Market and rewrite American history. The original Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 was a referendum on the Constitution and its two-tiered economic system that privileged Alexander Hamilton’s northeastern oligarchy and Thomas Jefferson’s southern plantations. Prior to the 2nd Whiskey Rebellion, the Aaron Burr Society initiated the Free Money Movement by spending paper currency stamped “Slave of Wall Street” on one side and “Free Money” on the other. Both the Whiskey Rebellion and the Free Money Movement are not metaphorical but symbolic. By this we mean that it is not “like” or “as” a rebellion but a symbol for a revolt against Wall Street, Oil, Coal and their corporate cronies to save the planet. http://aaronburrsociety.org

Thursday, September 16, 7:30pm

Please join us this Thursday, September 16 as we continue our programming series Open-Sourcing the City: Invited and Uninvited Participation. In the last event, professor/author Miriam Greenberg established the relationship between city branding and urban development agendas like Bloomberg's "Luxury City". Against this backdrop, how can cultural creatives and spatial practitioners participate productively? What are constructive forms of critical engagement?

Drawing from her own practice and from first-hand research, artist/activist Emily Forman will take us on a visual tour of the contested Neoliberal City, highlighting the ‘uninvited participation’ of its discontent inhabitants; grandmothers, squatters, and artists, joined together in a shared struggle for spatial justice.

First we will go to Chicago, where the mythic ‘Department of Space and Land Reclamation’ catalyzes a flurry of public interventions around hyperreal governance and runaway gentrification; and where an anonymous PR campaign nearly threatens to implode the City’s careful rebranding of its controversial public housing policies.

Then we visit ‘Miles de Viviendas’, a social center and ‘Pirate University’, housed in a squatted police barracks in seaside Barceloneta; where the neighbors bring culture to the barricades, defending themselves against immanent displacement and tourist-driven Disneyfication using bottom-up urban planning, critical cartography, tactical textiles, and creative direct action.

About Emily Forman

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).

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.