Not An Alternative Programming

Monday, April 27, 7:30pm EST
At The Change You Want To See Gallery and streaming live at http://www.mogulus.com/notanalternative
Follow live-blogging on Twitter at @NAA_NYC and #thechange

In Burma/Myanmar, the military junta has ruled since 1962, brutally suppressing human rights and the flow of information. Yet in the fall of 2007, the military found itself challenged by Buddhist clergy and ordinary citizens who used nonviolent actions and 21st century technology to challenge the regime. Although the so-called Saffron Revolution failed to result in regime change, dedicated Burmese activists are continuing to risk their lives to work for change in their country. In a country of 58 million with less than 1% internet and cell phone penetration, how is technology being used to challenge a military regime?

Join us for an evening conversation on this topic, including:
-- A presentation by Digital Democracy on the use of technology inside and along Burma's borders.
-- Footage from the Sept. 2007 Saffron Revolution, where tech such as mobile phones and the internet allowed protesters to coordinate and publicize the largest protests seen in a generation,
-- A Q&A with "Stanley", a Burmese computer programmer and chairperson of the All Burma IT Students Union.

This is the inaugural event of the 2009 Upgrade! New York art and technology programming series, pertaining to open source activist and creative practices, co-produced by Not An Alternative and Eyebeam.

About Digital Democracy

Not in NY? This event will be streamed live at http://www.mogulus.com/notanalternative

Sunday, April 26, 7pm - 10pm EST
Please join us this Sunday evening for an artist talk and presentation by Sara Sajjad, a founding member of Swedish arts collective Piratbyran (the Bureau of Piracy).

Sajjad will discuss their popular project The Pirate Bay, the world's largest bit torrent file-sharing service on the internet. A landmark trial pitting the Scandanavian pirates vs. Hollywood privateers made international headlines this week when four defiant Swedes were found guilty of violating copyright law. It's a mild blow to the buccaneers, but more like cutting heads off hydras or hitting hornets nests. Like an international game of whac-a-mole, the file-sharing community keeps popping up to promote new modes of connecting. A discussion about intellectual property and the free culture movement will be joined by special guests, including folks from MuxTape, a US-based music sharing site that was shut down last year. Sajjad will also screen footage from related Piratbyran projects and performances, including KopimiTV (CopyMeTV), the CopyRiot ritual, and the Pirate Bus art tour.

The talk will be followed by a guerilla music swap, so bring your laptop, USB stick or hard drive, and share, swap, and propagate like the pirate you arrrrrrr! As Piratbyran says, multiplication can produce powerful numbers. And great music collections.

Note: The event will take place at The Change You Want To See Gallery, and will also be live broadcast at Black Betty, the bar/restaurant across the street. For those who can't make it in person it will be live streamed at http://www.mogulus.com/notanalternative a bit after 7:30pm EST.

Monday, March 30, 7:30pm (free)
Please join us for a conversation with renowned philosopher, media activist and cultural agitator Franco Berardi (aka Bifo) and media theorist MacKenzie Wark, author of Game Theory and A Hacker's Manifesto.

Bifo has been a pivotal figure in Italian social movements for that past 40 years. He co-founded the legendary Radio Alice (1977), the first pirate radio station in Italy, the magazine A/Traverso (1977-81), and Rekombinant (2000), an online network environment that focuses on radical philosophy, urban conflicts, media activism, networking art, knowledge economy, western psychopathology, autonomous universities, and institutions of the common. More recently he produced the autonomous street television network Orfeo TV (2002), which sparked a national network of pirate micro TV stations to counter the media monopoly of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

This event marks the long awaited publication of the first two Bifo’s books in English: Felix Guattari: Thought, Friendship, and Visionary Cartography (Palgrave, 2008); and Ethereal Shadows: Communication and Power in Contemporary Italy (with Marco Jacquemet and Gianfranco Vitali, Autonomedia, 2009).

The evening will be moderated by Marco Deseriis, member of Not An Alternative and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU. It is cosponsored by Not An Alternative and This Is Forever.

About Franco Berardi Bifo

Thursday, January 29 7:30pm - 10:00pm
Saturday, January 31 1:00pm - 5:00pm*
no crafting experience necessary

Please join us at Change You Want to See Gallery for an artists talk, screening and workshop led by J Mandle Performance. Julia Mandle's installation Fabrication of Blindness attempts to give voice to the 700+ past and current detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Participants will learn the stories of those being held, and embroider detainees' poems onto hoods which will be exhibited at installations in Washington DC, Paris, and NYC.

As the paradigm shifts in Washington, Fabrication of Blindness hopes to negotiate the aftermath of Americans' complicit approval of the Bush administration's foreign policy. Working with local craft and activist groups where the installation is shown, sewing circles will offer an opportunity to connect the actions of dissenters with the voices of those who have been held.

Sewing experience is not required, non-crafters are highly encouraged to attend. All materials will be provided. Come Thursday evening and/or Saturday day and get your craft on. An artist talk, discussion and screening with kick the sessions off.

*Saturday drop in any time. Bear in mind the sewing project will take a minimum of two hours.

Turn Your Pee into Fertilizer for your Houseplants
A Workshop and Discussion with Bio-artists Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray
At The Change You Want To See Gallery
Thursday, January 8, 7pm (free!)

Meet neighbors, artists, and local specialists interested in:
* bioart
* personal ecosystems
* waste-to-food processes
* D-I-Y biology
* urban farming
* and crowdsourcing solutions to environmental problems

Just be ready to pee into a jar.

Bio-artists Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray create personal, super-local, at-home solutions to big environmental and health issues. Their urine to fertilizer kits let you recycle the excess nutrients your body creates when you eat and drink. You can pee in the kit and then perform a biochemical reaction that transforms the nutrients in your urine into an immediately usable fertilizer to feed your own plants. They invite you to join them for a special opportunity to turn your pee into fertilizer and take it home for your houseplants, and to join in a discussion with artists and friends interested in these same issues. Riley and Bray work as consultants to science museums and are graduates of ITP at NYU. Their work has recently been featured at Eyebeam, in the Venice Bienale, in ArtNews and on the Discovery Channel.

Participants are encouraged to bring clean glass jars.
http://www.submersibledesign.com/drinkpee/

If you can't attend, we will live stream this event at http://www.mogulus.com/notanalternative.
Date: 17 December 2008 @ 7.30 PM - 10.30 PM (Facebook Event Page)
Location:The Change You Want To See Gallery
Address: 84 Havemeyer Street, Storefront, Brooklyn, NY

Over the past two years, Web 2.0 technologies have matured and so have the methods activist use to employ them. In 2008, activists from around the world used Web 2.0 to take command of the digital airwaves pioneering new forms of political mobilization. From Student's for a Free Tibet's live streamed protests in Beijing, to RNC protesters coordinating actions and monitoring police movements on Twitter to mass digital mobilizations for humanitarian relief and election protection, Web 2.0 is no longer just for social networking and fundraising.

This Wednesday, practitioners involved in the above campaigns will present case studies and highlight how they leveraged these tools to have broader reach and greater effectiveness. We’ll also delve into issues governing internal organization and communication among political actors, including: transparency vs. security; command and control vs. autonomous affinity groups, and the power of organizing without organizations vs. the tyranny of structurelessness.

This report back and skills share is intended to leave you with concrete ideas for how these models and tools could impact your work.

With subMedia's Franklin Lopez
Thursday, December 4, 8pm, free

Since its humble beginnings in 1994, subMedia has grown from a small group of determined filmmakers into a grassroots network of socially and politically engaged artists and individuals. subMedia scrutinizes popular culture and media through the production of film, performance art, video, music and zines.

Equal parts performance and protest, an attitude of art following action defines subMedia’s productions. From the regularly released and highly produced video blog “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”, to the collaborative documentary “Ground Noise and Static”, their work injects a radical analysis into the culture in a most entertaining way.

Please join subMedia founder, director and producer Franklin Lopez (aka The Stimulator) as he steps out from behind the talking boxes to tour us through a video montage of his latest works, mixing culture jamming, news, radical commentary, music and action.

Join web developers, designers, and activists this Friday, October 24th for a Jam Session to build out a groundbreaking new project called Twitter Vote Report. Inspired by a blog post by new media consultants Allison Fine and Nancy Scola, volunteers across the country are moving quickly to build a decentralized election monitoring system that will allow voters to use text messages to report incidents of voter suppression, long lines, broken machines, and other disruptions on election day. The Twitter Vote Report site will aggregate the reporting data, represent it in real-time on a dynamic web map, and notify voters, election monitoring groups, and the media, facilitating rapid response by poll workers and activists.

We’re partnering with the Election Protection Coalition, Rock the Vote, League of Young Voters, NPR, and a host of other groups to make this happen.

You can help! Here’s how:
1. Stop by The Change You Want To See from 11am to 6pm on Friday to work with the lead development team; or
2. Host your own jam session and list it on the VoteReport wiki; or
3. Join us from the comfort of your home via IRC freenode channel #VoteReport.

More info below!

Please join us at The Change You Want To See Gallery for a weekend of screenings, artist talks and workshops exploring the concept of exclusion as it pertains to voting and democracy. From Al Capone and Zombie movies, to knitting workshops and non-citizen voting projects, presenters include artists Cat Mazza, Ricardo Miranda, and Not An Alternative.

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Friday, October 10, 7:30pm – 9:30pm
The weekend kicks off with Vote Early, Vote Often, a multimedia presentation by Marco Deseriis and Jason Jones of Not An Alternative. Followed by a screening of Zombie film “Homecoming” (59min). American soldiers who died in Iraq come back to cast ballots in the US presidential elections.

Saturday, October 11, 12pm – 3pm
Cat Mazza, founder of the MicroRevolt collective of craftivistsm, will give an artist talk. A knitting workshop follows, participants are invited to bring works in progress, or contribute to the completion of Mazza’s latest project Stitch for Senate, in which knit helmet liners will be sent to Senators on election week 2008.

Sunday, October 12, 12pm – 3pm
Artist Ricardo Miranda Zuniga will discuss his latest work VOTEMOS.US ¡Mexico Decide!. Votemos.us is an online Spanish language portal that enables non-citizens to participate in the upcoming U.S. elections. On Sunday, it enters the physical world, as participants are invited to join Ricardo on the inaugural tour of the Votemos.us interactive voting cart.

The Change You Want To See Gallery is pleased to host a film series and workshop on transmission arts, sound performance, and radical radio.

Join us this Thursday for a screening of "Work Slowly - Radio Alice", an account of an Italian pirate radio station run by the so-called "Mao-Dadaist" wing of the Autonomia movement. Then on Saturday we'll host free103point9's Radio Lab: Art Activism Seminar, with a screening of "A Little Bit of So Much Truth", a film that documents the 2006 popular uprising in Oaxaca, Mexico, and the people's takeover of 14 radio stations and 1 television station to coordinate organizing efforts. A hands-on workshop on transmitter-building will follow. Presenters include freeradio103point9, Prometheus Radio Project, and Germantown Community Farm.

Thursday, September 25
7:30pm - 9:30pm: Screening of "Work Slowly - Radio Alice" (Lavorare con Lentezza). Discussion to follow.

Saturday, September 27
Radio Lab: Art/Activism Seminar
12pm - 3pm: Screening of "A Little Bit of So Much Truth" (Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad). Discussion to follow, snacks provided.
3pm - 6pm: Presentation and transmitter-building workshop with freeradio103point9, Prometheus Radio Project, and Germantown Community Farm.

free103point9 Radio Labs provide students with technical skills and contextual background to consider and utilize the transmission spectrum for creative expression. Workshops address four main topics: the history of broadcasting; how transmitters work; online transmission tools; and transmission arts as a creative medium. Join Tianna Kennedy (free103point9); and Maka Kotto (Prometheus Radio Project), and Kaya Weisman (Germantown Community Farm) for a screening of "Un Poquito de Tanta Verdad" (Corrugated Films), discussion, and transmitter building workshop.