Thursday 25 August 2011

S&S at Justseeds

I am so thrilled to be able to say that Shape & Situate zines (issues 1 and 2) are now available via Justseeds (http://justseeds.org/)
Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative is a decentralized network of 26 artists committed to making print and design work that reflects a radical social, environmental, and political stance.

Without the work and influence of Justseeds (and the 'Celebrate People's History' project in particular) I doubt the zine would have happened in the first place.
I am so grateful for Josh MacPhee responding to a copy of the zine that he'd seen and organising with the rest of the Justseeds collective to get the zine on the catalogue. There's not many projects and works that are not directly created by Justseeds collective members which are distributed by them, and as such I'm really honoured and thankful. It's kinda a big deal to me. Thank you for having me, Justseeds!

You can find #1 for sale here: http://www.justseeds.org/other_artists/04shapesit01.html
and #2 here: http://www.justseeds.org/other_artists/04shapesit02.html

Please take the time to read more about Justseeds on the site and see more of the amazing work that the collective produces and supports. The many individuals involved, and their talent, action and inspiration blow me away with pretty much every item/print/poster/book they come up with.

Wednesday 24 August 2011

rachael house's feminist disco

From my inbox from Rachael House... each and every part of this looks amazing. Congratulations Rachael!!


Each day during her Fine Art MA show, Feminist Disco, Rachael House will be DJing with singles played on dansette record players.
As part of Feminist Disco Rachael has invited guests to perform, DJ and speak, putting the ‘disco’ into ‘discourse’.
All events are free and take place in Rachael’s exhibition space in Camberwell Art College, 45-65 Peckham Road, London, SE5 8UF
2/09/11-8/09/11
All welcome.
For more information please contact rachaelhouse@me.com
More info here: http://www.mafineartcamberwell.co.uk/

Apologies- there is no disabled to the Fine Art MA shows.

Friday 2nd September at 4.30pm- Deborah Withers
The remarkable Deborah Withers will present material from the Women's Liberation Music Archive (http://womensliberationmusicarchive.wordpress.com), and will instigate a discussion based around questions of process. This presentation will offer opportunities to listen to the music and collectively reflect on what it means to consider acts of cultural production - and the wider trajectories of cultural memory - as grounded in processes, actions and events. How does it transform our relationship to history and can it?

Deborah Withers is a writer, researcher, curator and publisher living in Bristol. In 2010 she published Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory to critical acclaim. She is the founder of HammerOn Press and is interested in the relationship between publishing and social change. She is currently developing plans for an exhibition based on the Women's Liberation Music Archive, which she co-curates with Frankie Green. Deborah’s work is published in numerous academic journals and she plays drums and sings in the band bellies!
www.debi-rah.net
www.hammeronpress.net

Saturday 3rd September 3.00pm- Lucy Whitman
This discussion with writer Lucy Whitman will touch on the politics of feminism, punk and the anti racist movements of the 1970s and early 1980s and their continued relevance today.

As Lucy Toothpaste, Lucy Whitman created the feminist and anti-fascist fanzine JOLT in 1977, and wrote for Temporary Hoarding (Rock Against Racism) and Drastic Measures (Rock Against Sexism) in the late 70s and early 80s. She wrote about women and popular music for Spare Rib regularly from 1978 – 1982. She was in two women-only bands: The Neons (1976) and Sole Sister (1981 - 82). A recent interview with her, about women and punk, appears on feminist blog the f word at http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2011/05/Lucy_Whitman

Monday 5th September 5.00pm- Anne Robinson

Anne Robinson performance- Protest Your Love

A manually selected live jukebox featuring feminist favourites with an element of chance...

Anne Robinson is an artist working with painting, film & songs and is a senior lecturer in film at London Met University.


Tuesday 6th September 6.00pm-9.00pm- Camberwell MA shows private view, all welcome.


Wednesday 7th September 5.00pm- The Hissterics fanzine launch party
Fanzine launch for legendary 70s women’s band The Hissterics, featuring very special guest DJs including Barby Asante (artist and curator), Erica Smith (editor of GirlFrenzy) and Dominic Appleton (DJ at Duckie and singer in Breathless). Recollections of The Hissterics from Marc Baines, Jason Barker Marcia Farquhar, Frankie Green, Melanie Maddison, Serge Nicholson, Sally O’Reilly, Tracey Payne, Kit Poulson, Bill Savage, Patrick Staff, Sian Stirling, Charles Thomson, Ed Webb-Ingall, Mike Wyeld and more, edited by Rachael House. Refreshments available. Dancing encouraged.

Thursday 8th September 7.00pm- Hackney Secular Singers
Hackney Secular Singers are the best punk choir in the world.
The Hackney Secular Singers (aka the Punk Choir) have been meeting every Monday for three years of co-operative musical bliss, devising alternative arrangements for new wave classics like 'Psycho Killer' and 'Germ Free Adolescents'. Previous gigs range from Hackney Wicked Festival through the School of Life to the Dublin Castle with some flash mob singing in between... and they welcome new members!


Please Arrive in plenty of time before the events.
Murray or Donna will be in the college foyer to meet people 20 minutes before events start, give directions and lead the way.

Friday 19 August 2011

comic book library for homeless and vulnerable young people

My friend (and comic book maker/illustrator) Karrie Fransman is seeking donations for a comic book library for homeless and vulnerable young people (in London), all the info and contact details are on her blog: http://www.karriefransman.com/?page_id=53

Over the last two months I’ve been running a comics youth project with House of Illustration and New Horizon Youth Centre. New Horizon Youth Centre is a day centre working with young people who are vulnerable, homeless or at risk. I’ve been running an eight week comic project with House of Illustration were the young people have been learning to tell their own stories and express themselves through making comics.

Each week I brought in loads of new comics and was delighted to see how much the young people loved them! It is easy to see the importance of comics in improving literacy and communicating across different cultures and classes. Of the 2000 young people New Horizon sees every year a number have had negative experiences with formal education, and have issues with numeracy and literacy. There are also a number of immigrant clients for whom English is a second language. You can imagine how well these young people responded to comics such as Shaun Tan’s ‘The Arrival’ and Marjane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis’.

I am currently trying to set up a small donated library of comic books at New Horizon and would love your support. Like me you probably have a shelf full of comics you no longer read. Any comics or graphic novels you can spare would be fantastic, even just one would do! It would be great if the collection included some classics (Chris Ware, Clowes, Alan Moore, Mccloud etc) if you have any copies to spare. I am starting the collection off with some of my own comics so please join in!

music & liberation: call for volunteer expressions of interest

From my inbox, from Deborah Withers...

Dear all,

I am currently putting together a funding bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund to make a touring exhibition called Music & Liberation. My aim is for the exhibition to tour the UK June-Oct 2012. It will draw on and gather new material for the Women's Liberation Music Archive http://womensliberationmusicarchive.wordpress.com that was launched in May 2011. A short synopsis of the exhibition is below.

As part of the project I want to involve up to 6 volunteers from across the UK to help research content for the exhibition, the archive and for a CD that will include music from the exhibition, photographs and extensive sleeve notes. These volunteers will be supported mainly online, although there will be opportunities to meet in person throughout the course of the project.

Research duties will include things like visiting archives where volunteers live, interviewing musicians who live in your local area, writing biographies (that will become sleeve notes for the CD) and, of course, listening to rare feminist music.

Gaining evidence of volunteer interest in the project is vital for attaining funds from the HLF. If you think you would be interested in volunteering on the project next year in any way (no matter how big or small!) please get in touch. debiwithers@yahoo.co.uk / 07940 320 113

Also, if you work for a UK-based museum or arts centre that may be interested in hosting the exhibition similarly please get in touch for more details as there are spaces to fill in the schedule.

Thanks in advance and please share widely!
Deborah Withers

Music and Liberation: Women’s Liberation Music-Making in the UK, 1970-1989 tells the story of how feminists used music as an activist tool to entertain and empower women during the 1970s and 1980s. It brings together for the first time a diverse collection of women’s cultural heritage to inspire and inform contemporary audiences about the politics of feminist music making.

The exhibition will draw on material from the Women’s Liberation Music Archive (http://womensliberationmusicarchive.wordpress.com), an online blog archive launched in May 2011 by archive co-ordinators Frankie Green and Dr Deborah Withers. It will also present new oral and audio-visual histories collected especially for the exhibition. Music and Liberation is a unique opportunity to hear the music and watch the performances of some of the most interesting, innovative and provocative music you have never heard of.


'strong female characters'

Kind of a rad read, over at Tiger Beatdown blog: http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/08/10/what-do-you-mean-when-you-say-you-want-strong-female-characters

independent, youth-driven cultural production by young women in cambodia

Sara Drake has a Kickstarter page for her Comics Project in Phnom Penh Cambodia.

She writes,

'In Collaboration with Arts Network Asia (ANA) and Anne Elizabeth Moore, I will be traveling to Phnom Phen, Cambodia to teach an introductory comics and self-publishing class to young women. Help me provide a space in which young women can feel comfortable sharing their own ideas within a culture that has historically given women little access to do so.
The class itself, will help equip young women with the skills needed to cultivate their own personal narratives and encourage them to share their stories.'


The Kickstarter page is at: www.kickstarter.com/projects/178882708/comics-in-cambodia

Sara's blog about the project is (will be) here: iydcpc.wordpress.com/comics

Friday 12 August 2011

we will not go quietly

From my inbox, via a conversation with Kate (Melbourne, Australia):

We Will Not Go Quietly will be a zine written by survivors of sexual assault, for survivors of sexual assault.

Dreamt up by two victim/survivors – Mel Hughes (of Poetry 101) and Kate Ravenscroft (of 16 Impacts of Sexual Assault) – who mourn the absence of survivors’ voices in their world and want to do something about it, they are seeking stories of survival from sexual assault survivors for publication in a small zine.

Contributions can take any form – poetry, essay, artwork, manifesto, stream of consciousness, narrative, recipes, battle cry, puzzles, comics, photos – anyway you choose to reflect upon and represent your experience of survival, anyway you want to share how you’ve set about rebuilding life on your terms, is welcome.

Some themes that we’d love to see covered in the zine include:

Finding safety
Battling PTSD
Coping mechanisms
Perpetrator-repelling
Building strength
Believing your voice, your story
Learning to trust your instincts
Recognising your courage
Asking for support
Telling your story
But by no means stop here.

Whatever has been important to you in surviving – we want to hear about it.

We would especially welcome visual expressions on surviving sexual assault – artwork, photos, illustrations, comics etc.

Second round contributions are requested by 28 August 2011 and can be submitted to wewillnotgoquietlyzine@gmail.com Please keep contributions to no longer than 1,500 words (no contribution is too short or too small) and anonymous contributions are welcome.

From here we commence collecting, collating and editing submissions. Any offers of support through this phase would be warmly welcomed! Especially offers of assistance with design and layout – anyone with experience in these areas who would be interested in contributing to We Will Not Go Quietly please do not hesitate to get in contact with us.

For more info, see: http://wewillnotgoquietly.wordpress.com/

Thursday 11 August 2011

caroline paquita interview on pikaland

My interview with Caroline Paquita hit the Pikaland website today, which I'm thrilled about, as out of the hundreds of artist interviews I've done, this one is one of my favourites.

http://pikaland.com/2011/08/11/artist-interview-caroline-paquita

I had the pleasure of meeting Caroline in the process of working on this interview, & I had already known that her art was inspiring, but getting to talk to her about stuff kinda blew my mind. She's really special; in the interview she mentions her notion of 'artists as teachers', and already Caroline has taught me a lot.

In the interview I love all the things she has to say about community; creating her own destiny; dialoguing and learning; keeping the 'magic' circulating; being tired of negativity and hopelessness; being empowered by real objects; involvement with every part of the artistic creation; straight up DIY and retaining the spirit of creativity; sharing; pushing boundaries and trying new things; - Oh hell, there's SO MUCH I love in this interview, and so much I love Caroline for.

I'm in a bit of a slump myself personally at the moment, I've given up on a lot of stuff, lost my way a little, forgotten what drives me, and my mind keeps going to dark places; but it's stuff like this that gives me hope and kinda helps to refocus my attention a little. Thank you Caroline xox

If you get the chance, check out Caroline's current fundraiser for Pegacorn Press.


Tuesday 2 August 2011

enough: the personal politics of resisting capitalism

From my inbox...

Call for Submissions: Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism (the book!!)

We created the website Enough in 2008 in response to a yearning for discussion about radical approaches to day-to-day decisions about money and resource sharing. Enough has been a space where people have shared their stories, questions, and strategies about what it means to practice a politics of wealth redistribution in their day to day lives while being immersed in capitalism. We are now compiling additional essays to be published in book form.

We are seeking essays about how we conceive of and live a politics of interdependence, resource sharing, and wealth redistribution beyond and in resistance to capitalism.

Deadline: Feb 15, 2012

More details: Please visit www.enoughenough.org/about

Enough asks questions such as:

- What are the various ways we are sharing resources to support community and movement-building?
- What does a politics of wealth redistribution look like in the day-to-day, and what are the obstacles to developing conversations about this in political communities we belong to?
- How can we build new models of collective support based in interdependence, care, and sustainability?


Topics could include (but are definitely not limited to):

- Strategies for collective income sharing within communities, community emergency funds, sharing of resources beyond money, etc.
- Local currencies.
- Collective, equitable approaches to land and real estate.
- Reparations.
- Fundraising strategies that directly challenge capitalist power dynamics.
- Community-based strategies for supporting mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
- How people who have inherited wealth are redistributing it equitably, and what challenges and opportunities they’ve encountered.
- How people who work together are creating methods and cultures of supporting each other as whole people.
- Exciting models of people dealing with money ethically in activist spaces and organizations.
- Anti-capitalist/anti-racist/anti-imperialist analysis of choices about saving for retirement, buying real estate, taking certain jobs, supporting our communities, etc.

Questions and submissions: Email info (at) enoughenough.org

Monday 1 August 2011

punk start my heart

From my inbox...

hi folks,

Some friends of mine PUNK START MY HEART are an organising collective based in Portland, USA.
Last year they organised the hugely inspiring Not Enough! festival, an event which got local queers and feminists in their community to start new bands because there simply weren't enough of them.
On the back of this they are currently trying to start a record label and need to raise $6000 on a pledge campaign before they get funded.
Check out this trailer they made and please share it with your networks, re-post on blogs, etc.
I know times are tough but have a heart and let punk start my heart help it beat louder.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/586915925/punk-start-my-heart



deborahx
www.debi-rah.net & www.hammeronpress.net