Getting organized

I admit it, I'm not sure yet how to go about setting up this blog. But I'll get it going pretty soon. I want it to be a place where my friends can talk to each other. And I don't mind if there's some who just want to heckle. Right now it mostly just me setting this up.

I decided, for the moment, to lead with the picture of the gypsy theater group and the school bus, the Illuminated Elephants, because they are a local historical phenomenon and they actually created situations. The made things happen. I hope this hippie look doesn't put anyone off. It's not that I think such a moment can be exactly replicated. But the spirit of it. That can be rekindled.

There are some written texts and other media that I am passing around.  Here are tow of them

Vaneigem interview 2009 In the spirit of gypsy radicals and freeing ourselves from "the economy." I am currently discussing this specially with Sandy Turner whose response will appear here soon..

 "Embracing Anger" Sent by Ron Epstein
My Dear friends, I would like to tell you how I practice when I get angry.
During the war in Vietnam, there was a lot of injustice, and many thousands,
including friends of mine, many disciples of mine, were killed. I got very
angry. One time I learned that the city of Ben Tre, a city of three hundred
thousand people, was bombarded by American aviation just because some
guerillas came to the city and tried to shoot down American aircrafts. The
guerillas did not succeed, and after that they went away. And the city was
destroyed. And the military man who was responsible for that declared later that he had to destroy the city of Ben Tre to save it. I was very angry....


Dan Hamburg Interview 2007

The Illuminated Elephants And Radical Imagination

Even though I'm an old fuck, as George Carlin would say, my spirit is with the gypsy theater group that called themselves the Illuminated Elephants. For more about them go to http://www.greenmac.com/illuminated. 

I feel like I did in 1967. Back then like now, remarkable events appeared in the news and I had a building feeling that something big was going to happen. Something big did happen: In 1968 there were massive demonstration in New York where I was living; Columbia University was shut down and occupied; it happened in other parts of the US, in France and many other places around the world.

In 1968, I first heard of the "situationists" and their focus on "creating situations that go beyond the point of no return." situations aimed to end the commodity world and replace it with self-management. More about the history, perhaps, at another time.

Warm regards to all,

King (Ken) Collins

January, 2010

Photo from Mendocino Active-fest 2000

Dale Glaser, Larry Sheehy, Rafa Boras and Sandy Turner, July, 2000 at Active-Fest at the Booneville Fairgrounds/ Dale and Rafa are no longer with us. 

Other photos from Active-fest 2000 at:

http://www.greenmac/Active-fest

Raoul Vaneigem Interview

As Gabrielle suggested, I am posting the following interview with Raoul Vaneigem. It has helped me focus on what I feel I can do for this world, my part of this world, Mendocino County and the the Nothern California.

It points me in the direction of local self-management. I'm not interested in electoral politics, except at the level of the county and the town or city. It seems that a lot of other people are feeling the same way. At the state and national level the only thing that works is direct action against the media and the redundant images---stereotypes and icons---we are fed.

Some of us are talking about a project, tentatively called "End Poverty In Northern California" which seeks to reinvent some old ideas (the 1934 Upton Sinclair project: EPIC: End Poverty In California) and to initiate a new kind bank, what Larry Shehy calls a "local development bank." The bank idea is not boring as it may sound. It's a great idea for focusing local energy and creating socially viable projects. But he'll explain that later once I get in contact with him.

Back to the interview. Vaneigem, whom I have never met---always makes me feel more alive, wakes me up. And if you have an intellectual bent and wonder about the roots of European radical thinking, there are many mentioned here. The questionnaire at the end of this piece, which asks Vaneigem for his heros, the art he loves, etc. is so amazing for me, an underdeveloped midwestern intellectual: to see so many names (roots) that I don't recognize. I won't have the time to trace them all down. But I do love Vaneigem for bringing them into view.

I'm tired of the isolation. If you like this, please join the discussion, which happen, not just here, but in many places.

Warmest regards. Ken Collins

* * * *

Hans Ulrich Obrist

In Conversation with Raoul Vaneigem

Hans Ulrich Obrist: I just visited Edouard Glissant and Patrick Chamoiseau, who have written an appeal to Barack Obama. What would your appeal and/or advice be to Obama?

Raoul Vaneigem: I refuse to cultivate any relationship whatsoever with people of power. I agree with the Zapatistas from Chiapas who want nothing to do with either the state or its masters, the multinational mafias. I call for civil disobedience so that local communities can form, coordinate, and begin self-producing natural power, a more natural form of farming, and public services that are finally liberated from the scams of government by the Left or the Right. On the other hand, I welcome the appeal by Chamoiseau, Glissant, and their friends for the creation of an existence in which the poetry of a life rediscovered will put an end to the deadly stranglehold of the commodity.

HUO: Could we talk about your beginnings? How did your participation in situationism begin, and what was your fundamental contribution? At the outset of your relationship with the SI, there was the figure of Henri Lefebvre. What did he mean to you at the time? Why did you decide to send him poetic essays?

RV: I would first like to clarify that situationism is an ideology that the situationists were unanimous in rejecting. The term “situationist” was ever only a token of identification. Its particularity kept us from being mistaken for the throngs of ideologues. I have nothing in common with the spectacular recuperation of a project that, in my case, has remained revolutionary throughout. My participation in a group that has now disappeared was an important moment in my personal evolution, an evolution I have personally pressed on with in the spirit of the situationist project at its most revolutionary. My own radicality absolves me from any label. I grew up in an environment in which our fighting spirit was fueled by working class consciousness and a rather festive conception of existence. I found Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life captivating. When La Somme et le reste [The Sum and the Remainder] was published, I sent him an essay of sorts on “poetry and revolution” that was an attempt to unify radical concepts, Lettrist language, music, and film imagery by crediting them all with the common virtue of making the people’s blood boil. Lefebvre kindly responded by putting me in touch with Guy Debord who immediately invited me to Paris. The two of us had very different temperaments, but we would agree over a period of nearly ten years on the need to bring consumer society to an end and to found a new society on the principle of self-management, where life supersedes survival and the existential angst that it generates.

HUO: Which situationist projects remain unrealized?

RV: Psychogeography, the construction of situations, the superseding of predatory behavior. The radicality, which, notwithstanding some lapses, never ceased to motivate us, remains a source of inspiration to this day. Its effects are just beginning to manifest themselves in the autonomous groups that are now coming to grips with the collapse of financial capitalism.

HUO: The Situationist International defined the situationist as someone who commits her- or himself to the construction of situations. What were those situations for you, concretely? How would you define the situationist project in 2009?

RV: By its very style of living and thinking, our group was already sketching out a situation, like a beachhead active within enemy territory. The military metaphor is questionable, but it does convey our will to liberate daily life from the control and stranglehold of an economy based on the profitable exploitation of man. We formed a “group-at-risk” that was conscious of the hostility of the dominant world, of the need for radical rupture, and of the danger of giving in to the paranoia typical of minds under siege. By showing its limits and its weaknesses, the situationist experience can also be seen as a critical meditation on the new type of society sketched out by the Paris Commune, by the Makhnovist movement and the Republic of Councils wiped out by Lenin and Trotsky, by the libertarian communities in Spain later smashed by the Communist Party. The situationist project is not about what happens once consumer society is rejected and a genuinely human society has emerged. Rather, it illuminates now how lifestyle can supersede survival, predatory behavior, power, trade and the death-reflex. 

* * * *

For the rest of this interview go to 

http://www.greenmac.com/situationist

* * * *

Response to Vaneigem interview

From Sandy Turner

Yo King,

thanks for the Vaneigem interview….

There are some parts that are unclear to me in the writing, but in general he has some VERY contemporary and important analysis with an historical perspective to contribute to folks who care about moving our planet (quickly) to a much better condition for the natural world and for humans.  i particularly like his emphasis on creativity and he finally uses the word "fun" near the final pages.  Fun is my favorite F word.  And I certalnly agree that LOCAL control of our lives with direct democracy with our community is where it's at.

…. i had this really strong idea to create a radio show and a class about revolution and the future.  …. I want to put lots of energy, creativity and intention to end capitalism within 10 years.   I figure there are MANY millions of others who are doing some concrete things that they think or hope will contribute to the downfall of capitalism in the near future, and I figure there are at least a BILLION adults who would like to see it end soon.  I want to be an outspoken and overt member of that orchestra.  I REALLY appreciate the ideas and language that Raoul Vaneigem put forth.   I want to learn more about the people who are consciously promoting FREE.  Many of Raoul's ideas are quite worthy of a much wider audience.

if capitalism is allowed to flounder and stagger around for another 19 years, what forms of horrendous, planetary corporate fascism will have emerged to plunder the planet to the point of no return for thousands of species including homo sapiens by then? 

Sandy