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On 11/11/11 in collaboration with Half Acre Brewing Company, we are releasing a commemorative Lumpen 20th Anniversary beer called The Chairman.
The Chairman is a very limited release. It’s an Imperial Red Ale created to remember the men and women who worked on Lumpen magazine and became Chairmen of the Boring Theoretical Party (BTP). The Boring Theoretical Party began in the 1990’s. It was Lumpen magazine’s response to the boring, and uh, theoretically inclined armchair lefties. We started a “Worker’s Newspaper” edited by Chairman Thar, our beloved leader. Our symbols were the Armadillo and the Hoe. We had a theme song, a salute (raised fist while yawning), and we promoted that everyone should be the Chairman of their own Party.
You have a chance to bring a Chairman to the Party. Get a bottle (or three) at Half Acre Brewing Company or Maria’s Packaged Goods & Community Bar on November 11, 2011.
We will celebrate at Maria’s with a Half Acre Tap Takeover including the super delicious The Chairman! (In fact this day will be the official day of Maria’s getting Half Acre beers here for forever)
The Half Acre tap line up will also include:
Lagertown Novemberfest
Barrel Aged Small Animal Big Machine
Mr. Ouroboros
Daisey Cutter
Over Ale
Bottle Sales begin at 11am, when the store opens.. Join us for Korean Polish BBQ at 5:30pm ! With guest kimchee by Bill Kim of Belly Shack!
We will be partying all night long…
Thanks for joining us on this historic occasion..!
The three different labels for the beer were designed by Michael Freimuth and collaborators:
Thin line illustration – Michael Freimuth
Big Armadillo – Jing Wei
Chinese Characters – Michelle Villasenor
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace from science2art on Vimeo.
A series of films about how humans have been colonised by the machines they have built. Although we don’t realise it, the way we see everything in the world today is through the eyes of the computers.
This is the story of the dream that rose up in the 1990s that computers could create a new kind of stable world. They would bring about a new kind global capitalism free of all risk and without the boom and bust of the past. They would also abolish political power and create a new kind of democracy through the internet where millions of individuals would be connected as nodes in cybernetic systems – without hierarchy.
The film tells the story of two perfect worlds. One is the small group of disciples around the novelist Ayn Rand in the 1950s. They saw themselves as a prototype for a future society where everyone could follow their own selfish desires. The other is the global utopia that digital entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley set out to create in the 1990s. Many of them were also disciples of Ayn Rand. They believed that the new computer networks would allow the creation of a society where everyone could follow their own desires, yet there would not be anarchy. They were joined by Alan Greenspan who had also been a disciple of Ayn Rand. He became convinced that the computers were creating a new kind of stable capitalism – “Like a New Planet”, he said.
But the dream of stability in both worlds would be torn apart by the two dynamic human forces – love and power.
Adam Curtis – All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace 2/3 – The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts – Subs Español Span from avefenix1954 on Vimeo.
and part 3
Adam Curtis – All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace 3/3 – The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey – Subs from avefenix1954 on Vimeo.
TYPEFORCE is the annual showcase of emerging typographic artists. Firebelly Design and Public Media Institute (Proximity magazine’s parent .org) put together this exhibition to show just how fantastic Type can be. You can send us a proposal to be in the next show which opens at Co-Prosperity Sphere on February 18, 2011. Visit the TYPEFORCE wall to download a submission form. Images from last year’s show are here. (Poster by Sonenzimmer)
From our buds at Just Seeds:
Chicago, IL – “Operation Exposure: War is Trauma” hit the streets of Chicago on Monday November 15th. This collaboration between the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and veterans and supporters from Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) is a direct response to the suicide epidemic and violation of GI’s right to heal within the GI and veteran community. Veterans, artists, and supporters met in Rogers Park in Chicago and split into teams. They divided up posters that Justseeds had designed for IVAW and then wheatpasted the city. Teams hit advertising spaces and boarded up buildings with messages of GI resistance and “Operation Recovery” – a new IVAW campaign aimed to stop the redeployment of traumatized troops and focus public attention towards Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), military sexual trauma (MST), and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
“We recognize that we must stop the deployment of all soldiers in order to end these occupations,” writes IVAW. “We see the deployment of soldiers with traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress disorder, and military sexual trauma as particularly cruel, dangerous, and inhumane. Military commanders across all branches are pushing service members far past human limits for the sake of combat readiness. We cannot allow those commanders to ignore the welfare of their troops. From multiple deployments despite
PTSD, TBI, and other injuries, to rampant sexual assault within the military, soldiers are consistently being denied their right to heal. This basic right is being denied and we must organize to get it back.”
The action was part of the “Chicago in War” series that was organized by Aaron Hughes of IVAW. Metaphorically, the prints covered up corporate ads and the corporate culture that pollutes the city and perpetuates systems of inequality and oppression — systems that create public apathy to war. Twenty different posters were designed along with three large stencils portraits that honored soldiers who have resisted the US military.
One stencil honored Camilo Mejia, a Florida National Guard Sergeant who became the first US combat veteran to publicly refuse to redeploy back to Iraq. Mejia had witnessed detainees being tortured and abused by US troops in Iraq. He served nine months in prison for desertion and in August 2007 he was elected Chair of IVAW. Another stencil honored Suzanne Swift, a 23-year-old Army SPC who was continually sexually harassed and assaulted by three men in her command while she served in Iraq. She suffered from PTSD and went AWOL in January 2006 to resist redeploying with the same unit. She was apprehended and imprisoned briefly in January 2007 and is now active in anti-war and anti-rape campaigns. The last stencil honored Rodney Watson, a 29-year-old Army Specialist who served 12-months in Iraq. Watson refused redeployment and is currently seeking refuge near Vancouver, Canada.
The stencils, prints, and street art action are meant to increase awareness about the impact of war on soldiers and civilians alike in order to get the public talking about GI resistance, GI rights, and stopping the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Photos of the action are posted here.
Justseeds blog post here.
Exhibits:
A month-long window exhibit of the prints is on display at Co-Prosperity Sphere in
Bridgeport (3219 S. Morgan Ave, Chicago) and a print mural is installed at the In These
Times building (2040 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago). The In These Times exhibit opens
on Thursday, December 9th at 5:00pm.
Museum show: Intrusive Thoughts at the National Veterans At Museum
Intrusive thoughts are unwelcome involuntary thoughts, images, or unpleasant ideas that may become obsessions are upsetting or distressing, and can be difficult to manage or eliminate. Although they are commonly unseen, there are silent signs of our current occupations in our local communities, households, and memories. This show features work by veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terror that brings these signs from the shadows to the forefront and gives these traumas a voice in the political and cultural discussion of today.
National Veterans Art Museum
1801 S. Indiana Ave, Chicago IL
Nov 2010- May 2011
More information / contact:
Aaron Hughes
Iraq Veterans Against the War
By NORMAN SOLOMON (via counterpunch)
On the last night of August, the president used an Oval Office speech to boost a policy of perpetual war.
Hours later, the New York Times front page offered a credulous gloss for the end of “the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq.” The first sentence of the coverage described the speech as saying “that it is now time to turn to pressing problems at home.” The story went on to assert that Obama “used the moment to emphasize that he sees his primary job as addressing the weak economy and other domestic issues — and to make clear that he intends to begin disengaging from the war in Afghanistan next summer.”
But the speech gave no real indication of a shift in priorities from making war to creating jobs. And the oratory “made clear” only the repetition of vague vows to “begin” disengaging from the Afghanistan war next summer. In fact, top administration officials have been signaling that only token military withdrawals are apt to occur in mid-2011, and Obama said nothing to the contrary.
While now trumpeting the nobility of an Iraq war effort that he’d initially disparaged as “dumb,” Barack Obama is polishing a halo over the Afghanistan war, which he touts as very smart. In the process, the Oval Office speech declared that every U.S. war — no matter how mendacious or horrific — is worthy of veneration.
Obama closed the speech with a tribute to “an unbroken line of heroes” stretching “from Khe Sanh to Kandahar — Americans who have fought to see that the lives of our children are better than our own.” His reference to the famous U.S. military outpost in South Vietnam was a chilling expression of affinity for another march of folly.
With his commitment to war in Afghanistan, President Obama is not only on the wrong side of history. He is also now propagating an exculpatory view of any and all U.S. war efforts — as if the immoral can become the magnificent by virtue of patriotic alchemy.
A century ago, William Dean Howells wrote: “What a thing it is to have a country that can’t be wrong, but if it is, is right, anyway!”
During the presidency of George W. Bush, “the war on terror” served as a rationale for establishing warfare as a perennial necessity. The Obama administration may have shelved the phrase, but the basic underlying rationales are firmly in place. With American troop levels in Afghanistan near 100,000, top U.S. officials are ramping up rhetoric about “taking the fight to” the evildoers.
The day before the Oval Office speech, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs talked to reporters about “what this drawdown means to our national security efforts in Afghanistan and Southeast Asia and around the world as we take the fight to Al Qaeda.”
The next morning, Obama declared at Fort Bliss: “A lot of families are now being touched in Afghanistan. We’ve seen casualties go up because we’re taking the fight to Al Qaeda and the Taliban and their allies.” And, for good measure, Obama added that “now, under the command of General Petraeus, we have the troops who are there in a position to start taking the fight to the terrorists.”
If, nine years after 9/11, we are supposed to believe that U.S. forces can now “start” taking the fight to “the terrorists,” this is truly war without end. And that’s the idea.
Nearly eight years ago, in November 2002, retired U.S. Army Gen. William Odom appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program and told viewers: “Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic. It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism.”
With his Aug. 31 speech, Obama became explicit about the relationship between reduced troop levels in Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan. “We will disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda, while preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a base for terrorists,” he said. “And because of our drawdown in Iraq, we are now able to apply the resources necessary to go on offense.” This is the approach of endless war.
While Obama was declaring that “our most urgent task is to restore our economy and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work,” I went to a National Priorities Project webpage and looked at cost-of-war counters spinning like odometers in manic overdrive. The figures for the “Cost of War in Afghanistan” — already above $329 billion — are now spinning much faster than the ones for war in Iraq.
One day in March 1969, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist spoke at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Our government has become preoccupied with death,” George Wald said, “with the business of killing and being killed.” More than four decades later, how much has really changed?
Norman Solomon is the author of Made Love, Got War.
Join us Friday in Bridgeport, the Community of the Future, for much art action! First stop by Eastern Expansion to see Paul Rizzuto’s Carny photographs. Then make your way to the C0-Prosperity Sphere for Corporate Psychedelia 1968-1975. View the amazing silkscreen prints from the collection of Jason Pickleman and check out James Jankowiak’s new front window installation.
Our Facebook invite is here. And we posted some images of the work on Flickr.
ANOTHER PARADISE LOST!
A Surrealist Program of Demands on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster
O octopus, with your silken look! whose soul is inseparable from mine…
-The Songs of Maldoror
We are through with the rational, reasonable, realistic and scientific solutions of faith-based positivism. Instead, we make the following demands and dedicate them to Judi Bari, an Earth First! liberator and lover of old-growth trees who was car-bombed by the forces of law-’n'-order twenty years ago on May 24th. Long live Judi Bari! Solidarity with Marie Mason, Oso Blanco Chubbock, Mumia Abu Jamal, and the Tarnac 9!
1. CLARIFICATION: It needs to be made clear that this is not an “oil spill.” This is a manmade disaster. Depending on which official version you chose to believe, millions of gallons of oil have been gushing into the ocean every day since April 22, 2010. A “spill” is what happens when a drinking glass of water tips over; this is and always has been an unstoppable, unpluggable, uncleanable, uncontrollable, unleashed man-made geyser of toxic disaster.
2. PEOPLE’S TRIBUNALS FOR ECOTERRORISTS: An injury to one is an injury to all! We charge every BP America executive and governmental overseer of offshore oil drilling with manslaughter and ecocide. The mansions, yachts, and private jets seized from these executives and bureaucrats will be converted into sandboxes, tree forts, rain gardens, greenhouses, and amusement parks. The accused must face a people’s tribunal and stand trial in the Gulf Shore communities that their actions (and inactions) have affected, particularly the families of those eleven workers killed when the BP rig exploded. Bussed in from the cities, the underground, and the countryside, members of Earth Liberation Front and Earth First! should be on hand to witness the proceedings, especially those who are currently serving harsh prison sentences for their work in defense of the natural world. The least that we can hope for as an outcome is that the accused will be tarred with their own petroleum wastes and feathered with the soiled plumage of murdered birds.
3. DISMANTLING OF ALL OIL, COAL, AND NUCLEAR POWER COMPANIES: The obscene perpetuation of environmental devastation and endless wars in the name of energy company profits cannot be tolerated any longer. In the name of brown pelicans, shrimp, frigate birds, marlins, sea bass, laughing gulls, octopi, and piping plovers, we demand an immediate and total cessation of the violent industrialized extraction of oil and coal from the Earth. We also call for the shutting down of all nuclear power facilities whose foul radioactive wastes threaten ecologies everywhere.
4. DISSOLUTION OF ALL MEDIA CORPORATIONS: Our friend in New Orleans, Max Cafard, reports that monstrous tentacles of oil measuring ten miles long and three miles wide continue to grow beneath the waves, yet tellingly the media industry remains focused on the multicolored “sheen” on the sea’s surface. News outlets dutifully parrot the oil company’s party line of official estimates and explanations. When one BP official said that this disaster was a good opportunity to experiment with pollution containment strategies, no news agency explored the implications of an industry that can trigger a catastrophe and then grope around in the dark for a way out of it. In another interview with a BP spokesman, the CNN reporter concluded the report with the sympathetic assurance that “We’re all praying” for the corporation. Clearly, the media serve only the interests of their stockholders and the State in their coverage of this atrocity. Therefore we call for all equipment and broadcast network technology currently used to disseminate these outrageous lies and propaganda (“We’re glad that you’re on the job, Admiral”; “Don’t worry-warm water microbes break down the oil”) to be collectivized and re-distributed on street corners in order to encourage more participation and free expression in the report and analysis of such tragedies.
5. EMERGENCY MASS ACTION: We call upon everyone to defend your homes, your loved ones, and the Earth from destruction. We have seen the graffiti in Mobile, Alabama: “When life gives you oil spills, make Molotovs!”
The Surrealist Movement in the United States
www.surrealism-usa.org
