2009-04-18

Community Garden Workday

The Garden workday is from 1-3pm on Sunday. Wear clothes you can work in and don't mind getting dirty.

The Community Garden is a student-led project that is attempting to increase the amount of organic produce that students consume on campus. We are currently building the garden; it's located on a small patch of land behind the Freeman center. It's not finished yet, but we're trying to get plants in the ground quickly. We're currently finishing some raised beds, digging a terrace, and erecting a fence; that's probably what we'll work on tomorrow.

To reach the Smart Home from East campus, drive down Campus Drive for about two minutes and take a right on Swift Avenue. Take another right on Faber Street.

To reach the Smart Home from Broad Street, Drive to the South end where it becomes Swift Avenue. Then take a left on Faber street.

2009-04-17

Day of Silence

Hi folks, today's the day of silence. It's a day when participants are silent "in recognition of those who are forced to be silent due to anti-LGBT bullying and violence." You can choose what media you choose to be silent in and how long you choose to be silent. If you'd like to participate in the protest, just pick up a button from the BC Plaza so people will know what you're doing. Otherwise, just pick a length of time and see what social effects emerge from your being silent.

2009-04-14

CALENDAR-XCO FINAL SITUATIONS -TEST1

Event: Buy Me


BUY ME!

an anti-capitalist cavalcade
Host:
The Performance Collective
Type:
Network:
Global
Date:
Friday, April 17, 2009
Time:
5:00pm - 11:00pm
Location:
Swain
Phone:
9199634944

Description

A brilliant mostly non-narrative performance of resistance and obsession.

Come enjoy many moments of heartbreaking beauty as the culmination of our class.

Swain Studio Six

Friday April 17 @ 5 and 8

Event: Love Art Laboratory

Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth M. Stephens are COMING to UNC-CH Tuesday, April 14th 5:30 PM Hanes Art Center.

*This event is ***FREE*** and open to the public*

ADVENTURES OF THE LOVE ART LABORATORY

With Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens

‘We, Elizabeth M. Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, are an artist couple committed to doing projects that explore, generate, and celebrate love. We utilize visual art, installation, theater pieces, interventions, live-art, exhibitions, lectures, printed matter and activism. Each year we orchestrate one or more interactive performance art weddings in
collaboration with various national and international communities, then display the ephemera in art galleries.
Our projects incorporate the colors and themes of the chakras, a structure inspired by Linda M. Montano’s 14 Years of Living Art. The Love Art Laboratory grew out of our response to the violence of war, the anti-gay marriage movement, and our prevailing culture of cynicism. We hope the Love Art Laboratory will help make the world a more fun, sexy, tolerant, love- filled place.

Love is the new sex! We hope you will join us for a show and tell afternoon."

Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D. is an artist and sexologist.
Elizabeth Stephens a professor of art and is the Chair of the Art Dept. at UCSC.

2009-04-11

Event: Suggestion

Relay for Life runs until midnight on West today.

2009-04-08

XCO SOCIAL METHODS / WEEK #1 / 090406-090413 / PROPOSED

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XCO SOCIAL METHODS / WEEK #1 / 090406-090413 / PROPOSED
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To be applied in experimental, individual, or coordinated fashion at confirmed XCO SITUATIONS for this week

We discussed these in class, but bring a camera and/or pointed ears to document and later represent what you/we were all doing and then post it on the blog and share with others

XCO SITUATIONS / WEEK #1 / 090406-090413

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XCO SITUATIONS / WEEK #1 / 090406-090413
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More information for the other weeks will follow soon, but I did not want to delay sending this.
I am also working on having a joint google.calendar platform ready soon that will help us coordinate all these events and ideas

Remember that we are still meeting every Tue at 2:50pm but for a much shorter time (2:50pm-3:30pm) mostly to coordinate each week's ideas for events and social methods, actions, and contextual experiments.

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Confirmed SITUATIONS for us to play out our SOCIAL METHODS this week will be:

WEEK #1
090406-090413

Mandatory
090408 - Wed 10-11pm
Jazz at the Mary Lou Williams Center
http://experimentalcommunities.blogspot.com/2009/04/playing-jazz-at-mary-lou-williams.html
We will also return on Wed 090414, 10-11pm

Mandatory
090409 - Thu 1-3pm
The Commons Conference: Negri & Balibar at Nasher Museum
if you cannot make it to that, go to at least 2hrs of any other part of the 2 day conference and be ready to talk/do something about it. I'll be there for all parts of both days.
Full info here:
http://experimentalcommunities.blogspot.com/2009/03/xco-events-09040910negribalibarothersth.html

Not Mandatory but Almost
090410 - Fri 6:30-7:30pm (time we'll be there, the reception goes from 6 to 9pm)
Classmate Cameron Ayres' exhibition reception at Arts Center in Carrboro
http://experimentalcommunities.blogspot.com/2009/04/invite-reception-for-my-stuff.html

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XCO EVENTS 090413/YAMILA GUTIÉRREZ CALLISAYA/TOWARD THE COMMUNAL(THE CONSTITUTION OF THE BOLIVIAN STATE AND A THE DECOLONIAL RE-CONSTITUTION OF AYLLUS

Modernity/Coloniality and the Geopolitics of Knowledge Working Group
UNC-Duke Consortium in Latin American Studies invite you to


A WORKSHOP WITH

YAMILA GUTIÉRREZ CALLISAYA

CONSEJO NACIONAL DE AYLLUS Y MARKAS DEL QULLASUYU (CONAMAQ), LA PAZ, BOLIVIA

ON

TOWARD THE COMMUNAL

(THE CONSTITUTION OF THE BOLIVIAN STATE AND A THE DECOLONIAL RE-CONSTITUTION OF THE AYLLUS)


The workshop will be conducted in Spanish and coordinated by Marcelo Fernández-Osco (Department of Romance Studies, co-founder of THOA, Taller Historia Oral Andina)

Monday, April 13, 2009
5,45 pm to 8 pm

Friedl Building 225A (East Campus, right by the bus stop; parking available at the entrance on Buchanan and Trinity)

Light dinner will be served.

Noam Chomsky describes Bolivia as the most democratic country on earth at this point. Yamila Gutierrez will describe the crucial role that the re-constitution of the Ayllus is playing in this process and the role of the Ayllus in redoing political theory and political economy (e.g., the re-conceptualization of “the communal”), working toward de-colonial democratic futures. We are allowing ample time for debate and exchange of ideas.


For more information about CONAMAQ see http://www.conamaq.org.bo/

2009-04-07

PLAYING: Jazz at the Mary Lou Williams Center

Join us at the Mary Lou Williams Center for a Wednesday night tradition featuring Professor John Brown and his trio. Come enjoy free late-night snacks, bring your drink over from the Faculty Commons bar next door and listen to the sounds of jazz in the cool setting of the Mary Lou.

Co-sponsored by Duke University Union and the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture

Where: Mary Lou Williams Center (above The Loop in the West Union Building; enter through the door under the archway between the plaza and quad and walk up one flight of stairs)
When: 9:30pm - 12:30am

2009-04-05

Invite: Reception for my stuff


So, the reception is this Friday, April 10th from 6-9 at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro. Hope you guys can swing by.

Invitation: Muslims of Metropolis Reading

Hey fellow Experimental Communitarians,

My very dear friend Kavitha Rajagopalan is coming to town this week to read from her book, Muslims of Metropolis, at Internationalist books - this Wednesday at 7. If you can make it, I promise it will be worth it. I'm reading the book as we speak and am utterly fascinated, and Kavi herself is brilliant, beautiful and a hell of a lot of fun.

Rather than attempt a mini-précis, I decided to beg, borrow and steal from the dust jacket. Here's some info on the book:

Muslims of Metropolis: The Stories of Three Immigrant Families in the West

"Through the microcosm of three Muslim families in Western cities, Kavitha Rajagopalan makes legible features of international migration easily obscured by questions of religion and racism. She brings to life socio-cultural alignments in the larger story of globalization that in turn illuminate those thick microcosms. This is one of the most interesting accounts I have read about the subject." - Saskia Sassen

Bio Blurb:
Kavitha Rajagopalan has worked in international development and finance, and as a journalist in India, Germany and the United States. She is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute.

Dust Jacket synopsis:
The Muslim population globally is comprised of hundreds of ethnic, linguistic, and religious sub-communities. Yet, more often than not, the public confuses these diverse and unrelated communities, branding Muslim immigrants as a single, suspicious, and culturally antagonistic group of people. Generalizations like these have compromised many Muslim immigrants' sense of belonging and acceptance in places where they have lived, in some cases, for three or four generations.

In Muslims of Metropolis, Kavitha Rajagopalan takes a much needed step in personalizing and humanizing our understanding of the Muslim diaspora. Tracing the stories of three very different families - a Palestinian family moving to London, a Kurdish family moving to Berlin, and a Bangladeshi family moving to New York - she reveals a level of complexity and nuance that is seldom considered. Through their voices and in their words, Rajagopalan describes what prompted these families to leave home, what challenges they faced in adjusting to their new lives, and how they came to view their place in society. Interviews with community leaders, social justice organizations and with academics and experts in each of the countries add additional layers of insight to how broad political issues, like nationalist conflict, immigration reform, and antiterrorism strategies affect the lives of Muslims who migrate in search of economic and personal happiness.

Although recent thinking about immigration policy in the United States and Europe emphasizes the importance of long-term integration, a global attitude that continues to sensationalize divisions between Muslim and other communities thwarts this possibility. Integration cannot occur with policy situations alone - people must feel that they belong to a larger society. Whether read as simple stories or broader narratives, the voices in this revealing book are among the many speaking against the generalization, prejudice, and fear that has so far surrounded Muslims living in the West.

2009-04-03

Proposal: Walking - turn left

I can't find her original text, but there's a Yoko Ono instruction piece where you walk until you have to turn, and then always make a left. I thought we might incorporate some sort of instructional (directional?) parameter on our walking day.