[p2p-research] p2p urbanism in the midwest

[Samuel Rose]

On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 10:04 AM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:
> Michel, sure, this looks good.
>
> On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 5:53 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Sam,
>>
>> could you report/comment on this initiative?
>>
>> many thanks, see
>> http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/cartography-with-your-feet/#more-1718
>>
>> Michel, in Milan
>>
>> --




Here's what I wrote:



The cultural hegemony here in the midwest is full of rigid and
stifling assumptions. Even in the supposedly “progressive” places
(like Madison, Ann Arbor, and even Chicago).

“Education” for most is primarily about working on grinding you down
as an individual until you finally forget about your unique local
originality, history, diversity, and freedom. In the US Midwest cities
and countryside who accept, and even enthusiastically re-inforce onto
others the culture of resignation will thrive in the commercial,
government and traditional University education sectors.

It’s commonly known around here that it is better to just accept your
fate as the guy or girl that drives the lawnmower, sits in a cubicle,
toils on a factory floor, delivers pizzas, or increasingly, collects
unemployment checks, begs for money, breaks into business and
residences to steal goods, etc. The vacuum of culture that was filled
for decades by big corporations and their collaborators, is now being
filled by decay and crumbling collapse of those same former industrial
culture machines.

Sure, mass culture is depressing. And, yes, the collapse of mass
culture is accurately more depressing if you allowed yourself to be
worn down into thinking you were happy with mass culture. So, what
will we fill the vacuum of the collapsing vacuum fillers with, then?
What’s left if you were already supposed to be next to nothing in the
first place? Well, we could start by working with the idea that we as
individuals out here so-called “flyover country” are actually pretty
kick ass all on our own. It is time to tell our stories with our own
voices, create culture in our own spaces, learn and do without asking
permission. Either that, or you can continue to be one of those people
who slouches around smugly telling “that’ll never happen” every time
they tell you about a new or interesting idea about how to do
something right here, right now. If you are one of the mindless
midwestern zombies that regularly repeats that mantra,
congratulations: you’re at the very forefront and cutting edge in the
effort of making nothing happen around here! Look around you, and you
can see the fruits of your labour.

There are many people heading to the US Social Forum in Detroit who
are thinking along the lines of inverting the logic of the zombies.

One example is “Cartography with your feet“:
(quote)
    Driven by the pressures of corporate competition, Midwestern
capital elites envision a network of highspeed trains linking the
scattered cities of flyover land into a dense urban grid. Oblivious to
territories, histories and peoples you whisk your way from center to
center like a roulette ball spinning through the global casino. What
gets lost in the dreams of power are the connections between the city
and the country, the earth and the sky, the past and the future.

    What kinds of worlds are installed on the ground by the neoliberal
planning processes developed in the technocratic universities? How to
start building a cultural and intellectual commons that can seep into
the fabric of everyday life?

    The Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor is a call for longer,
slower, deeper connections between the territories where we live. It’s
a cartography of shared experience, built up by those who nourish
lasting ties between critical groups, political projects, radical
communities and experiments in alternative existence. Why not help
build the commons by overflowing your usual daily routines? Why not
make the journey to the US Social Forum into a chance to discover the
worlds we can create right here in our own region?

    This workshop draws from the inspiration of Grace Lee Boggs and
the travels of the Compass Group on the “Continental Drift through the
Midwest Radical Cultural Corridor.” The idea is to propose an act of
collective discovery and creation, carried out this summer by anyone
who’s heading to the Social Forum. Multiple caravans each chart their
particular pathways and organize their own activist campaigns,
artistic exchanges, skill-sharing sessions, solidarity dinners or
whatever else they desire on the roads to Detroit, then converge at
the Allied Media conference and the US Social Forum to share stories,
images and artifacts from their detours through the Midwestern
labyrinth. Meanwhile, those with different priorities can invent their
own forms of travel and exchange, explore diverging temporalities, set
up “stationary drifts” in the neighborhoods they inhabit and continue
the projects they’re pursuing, while the moving worlds pass through
them.

    By taking the time for a conscious experience of the territories
we are continually traversing we can build up what Stephen Shukaitis
calls an “imaginal machine”: a many-headed hydra telling tales of
solidarity and struggle, daily life and outlandish dreams in the
places that power forgets, leaving their inhabitants free to remember
living histories and work toward better tomorrows. The Compass Group
will present images, narratives and documents from their Continental
Drift in 2008, then open up the concept to input and debate. With the
help of anyone who’s interested, we hope to lay the basis for a
collaborative process of self-organization and convergence at the USSF
in Detroit and to sow the seeds of future meetings and projects.

(/quote)




-- 
-- 
Sam Rose
Future Forward Institute and Forward Foundation
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"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
ambition." - Carl Sagan