[p2p-research] p2p urbanism in the midwest

Sat May 15 18:52:24 CEST 2010

VERY GOOD sam!

On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 10:06 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> Tel:+1(517) 639-1552
> Cel: +1-(517)-974-6451
> skype: samuelrose
> email: samuel.rose at gmail.com
> http://forwardfound.org
> http://socialsynergyweb.org/culturing
> http://flowsbook.panarchy.com/
> http://socialmediaclassroom.com
> http://localfoodsystems.org
> http://notanemployee.net
> http://communitywiki.org
> http://p2pfoundation.net
>
> "The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human
> ambition." - Carl Sagan
>

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