Blockupy Frankfurt wins as police blocks bankers, government blocks democracy

Posted on May 21, 2012 by

There has been quite some debate over whether the Occupy movement, despite being famously open and unspecific about its political aims, is fundamentally based on an anti-capitalist agenda. Some have argued against this assumption, claiming Occupy was critical of capitalism but didn’t share the believe that there was something fundamentally wrong with with it. This might be read as an adaptation of Graham Gibson’s argument about the dangers of fetichising capitalism in anti-capitalist politics, a valid critique.
It might also be, rather more worringly, an attempt by proponents of capital’s plan B to use Occupy for their pursuit of ‘capitalism light’. Some appreciation of critical approaches to capitalism to save it: See what George Caffentzis wrote in a recent comment:

As [Obama] wrote in his campaign book, The Audacity of Hope in 2006, neoliberalism (what the Bush Administration ideologues called ‘the Ownership Society’) was leading to a political catastrophe for capitalism in the US by creating harsh class divisions, an uncompetitive working class, and a corrupt and irresponsible capitalist class. Obama’s answer to US capitalism’s ills was and is similar to Sach’s answer for Africa: communal actions and institutions must be tolerated in order to make a functioning capitalism possible.

The uptake of Occupy in Germany had been relatively late and never particularily strong. Blockupy Frankfurt was a concerted attempt to take Occupy further and make it into a strong antagonistic and anti-capitalist statement. In particular activists targeted the German financial capital and her banks, including the European Central Bank (ECB) in protest over the austerity measures forced upon Euro member countries like Greece, Italy and Spain. As broad coalition was forged on the basis of a  very considerate action consenus, which allowed anti- and alter-capitalist to work together.

In the end, the protest was blocked: City of Frankfurt administration banned all planned actions apart from one march which took place on Saturday with 30,000 participants. The German constitutional court upheld the bans on protest, causing surprisingly little concern.

The organising Interventionist Left expresses some disappointment at the results of the banning of Blockupy

We’ve wished that there would have been more tents on the squares, for a longer period. We had prepared a large range of asambleas and meetings, opportunities to have a free exchange and free debates. The violence of the bans and the violence of those who executed them, kept us from doing so.

But many participants will also agree with the following note

We will not be intimidated. We will not be crushed. And most certainly, we will not back down. And even if they crack down on us again — which they will — let it be known that our aims have already been achieved: the financial epicenter of eurocapitalism is completely blocked. And the authorities were kind enough to do it for us.

Now it’s time to up the ante. Authorities in the West seem to be increasingly happy to undermine democracy to defend capitalism. Little do they seem to care whether protesters are anti-capitalist or alter-capitalist. These are signs of weakness: The results of the weekend in Frankfurt: Blockupy 1:Authorities 0

Posted in occupy, protest camps | Leave a comment

Video Now Available: Media, Politics and Protest Camps in the Occupy Social Movement

Posted on May 10, 2012 by

You can now watch Protest Camp Collective’s Anna Feigenbaum and Patrick McCurdy discuss the impacts of the Occupy movement, followed by a keynote address from award-winning journalist Chris Hedges.

Posted in occupy, protest camps | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Spontaneous Urban Design: An interview with 123 Occupy

Posted on May 1, 2012 by

“Someone mentioned to me recently the popular union slogan “8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for what we will”.  I’ve been thinking over the course of my work with the occupy movement that people are really taking those extra 1-8 hours a day to change the remaining sixteen.  In the midst of demanding work, designers tend to forget how powerful those extra hours can be.”

Bubble Wrap Pop-Up

 In October 2011 Greta Hansen, Kyung-Jae Kim, Andy Rauchut, and Adam Koogler came together as ‘123 Occupy’ to build strategies for occupation. Their work combines architectural structures, urban design principles and an open source ethos with a commitment to community-building, inspired by the Occupy movement and histories of radical design.

 

Protestcamps:  When and how did you start working together?

We started working together when the occupation of Zuccotti Park was occupying everyone’s attention.  The first thought was “what are they going to do in the winter?” and the second thought was opportunistic.  As architects we thought we could try to engage what we already cared about with what was an open ground for ideas.  We worked with the Architecture Working Group to brainstorm solutions for the winter, and then we developed a raised insulated water-resistant platform for tents and a collapsible triage station for the medical pavilion.  We built them, but unfortunately finished right in time for winter but not in time for the eviction.

Protestcamps:     What is your current project and how is it going?

Our current project is also collapsible, an inflatable structure to cover public space and encourage gathering, discussion, etc.  We just finished a test model. Our next iteration will double in size to a 30’-0” diameter, and what we learn from that will inform our final inflatable of 60’-0” – 80’-0” in diameter.  We call the project Inflatable GA because we think those assemblies, especially the early ones, represented the spirit of the movement.  We hope the project will encourage gatherings like those.

Protestcamps:   You seem to be coming from different training backgrounds. Could you say a bit about those differences and the collaborative processes you use? How do you see your different skill sets come together in this work? 

We’re all architects so our training is not so diverse.  I come from an architecture and exhibition design practice, but I’ve been making art projects for the past two years.  Andy and Adam work full time in architecture firms and are competent with thinking forms and well as building them.  Kyung-Jae also works fulltime in architecture, and he is our graphic side.

 Protestcamps:  Often in ‘activist circles’ strong lines are drawn between corporate industry work and community/protest work. However, in reality, many designers working in Occupy also work in, or have worked in, the corporate sector. Do you think about these divisions in your practice or working life? Do you see any changes occurring more broadly in the ‘design world’ between, as one recent project in the UK put it, “Creativity, Money and Love“?   

All of us are bound to the system somehow.  For me, juggling freelance work and art and activist work simultaneously, the boundaries between them can seem less defined.  But most of our 4-person group work a daily, strenuous job, like most designers. Someone mentioned to me recently the popular union slogan “8 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, 8 hours for what we will”.  I’ve been thinking over the course my work with the occupy movement that people are really taking those extra 1-8 hours a day to change the remaining sixteen.  In the midst of demanding work, designers tend to forget how powerful those extra hours can be.  So instead of feeling guilty about time spent in corporate offices, we can remember that it’s our right to balance that work with an effort to change the system we work in.

One of the design firms we look up to for their balance of activism and corporate/government work to is Interboro Partners in Brooklyn.  Their project for the Young Architecture Pavilion at PS1 in 2010 was a good example.  All the pieces of their design for the museum’s courtyard were pre-designed to become useful pieces of the neighborhood and community after the summer’s run of events and parties.

Protestcamps:   One thing I was drawn to in your projects is the way they engage with a kind of ‘open source’ or ‘crowd source’ model for product development. In a traditional product market, you’d take private designs, pitch it to for-profit investors for a stake, and then have your product produced and sold on the market with a price mark up. For 123 Occupy, your designs are made public, your investors are crowdsourced and your product is gifted to the movement. Is this a conscious part of your work? Are you guided by other open source practices and initiatives?

We started because of the completely open source and crowd sourced occupy movement.  So everything we are doing is an attempt to connect with that model, and the way for us was through DIY culture.  Mimi Zeiger wrote a 4-part series of articles for Design Observer called the Interventionist’s Toolkit.  The fourth one included our projects in a discussion of urban activism.

Zeiger’s first article introduces the emergence of these spontaneous urban architecture projects, which have the goal of changing the city through small actions.  I’m glad that 123 exists in the realm of these kind of projects.  You don’t need a client to make a project and by not having one you create your own agency.

Protestcamps:   Your work reminds me of some of Forays‘ projects which were done as everyday street interventions, but could be used in protest settings. This kind of work points, for me, to broader questions of appropriation or applied use. Generally, folks talk of capitalism/corporations ‘appropriating’ art and social movement practices. Yet, in your work and in groups like Forays, appropriation does not seem to work in only one direction. Materials, energy, design principles, landscape, etc. are all put to creative use. How does your group think about these borrowings or re-uses?

cocoon by Forays (Adam Bobbette and Geraldine Juarez)

The main thing I think we are doing is borrowing space and trying to open it up to new uses.  Forays’ guerrilla architecture seems to consistently involve the re-use of materials.  This is a way to be efficient but also a way to resist our dependence on the consumption of materials, a way to remind us of the resources we are already sitting on.  Right now 123 is using a lot of new plastic.  So we’re trying to design a smart outlet for that material if and when the inflatables become un-reusable.

Protestcamps:   What does 123 Occupy recommend for those interested in radical design? Are there other people, projects, books that you have particularly drawn inspiration from?A direct source of inspiration for us was Michael Rakowitz’s parasite project.  He created a series of blow-up pods for the homeless that borrowed warm air from the exhaust vents of buildings.  This so-smart way of redirecting air to make comfortable spaces – making something out of waste, invisible waste – is the kind of the epitome of the spontaneous urban design move that you and I both are trying to find.

We’ve also been working alongside Mitch McEwen who runs a small nonprofit called Superfront, which takes advantage of unused and available spaces in New York, Detroit, and LA and turns them into events and design collaborations.

Some of the vintage examples that continue to inspire us, especially for inflatables, come from the radical architecture groups Ant Farm and Archigram.

Michael Rakowitz’s ParaSite Project

Learn how you can build 123 Occupy’s projects.

Follow @protestcamps and subscribe to protestcamps.org for news and reviews of protest camps from around the world.

Posted in occupy, protest camps, social media | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Protest Camps on Canal Savior with Chris Hedges

Posted on April 16, 2012 by

Protest Camps on Canal Savior with Chris Hedges

Anna Feigenbaum & Patrick McCurdy will appear on Canal Savior’s airing of Media, Politics and Protest Camps in the Occupy Social Movement.  The first episode features journalist and author Chris Hedges on April 17, 2012 at 19:00 and April 18, 2012 at 14:00. The following week, episode 2 broadcasts the panelists’ discussion on topics including anonymous, social media, black bloc tactics and police brutality. It airs on April 24, 2012 at 19:00 and April 25, 2012 at 14:00.

Posted in occupy, protest camps, social media | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Warwick University on Occupy London

Posted on April 4, 2012 by

From its start, there has been a discussion of what Occupy is and what it means. With few camps left around the world, some have asked whether occupy has failed, or lost. Others continue to claim that occupy has a special quality as a new global movement, one with revolutionary potential, perhaps.

At a recent one-day workshop held at Warwick University Business School on the 21 March 2012, around 40 participants avidly discussed these points. Participants came from Occupy London Stock Exchange, as well as a range of academic backgrounds. It was an activists-academics crossover and, perhaps, an attempt to occupy the university and ‘steal study,’ as Occupiers sat in the front and shared their experiences.

Controversy occurred quickly: Occupy was presented as a totally new global phenomenon and as a convergence of diverse social movements into a unified form, with little acknowledgement of its underlying diversity, both regionally and historically. Further claims described occupy as ‘the most successful movement ever’ and as ‘our last chance.’ One participant even described Occupy as a ‘revolutionary movement because camping out in winter showed the bloody determination of participants’.

From the Tent City Uni to Warwick: Occupy the University

Divisions in the camp

Objections were raised against those assertions. Did Occupy ‘occupy’? i.e. Did the movement colonise a whole range of social movements across the world, forcing a brand onto the Arab Spring, the M15 movement in Spain, the Israeli housing protests, the British history of protest camping? Does the fact that Occupy did not materialize in India and Latin America indicate a lack of anti-capitalist movements in these places? Certainly not. But what lessons could be learned? The workshop aimed at discussing the politics of organizing. In this context it was very illuminating to hear first hand reflections from the practices and problems developed at Occupy LSX. Their forms of organising around consensus and horizontal decision making (HDM) quickly led to very tangible problems. While some pointed to the well documented ‘magic’ of HDM to produce consensual decisions, there were clear signs of divisions between those that ‘slept in the camp’ and others who came to the general assembly but had not been overnight stayers. The latter tended also to be ‘more [formally] educated’.

The remaining Finsbury Square camp faced a ‘digital divide’ as the on-the ground general assembly and discussions on online ‘groupspaces’ were attended by different groups. Suspicions developed against working groups like the ‘media team’ who were accused of misrepresenting the camp, as well as forming unwarranted leadership of the movement. Such problems occur in a variety of camps, and it is helpful to reflect the discussions on the role of the media team as they emerged, for example in the 2005 Horizone protest camp in Gleneagles.

Occupy LSX also experienced a range of problems that are very different from rural camps. As a camp located in a city, Occupy attracted a much broader range of people, including street drinkers and homeless who came for free food and shelter. Occupy developed a ‘charitable function’ of sorts, a characteristic much less pronounced in rural camps. HDM and other organisational set-ups were also burdened with the more transient character of  city space, where passers-by could come and join discussions at any point. Equally the need to make the space ‘safe’ afforded much more attention than in rural camps. This was addressed through the development of a variety of infrastructures and policies over the time of existence in which significant perspectives on what Occupy LSX was emerged and often clashed.

What’s to be done?

Occupy LSX participants told the workshop of attempts to do ‘skill shares’ and rotate roles between working groups. But there were also more fundamental questions about the use and utility of Occupy to advance revolutionary ideas. HDM seemed to work well in specific situations, but questions were raised whether it would be useful when more antagonistic strategies were pursued. Indicative perhaps was the decision to remove a banner from Occupy LSX which read ‘Capitalism is Crisis’ because the camp could not agree on being ‘anti-capitalist’. In this light it might be useful to draw on OccupyLSX’s experiences with HDM in other movement contexts.

In Warwick, we were also reminded that HDM, if used as a blanket tool of organisation, might easily get confused with very liberal ideas of politics. In this light , seeing Occupy as creating a blank slate of social organisation, from which all can speak and deliberate, might have been one of the key limitations of a developing ‘Occupy’ self-consciousness. The occupy movement seems to be a less threatening, liberal version of Tahrir, in which the revolutionary action of the Arab spring is referenced, but the key revolutionary demand remains unspoken: Off with their heads!

London Occupy as Tahrir Light?

Not a Tahrir moment then, but rather ‘Tahrir light’?

Steal Study!

The workshop ended on a proposal to ‘steal study,’ to use the university’s resources and intellectual might in order to liberate reflection and research from the constraints of capitals enclosures. This proposal was discussed replicating general assembly decision making, and – perhaps true to many similar discussions in the camps – ended on a consensus to create a working group.

Posted in occupy, protest camps | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

In the Middle of Occupy: short reflections on failure and growth

Posted on March 25, 2012 by

This post is updated and adapted from an answer I gave to the question ‘Are we in the beginning, middle, or end of the Occupy Movement?’ while a panellist at Media@McGill’s “Media, Politics and Protest Camps in the Occupy Social Movement” event 27 Jan 2012. 

Back in October 2011, we heard from philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Zizeck that Occupiers should not fall in love with themselves. I think it is also imperative that Occupy does not fall in love with failure. Capitalism loves failure. You lost your job, you are failure. You cannot support your family, you are a failure. You are poor, you are a failure. And of course, we learn this first in school where if you do not learn how you are supposed to, you fail. Most of all, the government officials, the corporations and the professional politicians all want this movement to fail. Let’s not forget that. And let’s not make it easy for them to say it.

The challenges and criticisms piled onto Occupy by participants, supporters and onlookers are, for me, the reason I say we are in the middle of the Occupy Movement. Some of these criticisms should be thrown out, but others demand attention and time and hard work. I think this winter offered time to dig in there and sift through it all and filter out what needs attention, as many Occupy groups and supporters are continuing to do.

One thing that I want to sift out is around discussions of inclusion and equality and the processes of alternative governance and decision-making that have become popularised particularly in North America by Occupy.

Direct democracy is an amazing intervention to see happening on this scale. Occupy has brought out many people who say there is something wrong with Our Democracy, with our economy, with corporations. These are incredible things.

Bec Young

For those of us engaged in traditions of consensus, of self-directed communities and participatory politics, it is profound to see these indigenous, anarchist, feminist and ecological tools for organising people enter into a broad-based social movement.

But when Occupy says ‘direct democracy’ what visions of Democracy are brought into Occupy? A lot of camps struggled with questions around inclusion. Many people brought forward traditional notions of Equality and Liberty. I think it is important to be critical of this. To remember that these terms themselves arise out of colonial histories wherein people are not equal and are not all oppressed in the same ways—as the 99%.

So for me there is a question that I don’t think has ever come before at this scale – and that is what happens when these tools that are about challenging and transforming how we even think about huge ideas like Equality butt heads with the traditional notions of Equality many people bring to the movement?

These traditional notions of Equality cannot account for the ways that different bodies and different voices have different amounts of power. So when we do consensus, when we do a general assembly and we do not acknowledge or configure these difference into our politics, ruptures occur, movements split and grow weary.

For Occupy to remain salient and relevant to existing communities of struggle and to reach out to broader publics requires that we strengthen ourselves and our movements, sharing skills, doing public education, rethinking some of the structures of Occupy that have become fetishized even when they are not working. We need to ask: What should we take along and what should go in the compost as we move forward to #OccupySpring?

Posted in occupy, protest camps | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Workshop Announcement: (Re)thinking Protest Camps: governance, spatiality, affect and media

Posted on March 4, 2012 by

Booking is now open for this free one day workshop, “(Re)thinking Protest Camps: governance, spatiality, affect and media” to be held on Tuesday 26 June 2012 at the University of Leicester, UK. Instructions and an online form to reserve a place are provided below.

Workshop Programme and Reading

The (Re)Thinking Protest Camps Workshop is structured around four ways of approaching protest camps and theorizing their social, cultural and political impact.  Following short introductions by discussion leaders, in each of our themed sessions, workshop participants will be invited to collectively examine the governance, spatialities, affective terrain, and media representations of/from protest camps. The day aims to provide plentiful opportunity for open, yet focused, discussion and debate, as well as a space for networking and research community building.

 

Schedule

 

09:30-10:00 Registration

Coffee & Tea

 

10.00-10.15 Welcome & Introduction

 

10.15-11.15 Opening Lecture: Sasha Roseneil

 

After the camp – what do we leave behind? Legacies, memories, transformations?

 

Sasha Roseneil is Professor of Sociology and Social Theory and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research, at Birkbeck, University of London. She has written extensively about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, and more widely about social movements, feminist politics and intimacy and personal life.

Reading:

Disarming Patriarchy: Feminism and Political Action at Greenham, 224pp, Buckingham, Open University Press, 1995.

Common Women, Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham, 329pp, London, Cassell Academic Press, 2000.
‘Greenham Revisited: Researching Myself and My Sisters’ in D. Hobbs and T. May (eds) Interpreting the Field, pp. 177-208, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993.
Break 11.15

11.30-12.15 Session 1: Spatialities

 

Discussion led by: Jenny Pickerill & Gavin Brown


This session examines protest camps spatially.  It considers the physical space occupied by camps (in their locational context), their materiality, and the spatial practices that occur within/through those sites.  It interrogates the (strategic) location of encampments and their (non)relations with the objects of their protests.  It debates the place of protest camps in cohering social movements at different scales, by providing spaces in which those movements can converge, but also hubs through which different types of networks are articulated across varying distances and of different durations.

Break 12.15

 

12.30-13.15 Session 2: Governance and Organisation

 

Discussion led by: Fabian Frenzel & Keir Milburn

Protest Camps are sites of experimentation with alternative forms of organisation and governance. They are places where radically democratic models of decision making, as well as decentralised, autonomous structures are tested and developed. As an organisational form, protest camps invite the practice of prefigurative politics (Breines 1989). The experience of many protest camps proves the use and utility of these alternative forms of governance, yet also shows clear limits of such attempts, for example when protest camps reproduce divisions of gender, race and class rather than work to overcome them. This session addresses the possibilities of and limitations to autonomy in protest camp organisation and the learning processes that may result from tackling these limits.

Reading:

Cornell, A. (2009) ‘Anarchism and the Movement for a New Society: Direct Action and Prefigurative Community in the 1970s and 80s’ online  http://www.anarchiststudies.org/node/292

Frenzel, F (2010) ‘Exit the system: Crafting the place of protest camps between antagonism and exception’ online at: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/15924/

Lang, S. and Schneider F. (2002) ‘The dark side of camping’
online at http://www.all4all.org/2004/07/985.shtml

13.15-14.15 Lunch

14.15-15.00 Session 3: Affect

 

Discussion led by: Anna Feigenbaum, Emma Dowling & Anja Kanngieser
What does it mean for politics to be attentive to the affective dimensions of protest and encampment?. Affect is defined by in a number of different ways, most of which relate to our pre-linguistic feelings and sensations. Affect theorists are often concerned with the materialities of daily life as they shape bodily reactions and responses, moving us toward, as well as potentially alienating us from each other. In this session we raise questions such as: How does affect accumulate and circulate in protest camps, shaping practices and policies? How does affective labour take shape in protest camps, intersecting with lived conditions of race, class, sexuality and gender? How do the affective qualities of the voice engage people’s capacities to listen and to respond to one another both in meeting spaces, as well as in daily interactions?

Reading

 Trott, B. (2007): Notes on Why It Matters that Heiligendamm Felt Like Winning, http://transform.eipcp.net/correspondence/1183458348#redir

Free Association: Moments of Excess, either online: http://freelyassociating.org/moments-of-excess/moments-of-excess-2006/ or the book (published by PM Press)

Shukaitis, S. : Questions for Aeffective Resistance, from his book Imaginal Machines, the chapter is downloadable here: http://f.cl.ly/items/3E1a1X2b0A0M3u0p2x15/Shukaitis%20-%20Questions%20for%20Aeffective%20Resistance.pdf

Break 15.00

15.15-16.00 Session 4: Media Representation & Cultural Production

 

Discussion led by: Patrick McCurdy & Julie Uldam

Media is a site of struggle on par and in tandem with physical places of resistance. As such, the representation of a social movements or protest camps in both mainstream and social movement-produced media can have a powerful impact on its public standing and success. Recognising that media – in all its forms – serve as an important environment and platform for social struggle, this session is interested in the representational strategies of protest camps and will debate how, and to what end,  media (mainstream, movement and social) are used in such spaces.

Reading:

1. Castells, Manuel (2007). “Power and Counter-power in the Network Society”, International Journal of Communication, Volume 1. Available from: http://ijoc.org/ojs/index.php/ijoc/article/view/46/35 Article captures the core ideas of Castells’ 2009 book, Communication Power. The idea of counterpower is helpful for understanding the rise and media resistance of the Occupy movement.

2. Donson, Fiona, Graeme Chesters, Ian Welsh and Andrew Tickle (2004).“Rebels with a Cause, Folk Devils without a Panic: Press jingoism, policing tactics and anti-capitalist protest in London and Prague”, International Journal of Criminology. Available from: http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Donson%20et%20al%20-%20Folkdevils.pdf

This study is based on Stanley Cohen’s idea of ‘folk devils’ which is a helpful lens for reflecting critically on the media’s coverage of the Occupy movement.

3. Gladwell, Malcolm (2010). “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted”, The New Yorker¸ Available from http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell A now famous polemic on the debate about the potential for social media to facilitate activism.

Break 16.00

16.15-17.15 Research network foundation

 

Facilitated discussion on future research collaborations and networking

 

Following the conclusion of the workshop there will be informal drinks and dinner at a restaurant near the train station for those wishing to attend.
If you planning to book your travel in advance, please consider the following approximate times for the end of each of those activities:

Workshop ends: 17.15
Drinks till about 18.15
Dinner from 18.30 to ….
(it’s about 20 mins walk from the university to the trainsation and 10 mins from where we have drinks and eat)

Workshop Overview

Over the last year, urban protest camps and encampments have captured the world’s attention and imagination.  From Tahrir Square to the tent city of Tel Aviv, from the encampments of the Los Indignados in Spain to the Occupy movement, enduring protests have arisen to demand democracy and fight austerity measures.  In addition to these protest camps situated within/outside symbolic targets, other kinds of protest camps have grown as a social movement tactic in recent decades.

These include camps that aim to prevent or disrupt the destruction of a site under social or environmental threat (for example, anti-roads protests, or the solidarity camp that sought to prevent the eviction of Irish Traveller families from their land at Dale Farm in Essex).  There have been camps that draw attention to sites posing a specific social, military or environmental threat (for example, the siting of Climate Camps outside oil-fuelled power stations or peace camps outside military installations). Finally, camps have been organised as counter-summits or ‘convergence spaces’ (Routledge 2003) in opposition to strategic meetings of global political leaders.

This one-day workshop seeks to examine both these recent and contemporary expressions of protest camps, as well as to chart the historical geographies of protest encampments in earlier periods.  The workshop is open to a broad interpretation of ‘protest camps’ from physical encampments where people live, through to the picket-lines of long-running industrial strikes.  In some cases it is the act of camping, of being in place, that is central, in others it is the duration and creation of a persistent physical infrastructure of protest in situ.

The workshop is structured around four ways of approaching protest camps to theorise their social, cultural and political impact.  Through four short introductions examining the governance, spatialities, affective terrain and media representations of/from these sites, we hope to provide plentiful opportunity for open, yet focused, discussion and debate.

Workshop Organisers

The  ”(Re)thinking Protest Camps” workshop is organised by: Gavin Brown, Fabian Frenzel and Jenny Pickerill, University of Leicester, Anna Feigenbaum, Richmond, the American International University in London, and Patrick McCurdy, University of Ottawa.

Workshop Logistics

Booking is now open for a one-day seminar on “(Re)thinking Protest Camps: governance, spatiality, affect and media”, University of Leicester, Tuesday 26 June 2012.  The event is free, and lunch is provided: but a place must be reserved in advance.  Please complete the online booking form to book your place.

A limited number of travel/accommodation bursaries are available for postgraduate / unwaged participants or people without access to funding for such activity which are available on a first come, first served basis.  To request a bursary please contact Gavin Brown (gpb10 (at) le.ac.uk) specifying your status and (briefly) the reasons for your request.
There will be a meal available afterwards at your own cost.
Location: University of Leicester – 15 minute walk from Leicester rail station. http://www2.le.ac.uk/maps/campus-map
Accommodation:  we would recommend Spindle Lodge:
http://www.spindlelodge.co.uk/
or you can find other options here.
www.booking.com/Leicester-Hotels

(If you are unsure about where is and isn’t convenient for the University campus, contact the organizers.) Please also inform us of any special requirements (eg. dietary, access etc.). We will do our best to address these.

Posted in occupy, protest camps, social media | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment