Hi comrades! We write you to spread a Spanish´ (Mallorca) iniciative called "take the town" (tomalaciudad). It´s about take empty places (private or statal properties) and make them squares, communitary gardens, places to meet each other and work togeter (Exarhia´s way). It is a political action based in assamblies, a critic of urban design, building a common space for the people. Sorry my english is not enough to describe but this is the video with english subtitles and this is the manifest Hope you like it. We ask you to make diffusion.
TAKE THE CITY!
It has been a long time decisions are taken for us but without us. Once upon a time, there were collective spaces where people lived together and took decisions amongst equals, cultivated dialogue, fraternal cooperation and work for the common benefit. Nowadays, our lives have been mortgaged to a political and economical system that has impoverished us and made us more dependent. They called the political irresponsibility of putting in someone else’s hands the affairs that matter to us “freedom”. We were educated within a childish and selfish outlook, articulating society in closed compartments where ruthlessness and mistrust prevail, rather than collaboration and respect. We were “the people” and they made us “the public”, we gave up being actors to become dejected spectators of a life managed from above. The design of our cities is also a purely political issue: the arrangement of gardens, fenced by barriers, closed by night; flowers lined up like paving stones, bushes pruned like walls. Urban space was thought up for a mute transit of vehicles, persons and merchandising. The stage is sterile and the flow never stops - because, if we stop, order is in danger. We have realized business and state production ways do not respond to either our wishes or our needs, and, instead, it generates corrupt and unjust structures and is hugely damaging for the environment. What would happen if we started managing the world ourselves, from below, in a different way? Let’s imagine, for instance, a transformed city, more natural, where, instead of so much tarmac, paving stones and sterile gardens, we grew aromatic herbs or plants from which we could extract natural remedies; where, instead of ornamental parks, we had orchards and ecological vegetable gardens, looked after by all together, children, grown ups, elders and youths. What would happen if, instead of maintaining a highly expensive and often inefficient state public sector, we built a network of people’s services, autonomous, where the labour that supported it was managed by people’s assemblies and not according to the profit of a few; where each of us would contribute as we can and where we can; where we could develop in a wholly way as persons, both to give and to receive, not being mere passive consumers anymore? It is not hard to imagine if we take into account that social state services are suffering ongoing cuts and the model of welfare state appears unviable, judging by the heavily indebted economical situation. Today, our streets overflow with closed spaces: empty houses, unused plots, unfinished buildings. We start to see the ruins that reveal the decadent state of a society in crisis. A society that we do not choose but that we pay dearly. Thus, we will take those unused spaces, previously usurped by the logics of private profit and public loss, giving them new uses for the benefit of all. So, we invite you all to participate into the new society we are constructing in those places. We are not here to do abstract demands, it is not enough to be indignant, we are here to meet each other, populate a space and take life in our hands. We are the inhabitants, not mere passers-by, of a world that is our home, and it is our responsibility to build it. Our strength will be measured by what we do, which, moreover, will be an example of what we are able to. So, let’s do it, we shall not wait anymore.
VOID MIRROR international digital magazine for the Global Movement: News, Actions and Theory / edited by the cultural, political and philosophical community VOID NETWORK [Theory, Utopia, Empathy, Ephemeral Arts] established 1990 Athens_ London _ New York_ Rio De Janeiro>>> [click on the image to navigate in http://voidnetwork.blogspot.com]
Void Network (Theory,Utopia,Empathy, Ephemeral Arts) est. 1990
if we don't want to participate in the spectacle of the end of the world we will have to work towards the end of the world of the spectacle. The spectacle is where all the relations, the needs, the dreams, the wishes are turned into profitable commodity, into obligation, into blackmail...There life turns into a spectacle of real life and the world turns into an endless desert
"VOID MIRROR : International Digital Magazine for the Global Movement" by Void Network
...all these Void Network people in Europe, in Amerikas, in the Outer Space... we started realizing that there are existing out there thousands of creative friends, spiritual comrades, political, social and cultural activists, radical theoreticians and crazy thinkers, artists that hate the high-class luxury and space out motherfuckers that send us mails, announcements, manifestos, essays, videos, songs, they make contact with us, we find them on our way, we meet at the barricades, at the parties, the concerts, the second-hand vinyl record shops, we find them on the mountains, in the streets of Metropolis, in some seaside free campings on the outside border lines of the Empire, in the Rainbow Gatherings, in Eco-Communities, squatted universities, on the steps that leads to Ganga in Varanasi, in the middle of the tear gass, on the most dangerous streets of Mexico city or in a small village somewhere out-there in Africa...we meet sometimes in some specific illegal raves, sometimes in hardcore punk occupied buildings, or in strange lectures, in underground bars, in poetry shows and demonstrations... almost all around the world! Void Mirror international digital magazine is dedicated in all our unknown friends!
Also we realised that there are existing thousands of interesting social struggles all around the world and there are existing parallel movements that don't know each other...even if they fight for really parallel reasons, in same fights, against same enemies, on the same destroyed planet... Void Mirror is dedicated in all unknown social, political and cultural struggles of this world
And then...we realised also that there are existing millions and millions of possible links of wonderful, interesting, inspiring, mind exploding material out there in the digital space...music, arts, design, video art, political theory, poetry, utopia, analysis, critical thinking, advice, philosophy...created by fighting people, created by amateur intellectuals or university teachers, by crazy everyday life inspired philosophers and somehow all this information needs prismatic rearranging, free re-distribution, mechanisms of collecting, take care and share back again, space holes and electronic tubes that you can find all your favorite ideas coming together in inspirational general conclusions, anti-fragmentation magnetic forces...And we found for sure so many empty bottles in the sea-side sending some old maps to nowhereland, some old messages about treasures hiding in the end of mind, some great thoughts from some dead comrades that they had put all their dreams, decades ago, on a paper...in a bottle and they through them to the oceans of Time for the benefit of the future generation revolutionaries... Void Mirror is dedicated to the culture, the dreams and the visions of the future generation Revolutionaries It is a network of dreams and struggles, a net of hopes and understandings, a moment of clear mind, a good debate, a late-night fight with a lover, a last drink before going home... It is more than anything else an Open Horizon, a VOID MIRROR
Void Network first appeared in 1990 in Athens with aim the radicalization of every day life and the construction of situations in Public Space through the creation of Utopian Public Environments by non-employed cultural activists. Discussions, multi media lectures and poetry shows, open free festivals, multi screen Void Optical Arts Atmospheres (live cross-platform collaborations between visual artists, photographers, poets, lecturers, d.j.s), performances, documentary representations, culture jamming, organization of demonstrations, street parades and public actions, celebrations, concerts, open collaborative workshops of artists, activists, academic scientists and spiritual friends that through dialogue, interaction and synchronized activity can manifest multi formic conditions of open access to creativity, education, free information, open liberated autonomous public zones, meeting places, places of communication, empathy, expression and creation for thousands upon thousands of people.
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