Evergreen Course Blog | Spring 2012 | Reclaiming Public Spaces

Dear all,

Here are the readings for this week. Please read all of this work and come prepared to discuss these materials on Wednesday. Please also remember that I asked you to bring your interpretation of the latest writing prompt which just to remind you involves riffing on Eirik Steinhoff’s “roules”. I asked that you create your own pamphlet (where the pamphlet’s form should not be taken for granted for as is but is also something to play with) that is your own version of what Eirik calls “the olds” (in contrast to “the news”). This is one way for us to play with text and collage and as such I put the following constraints on what your pamphlet needs to include: a) excerpts from at least two pieces of writing you’ve already done for this class; b) text about a current event that you’re passionate about; c) an older text that is not yours but that you’ve dug up as researcher or, as Eirik called it in his talk, “archaeologist”; d) an image (please feel free to interpret image playfully) that you feel can juxtapose, contrast, or bring together these different pieces of written text. Remember, finally, that I ask that these be pamphlets insofar as they can be printed out and given to others, i.e. not appearing only online via tumblr, etc.

Readings

1) Rodrigo Toscano, Strikes & Orgies, plus a “Read ‘N’ Shout Poem” HERE (KEEP READING AFTER THE SHORT PROSE PIECE IS FINISHED! THE POEM IS BELOW IT).

2) “Cordoned,” “a body movement poem for five players and one reader,”  HERE

3) David Buuck/BARGE, “Buried Treasure Island,” HERE (audio booklet/tour and 17 reasons why are also excellent to listen to/read on this site, so backtrack to BARGE’s main page for that stuff if you desire to read further)

4) Excerpt of “Landscapes of Dissent…” (courtesy of Nonsite Collective and the editors of the book, Jules Boykoff & Kaia Sand) HERE

Optional/supplementary:

Nonsite Collective Draft Proposal  HERE

Amy Balkin, “Public Smog,”  HERE and HERE and “This is the Public Domain”  HERE (for browsing)

Reminder: We are meeting at david and Elizabeth’s house on Wednesday of Week 6, regular time, 5pm. I will send an e-mail with specific directions, but you can find the house at 2921 Langridge Loop NW / 98502. Guest artist and activist Eirik Steinhoff will be workshopping/seminaring with us.

READINGS FOR THIS WEDS (short, so as to keep on with last week’s): As the second week of investigating Situationist and post-situationist text arts practices (which in many ways means looking at concrete examples of lived relationships between text arts and political action/activism) we’ll take Occupy Oakland as a case study.

Please read the following texts by poets that relate directly to Occupy. Below these REQUIRED READINGS for Wednesday, there are also two recommended supplementary readings–for those of you interested in reading further.

2nd Fiery Flying Roule, Eirik Steinhoff (with collaborators)

14th Roule, Eirik Steinhoff (with collaborators)

David Buuck‘s contribution to Thom Donovan’s “Our Occupations (After the Occupations)” series

Writing Prompt Reminder for Weeks 4 & 5 (A Collaborative Experimental Essay in 3 Steps): Just a reminder that I’ve already asked you last week to

a) think of three potential commons, i.e., two things, events, places, etc., that you’d consider commons and that have yet, in your estimation, to (fully) exist. What are they? What could/should they look like? What could or should be held in “common trust,” or held commonly that are not currently? Why would these things be commons? Alongside these two, I asked you to write about one thing, event, space, etc., that does exist in our world that you take to be a commons, or as close to a commons as you think possible, and to describe why you think this is the case. Be as particular as possible. I then asked you to

b) by Friday (still do this if you have not yet) partner up with another person in the class and trade written responses. YOU play “the skeptic.” Argue against each of the three written responses, even if you personally agree with your collaborator! Find arguments against these three things, events, spaces being commons, their possibility or actuality, and USE BOTH THE ZURITA AND THE GLISSANT someplace in your writing, being as “faithful” as you can regards the use of these texts (if you don’t fully understand the text or quote, try to, but realize that this is not about your expertise, but practicing interpretation and critical engagement in writing). Finally,

c) this week I asked that you trade back your writings to each other (Saturday’s class) and write an excursion or excursions, i.e., digress by bringing in new but connected ideas into what has now become a collaborative mini-essay. In other words: take what has been co-written thus far in a different but related direction. What related questions are there in the writing for you to take up? Where is the developing discussion going? GO THERE. Below is an example essay, which we read part of in class, from which this model of writing (thesis, counter-thesis, and excursion) is taken, “Alarms & Excursions” by poet, translator, and essayist Rosmarie Waldrop. THE FULL PIECE OF WRITING, WITH YOUR EXCURSION, IS DUE TO ME BY WEDS Week 6. If you have not gotten your writing back from your partner, do so. If you missed class Saturday, please do this work by contacting your partner, or at very least A partner. If you had to partner up with someone different on Saturday because your PARTNER FAILED TO SHOW ON SATURDAY, leaving you without someone to work with, no worries–just keep working with that 3rd person’s writings and do the same procedures to the best you can, remembering that you’ll still need send your initial partner back their initial writings (assuming they might not have a typed, additional copy).

Regardless, by Weds, you should have a piece of writing with a) a thesis regards 3 commons; b) a counter-argument regards those 3 as-such; and c) an excursion, i.e., generative digression from the discussion. Here, if you feel you’d like more of a concrete example of how one might approach such awriting form, is Waldrop’s Essay, along with the other RECOMMENDED LINK:

RECOMMENDED SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS FOR THIS WEEK:

1) Elliot Colla’s “The Poetry of Revolt” (on the Tahrir Revolution): HERE    (recommended by Eirik Steinhoff)

2) Alarms & Excursions, Rosmarie Waldrop 

The Native Student Alliance, Hip Hop Congress & The Occupy Symposium present:

Decolonizing Movements:
Native Activist & Hip Hop Occupies

Thurs. May 3, 6-9 pm  Lecture Hall 1

Waziyatawin, Dakota activist, writer, and educator (Waziyatawin.net) will speak on
“Indigenous Struggles in the Era of Hyper-Exploitation and Climate Change”

We live in an era in which the negative effects of hyper-exploitation and fossil fuel extraction become more apparent every day.  Rather than abating, colonial assaults on Indigenous Peoples and homelands seem to be increasing as industrial civilization’s ravenous appetite for energy and wealth becomes increasingly more desperate.  In exploring the links between decolonization and justice, this presentation will contend that the possibility of Indigenous survival and resurgence rests in our capacity to recover our sustainable ways of being and to engage in fierce, uncompromising protection of our homelands.  It will further address how our survival and resurgence is linked to working with non-Indigenous allies to collaboratively challenge the destructive forces affecting our lands, waters, and air.
You can see her speech at Occupy Oakland at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naY3VFdTKEc

Hip Hop Occupies, Seattle (www.hiphopoccupies.com) has worked with the POC Caucus of Occupy Seattle to present an urban arts-infused movement of decolonization that redefines protest and self-determination.  Maria Guillen, organizer with Hip Hop Occupies says, “In times of decolonization, hip hop manifests as a collective voice and the spirit of self-determination. Just like Hip Hop and art transcends borders as a result of young people reclaiming streets and spaces, we celebrate building community outside oppressive systems. No longer will our creativity be crushed out of us. We are what we’ve been waiting for.” Maria and members of the group will speak about their work and perform.

Co-sponsored by The President’s Diversity Fund, TESC Writing Center, Center for Community-Based Learning and Action, and the Academic Deans

Hello All,

Below are the links to readings for this week. Please read these texts for this Weds, week 5. Please read these in numerical order, such that you make sure you have had a good amount of time to process all the readings, and to have certainly read/listened to the Zurita and the Debord (Situationism) texts. All are important for this week, and will inform everything we do after that. These plus a couple others will carry us as “modules” into next week, when Eirik Steinhoff, our guest artist/activist, will be workshopping with us around the current Occupy struggles here and abroad. Please also look at the blog again tomorrow for another post after these links. That is, look out for my post and email about week 5 check-ins and reminders about the requirement of full participation in this course (including attendance and making sure your writing prompt assignments are sent to me in a timely fashion, and are sent to me, of course, if you are missing one or more).

1) Guy Debord, “Theory of the Derive” HERE 

2) Rau’l Zurita (and Daniel Borzutsky, translator) audio recording, reading from Song for His Disappeared Love HERE

3) Rau’l Zurita, poems from “The Desert of Atacama” HERE and HERE

4) Edouard Glissant, “Distancing, Determining,” from Poetics of Relation (trans. by Betsy Wing) HERE 

5) Laura Elrick, “Stalk” (video poem) HERE

FOR FURTHER READING (RECOMMENDED THIS WEEK):

A) “Written on the Sky,” an interview with Rau’l Zurita, by Daniel Borzutsky  HERE

Here are some recommended readings for this week as we dig deeper into Phillip and Moten’s work — don’t worry about reading any of them for tomorrow, tho if you can get to some of it, all the more helpful. As per our conversation on Saturday, links like this — recommended readings, recordings, etc. — as supplementary but not “assigned” (covered in lecture directly) will now occasionally be posted here for those of you who are interested and can find the time (assigned readings will always be designated as such):

–Zong! Article (models rather beautifully the difficulties, ethical, emotional, intellectual, creative, of approaching the Zong! text, of reading it and of reading more generally):

Sina Queyras, “On Encountering Zong!“: http://influencysalon.ca/essays/encountering-zong

–On Fred Moten and Moten’s work (also a good prelude, but a difficult read, regarding our future discussions about the commons and public spaces/public place, here helping contextualize for us Moten’s poetics as, in part, and in very particular ways, a poetics around radical commoning — fyi, we’ll be reading other writings by Thom Donovan, poet and essayist, later):

Thom Donovan, in Jacket2 Magazine, “A grave in exchange for the commons“:

–And check out the audio recording of Zong! by Philip, especially parts 2, 9 (which we read in class and have discussed quite a bit) and the “commentary” towards the end of the reading, which contains selections from a longer (amazing) essay Philip wrote on the construction of the book:

Zong 2

Zong 9 

“Commentary” — from an essay on Zong! by Phillip

The PennSound (a resource we’ll use a lot for our course–excellent!) page from which these recordings came, and where you can go to listen to other work by Phillip, including more readings from Zong! :

http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Philip.php