SUMMER SCHOOL / PUBLIC SCHOOL MEETING & POTLUCK

• Summer School!  We miss you already.  For a taste of the education conversation, which the Public School will be taking up going forward, here’s Sara Larsen’s live notes on Summer School’s EDUCATION session, Saturday, August 11, 2012. And, keep an eye on this space for announcements of radical education venues, projects, and activities around the Bay.

Summer School rounds out the week with stellar presentations on the theme of Empire.  

August 10: EMPIRE

Workshop:

·    GIFFORD HARTMAN on global supply chains

Panel:

·    CHRIS CHEN on Global Racisms and the 3 Faces of “Empire”

·    MATT SIMONTON on ancient empires

·    CLIFTON ROSS on movements in central and south America

Film screening:

·         Montage of films on China

If you want to start your thinking early, here’s some related links:

Who Calls the Shots in the Global Economy?  Research page from PBS’s Frontline documentary on Wal-Mart about global supply chains & big box retail:  

Make sure to refer to Chris Chen’s fantastic advance readings from an earlier post.

Finally, in reference to ancient empires, interesting article on contemporary historians’ classist snobbery about art sponsored by ex-slaves in the Roman world:  

Erika Staiti’s film MOVEABLE PARTS made a beautiful, reflective close to City Night at Summer School, and brought up many of the themes touched on during the night:  mobility, surveillance, infrastructure, militarization, and ways of re-mapping the city.  If you didn’t have a chance to see it, watch it here - and make sure to visit Erika’s Vimeo page and check out other great video work.  

He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness
before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no
choice left but confess--he was a woman.

***

The sound of the trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No
human being, since the world began, has ever looked more ravishing. His
form combined in one the strength of a man and a woman's grace. As he
stood there, the silver trumpets prolonged their note, as if reluctant to
leave the lovely sight which their blast had called forth; and Chastity,
Purity, and Modesty, inspired, no doubt, by Curiosity, peeped in at the
door and threw a garment like a towel at the naked form which,
unfortunately, fell short by several inches. Orlando looked himself up
and down in a long looking-glass, without showing any signs of
discomposure, and went, presumably, to his bath.

We may take advantage of this pause in the narrative to make certain
statements. Orlando had become a woman--there is no denying it. But in
every other respect, Orlando remained precisely as he had been. The
change of sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to
alter their identity. Their faces remained, as their portraits prove,
practically the same. His memory--but in future we must, for convention's
sake, say 'her' for 'his,' and 'she' for 'he'--her memory then, went back
through all the events of her past life without encountering any
obstacle. Some slight haziness there may have been, as if a few dark
drops had fallen into the clear pool of memory; certain things had become
a little dimmed; but that was all. The change seemed to have been
accomplished painlessly and completely and in such a way that Orlando
herself showed no surprise at it. Many people, taking this into account,
and holding that such a change of sex is against nature, have been at
great pains to prove (1) that Orlando had always been a woman, (2) that
Orlando is at this moment a man. Let biologists and psychologists
determine. It is enough for us to state the simple fact; Orlando was a
man till the age of thirty; when he became a woman and has remained so
ever since.

Join Summer School for a night on the politics of language.

Workshop:

·    CHRISTIAN NAGLER on instrumentalization of the mass body

Panel:

·    NORMA COLE is a poet, painter, and translator

·    ROBERT HURLEY is a translator of several leading French philosophers

·    LAURA WELCHER is a linguist and director of The Rosetta Project

·    MATTHEW VOllGRAFF is a writer and artist

Performance:

·    “O”s: a performance

A couple thoughts / links - the Rosetta Project refers to the store of human language (much of it in danger of vanishing) as our language commons.  And they have been hosting Record-A-Thons, training people how to record and document languages they speak with inexpensive equipment:

http://rosettaproject.org/record-a-thon/

And, Tom Comitta, who will be performing, ran an interventionist sound poetry troupe, the SF Guerilla Opera.  He is good at getting people to surprise themselves, together. 

“Sing the USA Patriot Act to your nearest surveillance”:

http://sfguerrillaopera.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/g-o-no-7-documentation/

Don’t miss it!

On August 10, 2012, at Summer School, Chris Chen will be speaking about three distinct but overlapping definitions of “Empire” - as coloniality, as capitalism,
and as liberal democracy.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y36gycx76dh8lzm/Coloniality%20and%20Modernity-Rationality%20-%20Quijano.pdf

Decolonization: A Short Definition
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0hcy0y9cv046ips/Decolonization%20short%20definition.pdf

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hl9s1bq7olouaot/Structural%20Violence%20Iadicola%20Shupe.pdf

Empire(3):

Call by Tiqqun
https://www.dropbox.com/s/o9rehq88jhhyl3x/Call%20Tiqqun.pdf

David Wojnarowicz’s Fire in my Belly will be screened on August 6, 2012, as part of Summer School’s night on THE BODY.  

These two interviews give a preview of his powerful voice.

Still from Fire in my Belly:

Some great resources on gang injunctions from Critical Resistance, who will be presenting a workshop at 7pm, on Tuesday, August 7, the night about THE CITY.  

Their workshop will be on the uses and impacts of civil gang injunctions in Oakland. Participants will learn about gang injunctions’ relationship to policing, surveillance, imprisonment, racism, and economic inequity. This workshop will also highlight community efforts to resist and to build self-determination.

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