Daily Archives: February 1, 2012


Occupy as Form: Shane Boyle

Since the start of Occupy, “direct action” has gone from being a term hardly spoken to a pair of words on everyone’s tongue. Accompanying the term’s discursive proliferation, however, has been a proliferation of what direct action signifies—a development that threatens to make direct action as a term essentially meaningless. Direct action has become a category used to encompass everything from lobbying days and mass rallies to encampments and pitched street-fights with police. It has become a blanket under which Occupy’s diverse tactics are forced to restlessly fit. Its current discursive meaninglessness is symptomatic of the generally impoverished vocabulary we have for addressing the non-identity of the forms that Occupy takes.

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Occupy as Form: Joseph Thomas

What constitutes a movement? It does not seem to be a question of scale (a large united group does not necessarily make a movement), but one of organization, or, to be more precise, a lack of organization. A movement can encompass any number of organizations, fronts, or parties, but even as it binds them together, it reaches beyond them. A movement does not call for any specific action (negotiating the question of tactics) but nevertheless has a will for action: and this will is the common ground that forms the movement.

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Occupy as Form: Lily Alexander

After reading Christoph Spehr’s “Free Cooperation” in The Art of Free Cooperation, though initially inspired by the general political model proposed by Spehr, I then found myself wondering what might be the “art” in this, and how could I possibly relate his vision to my initial research into the work of the net.art artists. I want to use these pages to begin to explore at least the second of these two questions. At the end of the first section, Spehr brings up the question that is lurking behind his initial explanation of a situation of free cooperation – how might we structure a politics that are dedicated to free cooperation? His short answer to this question resonates with my own perspective.

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Occupy as Form: Evan Buswell

The actions of occupiers this autumn were centered around the general assembly, which functioned symbolically as almost the embodiment of collectivity itself. This immediately deteriorated. All who camped at occupations realized this quickly; others took longer to see the deterioration. By this winter, occupations nationwide find themselves embrioled in arguments about autonomous actions. But consensus and autonomy are both understood mythically.’

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Occupy as Form: Byron Peters

Paul Virilio wrote “history progresses at the speed of its weapons systems” and The Invisible Committee has declared, “the world would not be moving so fast if it didn’t have to constantly outrun its own collapse.” The workings of a society ridden with the manifestations of capital are caught between seemingly opposing polarities of conception of time.

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Occupy as Form: Geoffrey Wildanger

The current question is what comes next for occupy? As the squares and parks have been swept by brutal police repression, as winter makes tents significantly less attractive, occupiers ask how to escalate. If occupying is itself a form—tents, general assemblies, cardboard signs with personal stories attesting hardship—the question of content remains. Occupy is form, but what is its content? This question is all the more essential now that the question of changing the form is more important.

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Occupy as Form: Naomi Bragin

Reactivism – processes of transforming and politicizing space that use sensory-kinesthetic techniques to activate radical intertextualities. Reactivism presumes space to be an arena of contest, difference and struggle, and uses complex processes of cultural referencing to address what and who are passed from tell-able history. Reactivism generates new meanings of space by bringing past experiences and historical events ‘to life.’

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