Melbourne launch: There Goes The Neighbourhood!

Guest Speaker: Gary Foley

Book Launch, Brunswick Bound, Saturday July 4, 2pm
361 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

Worried about the gentrification? Rising rents? Apartment blocks popping up on every corner and yuppies taking over your local neighbourhood? Well you’re not alone… There Goes The Neighbourhood: Redfern and the Politics of Urban Space is a book produced in conjunction with an exhibition in Sydney which explores these issues. From Collingwood to Redfern to New York to Copenhagen people the world over are negotiating life in the city – squatting, living space, evictions, rents and so on. Come along to a launch of the book and a discussion about spatial politics in the city.

There Goes the Neighborhood begins with a close study of Redfern before expanding into international examples to provide a detailed exploration of how the phenomenon of gentrification is altering the relationship between democracy and demography around the world. This book has been published in tandem with an exhibition of the same name and many of the contributions come from participating artists in the exhibition: Brenda L. Croft (Australia), 16beaver (USA), Daniel Boyd (Australia), Temporary Services (USA), Jakob Jakobsen (Denmark), Lisa Kelly (Australia), SquatSpace (Australia), Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro (Germany/Australia), Evil Brothers (Australia), You Are Here (Australia), Michael Rakowitz (USA), Miklos Erhardt and Little Warsaw (Hungary), Bijari (Brazil) and Democracia (Spain). The book also includes contributions from key thinkers about the complex life of cities such as the Situationists, Mike Davis, Brian Holmes, Gary Foley and Elizabeth Farrelly.

There Goes The Neighbourhood is edited by Keg de Souza and Zanny Begg from You Are Here, a Sydney based art collective which focuses on social and spatial mapping.

Free Artem Loskutov!

On May 15, the young contemporary artist Artem Loskutov was arrested in his native Novisibirsk and charged with possession of a narcotic substance (marijuana) by the local branch of the Interior Ministry's notorious Center for Extremism Prevention (Center "E"). Loskutov and his supporters claim that the police planted the marijuana in his bag in order to incriminate him. As one of the organizers of the annual "Monstration" -- a flash mob street party in which young people march with absurdist, non-political slogans -- Loskutov had long been an objection of the Center's attentions. At a pre-trial custody hearing on May 20, it was revealed that the Center had been tapping the phones of Loskutov and his friends for the past six months. In April and on May Day itself, Loskutov had been summoned to the Center for "discussions," and his parents had been called and told that their son was a member of a dangerous sect. The circumstances of the case and the way that he was arrested thus point to a campaign of intimidation directed both at Loskutov and his fellow "monstrators" in Novosibirsk.

The Loskutov case has sparked a massive outcry in Russia's activist and art communities. In the past three weeks, artists, activists, and ordinary concerned citizens all over Russia have carried out a series of pickets, protests, and actions in Loskutov's defense. The most inspiring of these actions has been a "plein air" hunger strike organized by several young artists in Petersburg, now in its second week. The artists encamped themselves in a park next to city hall and began producing paintings and drawings whose central theme is the increasingly brutal police repression of social activists and left-wing artists in Russia. The hunger strikers have issued three demands. First, they want a criminal investigation of the mass arrests by riot police of a group of young anarchists on May Day in Petersburg despite their having obtained official written permission to march with the other columns of demonstrators. Second, they call for the
creation of a public commission to monitor the work of Center "E." Finally, they ask that all charges against Artem Loskutov be dropped and that he be released.

Although the Loskutov case and the Petersburg hunger strike have become one of the hottest topics in the Russian blogosphere, there has been a near-total blackout in the mainstream Russian press, especially television. That is why we ask you to read the article linked below and learn how you can join our campaign of solidarity with Artem and his artist comrades in Petersburg. We have called an international day of solidarity actions for June 9, a day before Artem's next hearing in the Novosibirsk Regional Court.

An injury to one is an injury to all. Free Artem Loskutov!

http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/free-artem-loskutov/

http://www.demotix.com/news/artists-hunger-strike-drags-international-economic-forum-looms
Artists hunger strike drags on as international economic forum looms

Pemulwuy Dream Team

Pemulwuy Dream Team is a work inspired by the legend of Pemulwuy, a member of the Bidjigal clan of the Eora people, who was born around 1750, and who lead an Indigenous resistance to the European settlement when the First Fleet arrived in 1788. In November 1801 GovernorPhilip Gidley King outlawed Pemulwuy and offered a reward for his death or capture. In 1802 Pemulwuy was shot; his head was severed, put in a jar and sent to London to Sir Joseph Banks accompanied by a letter from Governor King who wrote: "Although a terrible pest to the colony, he was a brave and independent character."

Pemulwuy has been chosen as the name for a proposed housing project which the community wants to build on The Block, the heart of Redfern, Sydney, on land owned by the Aboriginal Housing Company. Since the early 1970s architects and Aboriginal campaigners have been trying to build The Pemulwuy Housing Project to provide appropriate housing for the largest urban Aboriginal community in Australia. This new housing project will transform The Block creating 62 new houses, a cultural centre and a new gallery for Indigenous art to add to the already famous Tony Mundine Gym, training centre for Heavy Weight Champion boxer Anthony Mundine, which currently dominates the place.

Pemulwuy Dream Team is a project which grows out of a Performance Space residency at the Redfern Community Centre in November 2008. You Are Here conducted animation workshops with people who access the Community Centre. The participants were asked to help create a Pemulwuy “Dream Team” who would continue the fight for justice but in the contemporary context.

You Are Here is joined by software developer Andy Nicholson to draw from these animations to create a boxing game where each of the characters and their opponents fight out the future of Redfern. Viewers can chose to play a member of the Pemulwuy Dream Team and conduct a ritualized boxing match. Each game has an unpredictable outcome – you win some, you lose some – but what keeps the game going is the ongoing struggle for justice.

Pemulwuy Dream Team

Above is a fragment from Pemulwuy Dream Team an inter-active boxing game developed by Andy Nicholson, Keg de Souza and myself for the exhibition There Goes The Neighbourhood. The game highlights four people from around The Block, Redfern - Danny, Wasana and Naryma Dixon and Ted - and uses the symbolic form of a boxing game to address the fight for issues they feel are important to the area. The film was filmed in the Tony Mundine gym and can be played by one or two players. It will be on exhibition at Performance Space for the next five weeks - go down and check it out.

Gerald Raunig at Serial Space

"AND is neither one thing nor the other, it's always in-between, between two things; it's the borderline, there's always a border, a line of flight or flow, only we don't see it, because it's the least perceptible of things. And yet it's along this line of flight that things come to pass, becomings evolve, revolutions take shape" - Gilles Deleuze

Gerald Raunig, a philosopher, art theoretician and activist from Vienna is coming to Sydney for a conference at Artspace. He wants to engage in a more in depth and informal meeting with artists and activists from Sydney and is holding a free workshop, presented by You Are Here, to discuss his ideas on Friday April 10th at Serial Space. Gerald is the author of the book "Art and Revolution - Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century" and will be giving two presentations from this book followed by discussions/debate/questions. Gerald has played an important role in maintaining several bilingual websites which have discussed important issues for artists and activists including republicart (http://republicart.net/) and transform (http://www.transform.eipcp.net/) and has been one of the key theorists of the cultural significance of the counter-globalisation movement.

The workshop runs from 1-6pm Friday April 10, for a full workshop program go here.

Buy a There Goes The Neighbourhood Tee

Support There Goes The Neighbourhood! We are trying to raise funds for international artists to come to Sydney, so buy one of these beautiful, hand screen printed, sweatshop free tees with designs from the artists in the exhibition. For payment options click here.

Gentrification has never been so fashionable!

This Friday Night, at Serial Space (33 Wellington St, Chippendale) we are organising a fierce fashion spectacular! Sydney's hottest model talent, are strutting the catwalk in their most model-y way, at the foot of the new Fraser's construction site... after all gentrification has never been so fashionable. Come to the night, buy a t-shirt and help raise funds for the exhibition There Goes The Neighbourhood.