Seed saving is as old as agriculture itself but it is hardly common practice nor is it a priority for most people, even those with their own gardens. In the coming weeks we will be exploring various aspects of seed saving, seed libraries and the reasons behind creating these essential initiatives. Pharmaseed allows us to look at one of the why’s behind starting a seed library and how as individuals we can become personally invested in projects such as these.

Milky Oats seeds

Lemon Chamomille seeds

Johnny Jump Up seeds, a type of Viola

Valerian seeds, also known as "heal-all"

Calendula seeds, a multi-purpose healer

Cameron entranced by the lavendar seeds he saved from his garden last year.

Pharmaseed will be a public seed bank located in Montreal at the Sierra Youth Coalition offices. Set to launch in spring of this year, visitors can come to browse and take (and at the end of the season, replenish) various seeds. Cameron describes his desired outcome for the project: “I want to explore, in depth, the different medicinal and nutritional qualities of different plants, bring them forward and create a (seed bank) where people get prescriptions, and then get a plan to make a garden to suit their personal health needs.” He explains that this process can be both self-prescribed and aided with guidance to build one’s own garden. All seeds at the Pharmaseed will be stored in medical pill bottles as a part of the statement the project puts forth about our health and our relationship to plants and environment, and of course, to our medical system.

Cameron explains that his work has always centered around “the connections between our environment and our food, which both have an immense quality and impact on our health. But, this seems to be invisible to us and to the medical system.” He went to explain that in North America “we are very hard, we have hard outer shells and tend to accept the physical conditions we are (used to) thinking we can live through them.”

Cameron described the following anecdote to me that captures the importance of seeds and urban health and outlines the genesis of his idea for Pharmaseed:

“When I first moved to Montreal I used to just walk a lot late at night. An artist and an herbalist had done an installation by the train tracks in the Mile End (neighborhood). It was an installation of local flora with medicinal properties. There was a collection of planters with descriptions and medical properties listed.”

The plant that struck Cameron the most was Ragweed, a common plant in many urban settings that is often the cause of seasonal allergies. “Ragweed is a carbon dioxide-avore, it purifies the air around it which is why it flourishes so much in cities. It purifies air and soil. We have this plant that flourishes because of the poor design of our cities but we try to exterminate it and treat ourselves with pharmaceuticals that could have short and long term negative side effects on our health. Discovering ragweed was a big building block in my environmental consciousness.”

Many pharmaceuticals are derived from plants and while the field of allopathic medicine is aware of this, it is not often referenced; therefore further disconnecting us from the literal roots of the healing agents we choose when we are ill or imbalanced.

Plant based medicine and the knowledge that stems from this is extremely old and one of the most well recorded bodies of knowledge has its roots in the Vedic Period of India. Remembering this long history acts as a reminder that saving seeds and seeking health knowledge from plants is not something new for us as a human species. However, our current system of Western medicine often does not acknowledge, with enough emphasis, the importance of plants in our overall health.

While Pharmaseed is not about being in opposition to allopathic medicine, it does, however, empower individuals to consider their own health needs and make choices based on those needs. While Pharmaseed’s overarching mission is similar to that of other seed banks (preserving genetic diversity of plants, preserving organic and heirloom plant varieties, ensuring the resilience of plant varieties and etc.) it is viewing the necessity of seed saving through the lens of health. Unique in its mission, which has political and social statements in the way it is set up, Pharmaseed is providing a health alternative that is free, self-directed, based in ancient knowledge and is sustainable.

Pharmaseed is helping to reframe how we interact with our concepts of health and what is available to us. It asks those of us who are capable and interested in building our own gardens to think about what imbalances exist in our health and aid those imbalances by carefully cultivating plants that can help support our health. It makes the seed as important as the medicine; the seed becomes the medicine. Furthermore it challenges our notions of where our foods and medicines come from and asks us to save what is precious and necessary for the survival of our many plant species that we rely on whether knowingly or unknowingly. Cameron reminds us that, “We don’t always see how valuable seeds are. We live in a society where big things matter. We have to reprogram our internal calculators to realize that small is powerful and beautiful and within that tiny seed is immense potential. It’s up to us if we want to cultivate it. A pill bottle could have thousands of seeds in it…If global systems breakdown we will need local resources in ways we’re not used to – then the single seed will be seen as useful.” The power of this one seed library is that it is helping to make seeds important to us, personally.

When Pharmaseed launches we will let you know and at that time there will also be resources available about how you might start a Pharmaseed in your community.

Cameron is a huge fan of the wilderness, feeling most at home in a stand of ancient hardwoods, or on a mountainside, or sitting on a surfboard in the ocean. His love of nature and the finer qualities of humanity – our intelligence, creativity and ability to love – motivate him to work for social justice and the environment. He dreams of sustainable cities, car-free, green and livable, living symbiotically with their surrounding countryside, rather than ‘taking, making and wasting’, in the words of green architect and Cradle-to-Cradle author William McDonough. Cameron has organized extensively around climate change at the national and international levels, worked at Concordia University in Montreal on a variety of sustainability projects, led greening and sustainability projects in his neighbourhood, and co-created a social networking platform for social entrepreneurs. He loves woodworking, making music, growing and cooking food, yoga, hockey, and theatre, and traveling to new and exciting places, meeting incredible people and learning new things about himself and the world.

People walk past an advert against genetically modified food on a Paris subway station platform. The advert reads in French: ‘It is safe. Regarding GMOs, we still don’t have enough hindsight’.

For the next three months the Kindle Project blog will focus on an issue that is often at the forefront of our minds – seeds: their sovereignty, production, and importance. As the local food movement is growing in urban centers worldwide and the popular trend of homesteading and DIY is gaining greater momentum a slightly greyer area of food and environmental justice lays in the issue of seeds. While there are known and publicized issues surrounding the mega agricultural biotech company of Monsanto and the injustices coming from their production and distribution of genetically modified seeds, there is still much to explore in terms of how we make these injustices relevant to each of us on a personal and daily level.

The issue of seeds is a complex one and while it may seem odd to focus our attention to seeds during the winter months, this is precisely when seeds are most relevant. For the next three months many North Americans will be participating in seed trades, sales, and collections. Farmers big and small, local gardeners, and individuals are beginning to plot their gardens and land for the spring and summer months.  

For many of us living in the developed world we experience a false sense of abundance. What is available to us is not always what grows near to where we live. This is, of course, not new information for most of us. For those of us that have had the privilege and the need to educate ourselves on food issues we have grown accustomed to thinking about food sourcing, farmers rights and eating local. However, there is a very real threat of scarcity, (due to changing environmental landscapes, seed wars, GMO’s etc.), that prevents us from looking further at times. And oddly, the issues around seeds and seed justice are all too often swept under the rug.

As we spend time studying seeds in the next several weeks we will be doing so by asking a lot of questions and hopefully be providing some answers: How can people living in urban centers become engaged in seed issues? Is it important for people living in urban centers to care about seeds? What are the reasons behind building seed libraries and why is this important? How are artists and filmmakers engaging with seed issues and helping to bring tangible information to the public? If food scarcity is real for all of us, what do seeds have to do with this? What can I do to understand seeds in a more meaningful way?

For us, and many others, seeds represent what is possible for our planet, what is sacred and also what is most pressing. We live in urgent times with a planet whose environmental shifts are already causing grave effects. But, seeds remind us that despite urgency we need to patient, we need to let things incubate, grow, flourish and rest.

It is our hope that you’ll join in on this conversation with us by commenting on our posts and sharing what it is you know and what it is you want to know about seeds.

Looking forward to an exciting year ahead on the Kindle Project blog!

Image Source

If we were to play a word association game, where we ask you to say the first three words you think of when we say ‘video game’ it’s likely your answers will not be related to issue of gender, religious fundamentalism, and environment. After experiencing Pedercini’s games, however, they might be.

Pedercini’s work asks us to focus on the issues that are most pressing in our times through video games. In this interview on the Culture Jamming site he describes the aim of Molleindustria as a “start (to) a serious discussion about the political implications of videogames and also to produce various, very quick simple games – experimental games – to spread a political message and to criticize the mainstream videogames as a cultural form.”

Pedercini has challenged the very notions of what gaming and entertainment mean culturally and exposes the potential impact this industry can make in the areas of social and environmental justice. Paolo’s games open a door for the player to explore complex social issues such as food politics, gender, labor and corporatization. This September we featured one of Pedercini’s projects – Phone Story – a smartphone app that allowed the user to play an educational game about the back end journey of mobile electronic devices and the human rights atrocities committed in their production.  Proceeds from the app went to organizations working on these issues. Apple banned the sale of this app just hours after it was released, but not before it made it into the hands of consumers worldwide, catalyzing important discussion around labor and censorship.

To play Molleindustria’s games click here.
To learn about Paolo Pedercini click here.

An image from Molleindustria's Faith Fighter game

Note to our readers:
Kindle Project will be closing for the holidays and we’ll be back in 2012 with weekly features on our blog starting January 5th. We’ve been cooking up some exciting ideas and new collaborations and we are really looking forward to sharing them with you. As always, if you have an idea for an article, feature or post please be in touch (arianne@kindleproject.org). Wishing you all a happy and healthy New Year!

Kurdistani carpets for tourists

Simon Norfolk has received many accolades for his work as an outstanding photographer and wordsmith. His vision and clarity allow his photographs to read as delicate studies of a reality riddled by the bizarre and often horrific. Whether they be the haunting mass graves in Rwanda, the bizarre complexities of the supercomputers used to wage war, and currently the people and the streets of Erbil, his photographic explorations are unprecedented works in documentary photography.

Norfolk seduces his audience with the perfection of beauty; the blues and pinks of predawn light, melodic compositions, portraits of resilience and decay of man and his systems and structures. The eye is drawn into the photograph, satiated in its pristine jest, basking in the cacophony of a moment captured through his eyes. Beauty becomes merely the tool that tricks the audience into becoming captivated. Upon that captivation, Norfolk’s world of battlefield and its casualties, mortality and the hope of superhuman power over nature, reveals itself. A world littered in the filth of machinery, smoke, and war. As the elements of beauty and horror collide in a Norfolk photo, there is a calm and eerie silence that permeates the space. This is the brilliance of Norfolk.

Simon Norfolk is writing to us from Erbil, Iraq where he is on assignment for Suddeutsche Zeitung’s magazine. Below he shares his most recent photos and writing from that trip. His reflections from Erbil are as calm and detailed as his photographs. Exposing truths without gratuity or sensationalism. Norfolk’s of the moment, astute and candid contemplations from his time there are the kinds of informative and personal observations from photojournalists that we rarely get to see.

www.simonnorfolk.com

Kurdistani carpets for tourists

Writings from Simon Norfolk in Erbil

I’m writing this on battery power, sitting in bed fully-clothed, during a power blackout. I’m in Erbil in northern Iraq, and in December it can get pretty chilly here at night. This is the capital of what is effectively one of the newest countries on earth, Kurdistan; although realpolitik means that for now (and in return for 17% of Iraq’s oil revenue,) they’ve agreed to remain part of Iraq. But despite the fact that this part of the nation had a 12 year head-start in getting rid of Saddam (the ‘No-Fly Zone’ of the 1990s kept him at bay and allowed a free Kurdistan to flourish,) and despite it being awash in new-found petrodollars; they still can’t keep the power on 24/7.

Which is odd because the rest of town, whilst not exactly ‘the next Dubai’ I was promised, is booming. Forests of construction cranes pierce the skyline; every plot of land features the skeletal, concrete beginnings of another opulent home; and luxury Hummers cruise the city streets like vulgar, chrome cockroaches. Erbil has a shopping mall big enough for 8,000 shops, the tallest building in Iraq, and a new airport with a runway long enough to land a Space Shuttle. (Or, if/when the war against Iran gets declared, the biggest US military transport planes. How convenient.)

On the local news there’s been trouble in the nearby city of Zakho. Islamists have been burning down places selling alcohol. I’m staying in the suburb of Ankawa which is a Christian neighbourhood. As they aren’t muslims, they are free to drink and sell alcohol, something which they’ve taken to with gusto and the main drag is one long booze outlet after another. The owners are all glued to the same news channel whose nervous commentary carries from shop to shop as you walk by. (I’ve been advised to avoid any demonstrations and keep a low profile. With my colossal camera on its tripod, that’s going to be a little awkward.) And yet I didn’t even know Kurdistan had Islamists. Does the US know that they killed off Saddam only to wake up to find that he had kept the Islamist genie corked in its bottle and even the Kurds, so friendly to the US they’re even friendly to Israel, are beginning to be radicalised?

But the hardest thing about working in places like this is the kindness of strangers. I’m here on assignment for Suddeutsche Zeitung’s magazine and I’m being helped by contacts of my journalist colleague. As a joint German/Kurdish business here, they take an ultra-conservative line on personal security for the foreigners they’re charged with. Its very kind of them to worry about where I’m going/what time I’m coming home/the security situation in town but it feels like I’m being swaddled in cotton-wool. I don’t know the place well enough to disregard their advice about not being seen to take pictures in the city centre, but in that case, why on earth am I here? My plan to use a bike to survey the city has been crushed. (Cycling is a great way to get the width and breadth of a place: slow enough to see what’s going on and to give you a chance to stop, fast enough to get past trouble before it’s noticed you.) I’m sure the city isn’t as dangerous as they say; everyone seems friendly enough: but it’s hard to calibrate. I’m new here, I don’t want to get caught out like a fool; and this is Iraq, after all!

All this is tomorrow’s problem. The light’s are still off and any heat I had in the room is starting to ebb away. My laptop’s battery, which has kept my lap warm this last half hour, now says ’12%.’ It’s 9.15pm: time to put on more clothes, and go to bed. Goodnight!

With street artists continuing to gain international recognition in both the institutionalized art world and street art realms, the work of Blu is currently reaching the top of the list of admired street artists. He manages massive feats of stop motion animation, as seen above in his ten minute Big Bang Big Boom video. Crafting impermanent worlds on streets throughout Europe and Latin America Blu’s work, similar to Tessa Farmer’s, gives us a glimpse into worlds that we often don’t see, or choose not to see.

Blu’s work is revelatory. Once you get past the wondering of how he manages to make the videos and massive murals he does, you’re swept up in the world he’s creates. His monsters and creatures, some friendly, some mean, and some morphing from one to the other, enchants those that come in contact with them. In his mural work, left on walls throughout his travels, he manages to connect to the people and lands – acknowledging heritage, history, and current struggle.

Praha - Czech Rebublic

In spring of this year Italian filmmaker Lorenzo Fonda released a documentary (exclusively on Wired.it) he made about Blu and their travels through Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Argentina. The film’s trailer is below and is real testament to the humility, poetry and quiet magic that Blu creates.

http://blublu.org/

Art as a Weapon, a film currently in production by Director Jeffery Durkin is feature documentary about the intersection between street art, Buddhism, and the struggle for Democracy using the closed country of Burma as a case study. The film will give the audience a peek into the lives of Burmese school children learning how to use spray paint, Buddhist monks who write poetry, and street artist Shepard Fairey creating a three-story mural in support of Burma.

The project really caught our attention and is currently in need of funding. Check it out their impressive Kickstarter campaign here to support.

To read the press release for the film click here.

In his recent exhibition, On the Road to Damascus, which was a part of a collaborative show at Montreal’s Fresh Paint Gallery eL Seed used his Calligraffiti to explore the duality of struggle in the Arab world: “My latest exhibition series is inspired from the recent events that have taken place in my home country Tunisia, and also in the Arab World. ‘On the road to Damascus’ has a double meaning in this case: partly noting the unique moment in history we are all witnessing, and partly paying tribute to the struggle of the Syrian population.”

On the Road to Damascus by eL Seed at Montreal's Fresh Paint Gallery

eL Seed is currently in high demand. His travel and work schedule are full as museums, communities and intellectuals are taking notice of him on an international level.

To name just a few of his recent endeavors: He participated as a speaker and an artist at Pop Tech 2011. He was invited to LA to make ‘This is just a phrase in Arabic” (see video here), and to Doha, Qatar to conduct Calligraffiti workshops with students in partnership with the Museum of Islamic Art. Here he has shared with us a reflection of his time in Doha along with a beautifully shot video produced on that trip (see below).

Currently, eL Seed has continued to create work within the perplexing theme of revolution, Arab identity and uprising in the Middle East. In his upcoming participation in the anticipated Arab Winter project, opening at the Fresh Paint Gallery on December 2^nd, Arab Winter deals with the innate struggle of revolution in Arab countries and the questions that arise during and after a swell of a revolutionary movement.

Nothing like it has been attempted so far and it is sure to be an experiential exhibit that will tackle hard questions and “contemplate issues of the past and establish the questions we need to ask ourselves about the future. What is it like the day after the revolution? When the dust settles, who will help us clean up?” (see the Arab Winter tumblr here) In collaboration with other prominent Montreal based Arab artists this exhibit is already generating a lot of buzz. Each artist is being featured in a short video, here is the one of eL Seed talking about the project. To learn more about the collaborative exhibit to and support Arab Winter please visit their Indigogo site where they are raising the remainder of the funds needed to launch this exhibit.

Arab Winter: eL Seed Artist Profile from The Narcicyst on Vimeo.

Reflections from Doha, by eL Seed

When I was first contacted by the Museum of Islamic Art, I was surprised that such an institution would be interested in graffiti, and at the same time, honoured that my work had caught their attention. During one week I conducted a series of workshops with students from neighbouring schools. The purpose of each workshop was to introduce Calligraffiti to youth who either have or have no previous experience with the art process. They learnt various spray paint techniques, graffiti designs and lettering. The desired outcome of these workshops was to instill feelings of artistic agency and pride in realizing large-scale masterpieces in a group environment. As the week came to a close, I felt that the Museum was striving to both carry the traditions of Islamic Art and keep a vision oriented toward the future. The success of this amazing experience would not have been possible without the dedication of several Museum employees: I would like to personally thank Amel Saadi-Cherif and Deena Hammam, the team of the MIA, and all the participants.

One Week at the Museum | MIA Doha, Qatar | eL Seed from eL Seed on Vimeo.

http://www.elseed-art.com/

Here he takes us effortlessly into his world. His meditation on music love and discovering of old sounds is a welcome respite. Listen to the Filipova track below (embedded in the article) while reading Nagoski’s piece and let yourself sink into the words and world’s that he has so carefully produced.

To learn more about Nagoski please watch this beautiful short film produced in conjunction with the release of the record: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, 1916-29

Listening, Love, and Time
by Ian Nagoski

Earlier this year, Harley Gaber and I were talking about composing music. The problem he felt he’d run into was that he’d been desperate to describe the very dramatic terrain of his lived experience, an experience which felt utterly huge and which had caused him to make overwhelming experiences for others so that they’d know what it was like. He warned me against my impulses to “invade” the consciousness of others, to make a music that would enter a person like a virus. Music and poetry cause delirium but the fevers they give are delicious because of a subtler set of triggers than the grandiose mind-invasion than the novice poet wants.

Ornette Coleman told an interviewer, “I don’t think about communication; I think about sharing.” That difference requires taking your foot off the throttle and changing your relationship to the destination. It can be felt.

Listening alone to music, the best experiences are very close to falling in love. There is the sense of recognition – “yes! You! There you are, just like I wanted you to be.” There is trust in one’s own feelings and desires. There is wonder and awe in another person – who they are and what they are capable of. And there is a moment of fulfillment that could not possibly have been predicted just a minute before. It’s great. And I keep going looking for it.

I had that feeling with a piece of Harley’s, a string quintet released in 1975, the year I was born, called The Winds Rise in the North. And I went looking for Harley a decade ago after having had that experience, but I didn’t find him until about this time last year. We became firm friends in our first phone conversation, and then this past summer he died. He sent me the manuscript of Winds Rise a few months before his death. It’s in my closet waiting for me to find it a home in an archive where it can be cared for and studied by others

It’s OK if it takes a little time. I am a slow and faithful person.

I arrived recently at page 830 of Rebecca West’s sprawling Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia, written about her six-week trip in 1937. Page 830 is something like the three-quarters of the way mark. At that point in West’s travelogue, she witnessed an animal sacrifice fertility ritual in Macedonia which horrified her and caused to blow long and loud on foundational Christian principles of sacrifice and love, blasting through judgements of Augustine, Martin Luther, Mozart, Blake, Austin and Shakespeare, in the process of which she was compelled to quote from Sonnet 116:

Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove

It is, in other words, slow and faithful.

A decade after West was in Macedonia, a singer named Vera Filipova recorded four performances at the radio station of Skopje of what was by then the center of the Macedonia state inside the People’s Republic of Yugoslavia under Tito. Here (verafilipovamp3) is a folk song she recorded, and which I happened across in a box full of Macedonian records made some time before 1953 that someone traded to me. I keep going back to this song; there’s something special about it. I’m starting to love it. Nothing at present is known about Vera’s life. From the sound of her voice, she was young when Rebecca West was in Skopje, but how young? A child? An adolescent? Possibly there are still photos or recordings of her in some closet there, waiting for someone to care enough to look or ask. Maybe you’ll love it when you hear it and your love will be the love to carry it forward in your heart and memory. Maybe you’ll be the person to keep her alive when you hear her.

[song credit: “Kirajdjice Jabandjice” – Vera Filipova, recorded ca. 1950 Skopje, Macedonia. Transfer and restoration by Ian Nagoski]

Ian’s Website and places to purchase his releases from his favorite record stores:

• http://mangkunegaran.tumblr.com/
• Brass Pins & Match Heads: International 78s
• Marika Papagika – The Further the Flame, the Worse it Burns Me: Greek
Folk Music in New York, 1919-28
• To What Strange Place: The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora,
1916-29

John Doran wrote about it best when describing her recent collaboration with electronic musician Amon Tobin. “Amon Tobin and Tessa Farmer are going deeper and deeper into their art, away from the macro and into the micro but they are fearless explorers like Alice disappearing down the rabbit hole, not cyphers of angst in a modern age. One gets the impression Tobin would break down his sounds even further into even smaller component parts until it would take a hearing system more advanced than our own to be able to discern what he was doing. And one can’t help but feel that Farmer would let her fairies grow even smaller, allowing them to wreak their mischief and havoc on the very genetic material we are made from. Both of them waging war on art’s new inner frontiers.”

Tessa has been traveling with her fairies to New Orleans. Below she writes of the current collaborative exhibition Lafacadio’s Revenge and her future plans for travel, research and discovery.

She has also had a recent show in London at the Viktor Wynd Fine Art gallery and has shared with us her artist statement and images from that show.

 Prose and Images from Tessa Farmer’s Most Recent Work

7/10/11: I find myself on the cusp of an adventurous period of life and work. The fairies and I have had an extremely busy year generating and evolving, but we are exhausted, a little tired of the others’ company, and we need new blood. As an obliging host I am about to set the fairies upon New Orleans, in a project with the artists Nina Nicholls and Dana Sherwood. ‘Lafcadio’s Revenge’ will explore and reveal the layers of history and magic upon which the city is built, and I am certain the fairies will not want to leave. However I intend to introduce some into Chile, early next year (2012) where I will undertake field work and research with entomologists from the Natural History Museum, London. I am excited to discover wondrous things in both places, and to witness the evolution of the fairies and their quest for world domination becoming a little closer to being realised.”

The Coming of The Fairies (at Viktor Wynd Fine Art, London Sept/Oct 2011)

The fairies couldn’t take the swan by force. It was too large, too powerful. Smaller birds, particularly passerines, are easier to overcome. Using hedgehog spine spears, sea urchin spine clubs, and the stings of captive wasps to kill the creatures, the fairies feast on their flesh and use their feather-light skeletons as flying vessels, hoisted by enslaved beetles and butterflies and bees.

To conquer the swan, which would be more valuable alive, insidious methods were necessary. Parasitic fairies laid their eggs into the corners of the bird’s eyes, and the larvae burrowed into its brain, eating non essential tissue, until metamorphosing into adult fairies and taking control of this powerful flying machine. Other fairies laid eggs in its skin, causing tumour like eruptions of protective egg cases enclosing the developing fairy larvae.

Chemicals injected through the fairies’ ovipositors into the feathers caused them to grow into delicate cylindrical latticed structures which serve well to encage precious weapons such as parasitoid wasps and small, but deadly snakes. Some of the feather filigree has been plucked from the swan and incorporated into the skull of a sheep which is flown by beetles and butterflies and carries food supplies (insects) contained in the nest of a hornet. The cargo also includes a captured Chilean Rose Tarantula, prized for its ability to flick irritating hairs at potential prey – the fairies encourage this in hunting missions, and skilfully dispatch the distracted animals, sharing the spoils with their pet.

Skull ships and bird skeleton ships make up the rest of the fleet. The ribcages of birds are effective in enclosing aggressive captive insects. Others, used as weapons, such as earwigs and social wasps are tied by their antennae to leg bones and claws. Captive spiders spin silken nets for the fairies, used to capture fast flying, smaller insects.

The fairies command a gang of ants, although their relationship is symbiotic, so they don’t need to be imprisoned. The soldier ants, with their large snapping jaws are an excellent first line of defense, and attack, and their smaller sister ants squirt formic acid at enemies or potential prey.

The fairies are coming. Armed, organised and dangerous. Like a column of army ants, they will destroy and devour whatever dares to cross their path.

www.tessafarmer.com

To open our weekly features we have Geraldine Juárez, whose work is focused on the internet and in the street through a wide range of media. Her aim is to understand the spaces that emerge when information, property and power collide, with special interest in low, open and pirate technologies. (You can read her full bio here).

Geraldine’s piece, OCCUPY!, is a timely exploration of how she is viewing, experiencing, framing and taking action within the Occupy Wall Street movement currently taking place worldwide.

Occupy!
by Geraldine Juárez

I often explore the tension around material and immaterial appropriation, tinkering with tools and performing actions that are able to hack and circumvent property systems that I don´t agree with. I learned everything about appropriation during my fellowship in Eyebeam, where I met inspiring people that shared their knowledge and taught me how to make stuff, no matter if it’s art or not. By using methods of hacking one is able to turn infrastructures over and use them to your advantage, creating your own structures.

So yeah. Hacking. We hear all the time about hacker this, hack that…often related only to the paranoia of governments. But we can all be hackers really. And hacking is not only about computers, is about systems. Whether it is a legal, political, urban or art system, if it’s closed I´ll probably be interested in opening it up, even if it’s only a bit. Probably, it is all the fault of a text of McKenzie Wark that I hold dearly:

02. Whatever code we hack, be it programming language, poetic language, math or music, curves or colourings, we create the possibility of new things entering the world. Not always great things, or even good things, but new things. In art, in science, in philosophy and culture, in any production of knowledge where data can be gathered, where information can be extracted from it, and where in that information new possibilities for the world are produced, there are hackers hacking the new out of the old.

Now, it seems so important that I learned how to approach things and situations from a hacker perspective in New York, a place where so much happens, so much property is concentrated and the fight for resources is very evident. Politics, as a constant struggle for resources, it is so evident there.

Funding (not only for the arts) is a fundamental part for creating new infrastructures and part of my work has explored collaborative funding structures. Today, seeing how the OCCUPY movement in New York, around the US (and everywhere) is thriving using collaborative based infrastructures to find a way to reach autonomy I am really thinking how an experiment can actually became a tool. And all these occupations are really super inspiring… So I promise to launch soon this little funding project inspired on all this amazing exercises on decentralization that are happening all over the world and its networks.

As Chris Carlsson says, there is a lot to do, but we are constantly busy with other things that do not let us do the work we need to do. People spend their lives in jobs that are not necessarily work. That is why bankers have jobs where they do something that benefits no one anymore, while the 99% need to work hard to try to get by.

No matter if we are in Mexico, the US or really, anywhere in the world, we are part of the 99%. Solidarity pushes me to preoccupy myself by  tinkering and making new models that can help us all imagine how to turn the system against itself to make it a bit more fair, using this amazing opportunity that Kindle Project awarded me to support back.

Forays. Adam Bobbette and Geraldine Juárez. 2008.

I occupied downtown New York City for a night on 2008 on the midst of the financial meltdown with Adam Bobbette, my greatest instigator and whom I miss making forays with so much. Maybe, these tools we made can be helpful now for you all.

Using simple tactics we might open up new resources for those who don’t have them and against a world in which everyone is telling us they are so scarce.  So, occupy!

Forays with Steam. from forays on Vimeo.

www.simple-mechanisms.com
www.fffff.at