Occupation Culture Art & Squatting in the City from Below
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Omnia sunt communia! Support Minor Compositions / Purchasing Books The PDF you are reading is an electronic version of a physical book that can be purchased through booksellers (including online stores), through the normal book supply channels, or Minor Compositions directly. Please support this open access publication by requesting that your university or local library purchase a physical printed copy of this book, or by purchasing a copy yourself. If you have any questions please contact the publisher: [email protected]. OccupatiOn culture Art & SquAtting in the City from Below Alan w. moore <.:.min0r.:.> .c0mp0siti0ns. Occupation Culture: Art & Squatting in the City from Below Alan W. Moore ISBN 978-1-57027-303-2 Cover artwork & design by Seth Tobocman Interior design by Margaret Killjoy Editorial support: Joanna Figiel & Stevphen Shukaitis Released by Minor Compositions 2015 Wivenhoe / New York / Port Watson Minor Compositions is a series of interventions & provocations drawing from au- tonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the revolutions of everyday life. Minor Compositions is an imprint of Autonomedia www.minorcompositions.info | [email protected] Distributed by Autonomedia PO Box 568 Williamsburgh Station Brooklyn, NY 11211 www.autonomedia.org [email protected] Tis project funded by Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program. cOntents acknOwledgments...........................v intrOductiOn ...............................ix one in Old new YOrk ............................. 5 Two 9/11 & the chicagO gang .................... 17 Three BaltimOre, Berlin ........................... 25 four lOndOn, amsterdam ........................ 33 five secO and the citY frOm BelOw ............... 39 Six “we like the name” .......................... 49 Seven “hOuse magic” Opens ....................... 55 eighT research Bureau at the “universitY Of trash” .................... 65 nine unreal estate and a tent citY in harlem ...... 75 Ten distances .................................. 81 eleven whiskeY, paper and pOlice ................... 89 Twelve a cOnspiracY in lOndOn .................... 99 ThirTeen the Old tOBaccO factOrY .................. 107 fourTeen hamBurg ................................. 113 fifTeen Bad students .............................. 123 SixTeen Berlin! .................................... 135 SevenTeen “reBel new YOrk” at the red flOwer ........ 153 eighTeen paris adventure squatting................. 163 nineTeen slammin’ at JOe’s garage .................. 175 TwenTy the camp at the gate Of the sun ............ 187 TwenTy-one cOpenhagen: the YOuth hOuse, candY factOries, and the free tOwn ...................... 195 TwenTy-Two OccupY art ............................... 207 TwenTy-Three hOtel madrid ............................. 217 TwenTy-four missiOn accOmplished – sqek meets in new YOrk ................. 227 TwenTy-five enter the curatOrs ........................ 235 TwenTy-Six artist fOr a daY: institutiOnal regulatiOn Of vacant space in new YOrk citY ........... 245 TwenTy-Seven exit art and nOt an alternative............ 251 TwenTy-eighT turtles, puppets, reBel clOwns and puffY rumBlers............................... 259 TwenTy-nine earthquake in milan ...................... 267 ThirTy schOOling prOtest, plunder and militant research............................... 275 ThirTy-one lines Of flight............................. 287 ThirTy-Two the hOstage archive ....................... 297 ThirTy-Three a squatter museum ........................ 307 ThirTy-four art + squat = x ........................... 315 ThirTy-five art gangs Of paris ........................ 321 ThirTy-Six afterwOrd and Onward ................... 339 cited wOrks and references ................ 351 acknOwledgments without my comrades of the artists’ group Colab, my own occupation adventure would not have been possible. Becky Howland and Robert Goldman (aka Bobby G) continued to work with me on the result – ABC No Rio – for three event-flled years. Props to Clayton Patterson, with whom I organized a show at the 13th Street squats in ’93, and who invited me to work on his book project Resistance some 10 years later. Howie Solo has steadfastly supported these and many other projects with his wild wit and solid advice. Present-day ABC No Rio’s visual arts commit- tee hosted the frst show called “House Magic.” Some of them, especially Steven Englander, Mike Estabrook and Vandana Jain, worked hard to make it happen. Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman brought it to the Sculpture Center in Queens. I am grateful to schoolmate Jennifer Farrell for in- viting me to talk at the symposium she organized at Yale University in October of 2008. (I have to admit my talk had next to nothing to do with the ostensible occasion... Still, lunching with the CIA man was pret- ty cool!) Nato Tompson heard that same talk later, and invited me to the Creative Time Summit. I am viii occupation culture grateful for that break. In Europe, I have to thank Jim Graham, writer, translator and high-class vagabond, who nerved me to make the jump over here. Miguel Martinez, who made the SqEK group project happen, has been nothing but generous with me. I have taken much important information and turns of phrase from his notes and reports, and from his revisions of my notes on SqEK meetings. Eli, Edward, Tomas and many others have since become friends. Te late great Neil Smith helped us all so much at a crucial moment in butt-breakin’ New York City. For this book itself, my frst thanks go to the anonymous reviewers at the Andy Warhol-funded Artswriter grant panel, which made this whole thing much easier. All the writers and researchers, cited and not who have built the base of knowledge upon which this shanty stands deserve props, as do all the photographers and artists who have shared their work in its pages. Stevphen Shukaitis took this book on during a difcult time, and has been a sturdy friend. And always, my love for Malena Conde Diaz who has made life here in Spain not only possible, but very sweet. for my Mother intrOductiOn this is not a book of analysis, although there is some. It is not a scholarly account with a con- clusion of policy recommendations, nor a philosoph- ical rumination on the signifcation of determined aesthetic acts. Both sociologists and aestheticians may be disappointed. Tis book is mainly a travelogue, an annotated record of a long series of journeys around and into a little-known territory, obscure and shift- ing: the occupied world, the world of squats. It is ob- scure because it cannot be explained in the terms we normally use to describe cultural and political activity in a world ordered by capital and governance. It is an international region of no-money people, operating in ways and toward ends that Adam Smith might not admit form a part of the immutable general economy of self-interest. Tis book begins with the working title “Art + Squat = X.” But it will not explain that dependent variable, neither as a recuperable part of the ordinary workings of cultural governance, nor as the cease- lessly regenerative tendrils of the coming insurrec- tion. It is both a part of what is and how it works, and a foreshadowing of what is yet to be. It is also a 2 occupation culture remembrance of what was not allowed to happen, of what was cut down to size, or cut back to the root. For me it is a very personal journey, starting with childhood ad- ventures amidst the great wasted lands of urban renewal in Chicago and Los Angeles, university activism inspired by the