Last Week of "House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence," May 5-7, 2009 The “House Magic: Bureau of Foreign Correspondence” informational exhibit on European squatted social centers finishes its final week of programming at ABC No Rio. Then it will be boxed up and moved to Queens for the summer. After this week we'll be working on the catalogue zine, which will be a PDF posted in June.

"OVNI 2009: Rhizomes, Liberated Spaces" Abu Ali, OVNI 2009 Barcelona [Editor's Note: This text introduces Barcelona's OVNI ARXIUS DE L'OBSERVATORI (Observatori de Video no Identificat) radical documentary film festival, May 26-31, 2009. Click above for archive and schedule of screenings.] "OVNI 2009: Rhizomes, Liberated Spaces" lays bare the subterranean, rhizomatic points of contact between worlds and experiences that seem very different from each other. The remembered image (1) is that of a rhizome, or rhizomes, it doesn't matter which because it is both at once, the singular and plural do not affect it.

"On Décapitalisme" Granad(a) Collective I. gravity is the first law of force that is inscribed into our bodies. grammar is the second. social war is the third and self management is the fourth. II. how do we decapitate capitalism? by cutting of its head. a rhizomatic internet devoid of its tags, a sentence with a lower-case beginning. an always emergent discourse without a title. decentralised institutions that become constellations of extitutions. deindividuated bodies in acéphalous collectives. III. an “I” that is always decapitalised. we own no proper nouns just as i do not want to own you and you do not want to own me. only the Structures that we imagine to still be standing retain their brand names and ownership capital. structures that must be decapitalised and torn down. IV. no longer anarchists or socialists or communists or marxists or situationists or nihilists or new hegelians or nietzscheans or surrealists. no longer any ‘ists’ or ‘-ans’ or ‘ishes’ or ‘ics’ and no longer any national identities. no more hyphens hugging our fragmented sense of self identification, only outstretched arms.

Author J.G. Ballard Dies After Lengthy Illness Ben Hoyle, London Times Arts Correspondent Pinteresque, Dickensian, Shakespearean. Not many writers are so distinctive and influential that their name becomes an adjective in its own right. J. G. Ballard, who died yesterday morning after a long battle with cancer at the age of 79, was one of them. “Ballardian” is defined in the Collins English Dictionary as: “adj) 1. of James Graham Ballard (born 1930), the British novelist, or his works (2) resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in Ballard’s novels and stories, esp dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments.” His influence stretched across a modern world that he seemed to see coming years in advance. His dark, often shocking fiction predicted the melting of the ice caps, the rise of Ronald Reagan, terrorism against tourists and the alienation of a society obsessed with new technology.

Announcing the Free Music Archive Dave Mandl The Free Music Archive is a social music website built around a curated library of free, legal audio. It's spearheaded by WFMU, but the freeform radio station is just one of several major curators collaborating on this project. WFMU is joined by fellow radio stations like KEXP (Seattle), webcasters like DUBLAB (Los Angeles), netlabels (Comfort Stand), venues (ISSUE Project Room), and amazing online collectives like CASH Music.

The 4th Radiator festival. Going Underground - Surveillance and Sousveillance. http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=338 Review by Marc Garrett. Exploits in the Wireless City is the 4th Radiator festival and symposium to date, which lasted between 13-24 January 2009, 10 days of Exhibitions, Events, Screenings, Music, Artists' Talks and more. Marc writes about the commission for the festival 'Going Underground', enquiring how the works relate to the theme of Surveillance and Sousveillance.

The 12hr ISBN-JPEG Project _ |__ __| | /_ |__ \| | | __| | | | (_) | | __/ (__| |_ __ | | | | | | __/ | |/ /_| | | | | _ | | | '_ \ / _ \ | | / /| '_ \| '__| The 12hr-ISBN-JPEG Project >>>> posted since 1994 <<<< _ | | | '_ \ / _ \ | | / /| '_ \| '__| -_ | | | |__ ___ | | ) | |__ _ __ _ | __ \ (_) | | "An impassive observer, { brad brace } forges a personal aesthetic in these 12hr-images infused with blank-sadness and a sense of mystery. What makes them both new and significant is the fact that he organizes its contents in sequences, applying the principles of cinematographic montage to fixed images." You begin to sense the byshadows that stretch from the awe of global dominance. How the intersecting systems help pull us apart, leaving us vague, drained, docile, soft in our inner discourse, willing to be shaped, to be overwhelmed -- easy retreats, half beliefs. Works of art are complex formal interventions within discursive traditions and their myriad filiations. These interventions are defined precisely by their incomparable capacity to trace the dynamics of historical process in paradoxical gestures of simultaneously prognostic and mnemonic temporalities.

Can Christiania Survive? A Countercultural Enclave in Denmark Fights for its Life By Charles Hayes, http://www.reason.com/news/show/131418.html Pusherstreet isn’t what it used to be. The leading source of retail cannabis in all of Denmark, in one of the largest and oldest anarchic enclaves in all of Europe, is no longer the bustling, friendly spice bazaar of years gone by. There’s a raw, on-the-hunt, bracing vibe here now. Young, shaven-head toughs in drab garb gather around fires in metal barrels, surreptitiously directing the illicit traffic. Mutts wander unleashed, some trained to whisk contraband away in the event of a raid by the politi (police).

Rebranding Fascism By Spencer Sunshine Public Eye On September 8, 2007 in Sydney, Australia, the antiglobalization movement mobilized once again against neoliberal economic policies, this time to oppose the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit. Just as during the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle,Washington, in 1999, the streets were filled with an array of groups, such as environmentalists, socialists, and human rights advocates. And also just like in Seattle, there was a “Black Bloc”—a group of militant activists, usually left-wing anarchists, who wore masks and dressed all in black. In Sydney, the Black Bloc assembled and hoisted banners proclaiming “Globalization is Genocide.” But when fellow demonstrators looked closely, they realized these Black Bloc marchers were “National- Anarchists”—local fascists dressed as anarchists who were infiltrating the demonstration. The police had to protect the interlopers from being expelled by irate activists. Since then, the National-Anarchists have joined other marches in Australia and in the United States; in April 2008, they protested on behalf of Tibet against the Chinese government during the Olympic torch relay in both Canberra, Australia, and San Francisco. In September, U.S. National-Anarchists protested the Folsom Street Fair, an annual gay “leather” event held in San Francisco. While these may seem like isolated incidents of quirky subterfuge, these quasi anarchists are an international export of a new version of fascism that represent a significant shift in the trends and ideology of the movement. National-Anarchists have adherents in Australia, Great Britain, the United States, and throughout continental Europe, and in turn are part of a larger trend of fascists who appropriate elements of the radical Left. Like “Autonomous Nationalists” in Germany and the genteel intellectual fascism of the European New Right, the National-Anarchists appropriate leftist ideas and symbols, and use them to obscure their core fascist values. The National-Anarchists, for example, denounce the centralized state, capitalism, and globalization — but in its place they seek to establish a system of ethnically pure villages.

Young Muslims Build a Subculture on an Underground Book David Ahntholz The New York Times Five years ago, young Muslims across the United States began reading and passing along a blurry, photocopied novel called “The Taqwacores,” about imaginary punk rock Muslims in Buffalo. Noureen DeWulf and Bobby Naderi, both actors, with Jay Verkamp, center, the sound mixer for the film version of Mr. Knight’s novel. The film was shot in Cleveland. “This book helped me create my identity,” said Naina Syed, 14, a high school freshman in Coventry, Conn. A Muslim born in Pakistan, Naina said she spent hours on the phone listening to her older sister read the novel to her. “When I finally read the book for myself,” she said, “it was an amazing experience.” The novel is “The Catcher in the Rye” for young Muslims, said Carl W. Ernst, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Springing from the imagination of Michael Muhammad Knight, it inspired disaffected young Muslims in the United States to form real Muslim punk bands and build their own subculture. Now the underground success of Muslim punk has resulted in a low-budget independent film based on the book.