term

Urbanism

Cars, Riots & Black Liberation

Cars, Riots, & Black Liberation: Philadelphia’s Walter Wallace Rebellion

The US saw some of the largest riots and protests in its history this year in response to the continuing police murder of black people – most recently the Walter Wallace Rebellion in Philadelphia. Yet there has been scant attention paid to the innovations in struggle specific to these logical revolts. Shemon & Arturo take another look at the phenomenon of car-looting and argue that this tactic is inseparable from black liberation 

 

Primer′

Benedict Seymour's speculative fiction on the post-internet artworld in London dates from June 2013 but points forward to the apotheosis of Trump (developer and author of 'The Art of the Deal'), and June 2020 (the George Floyd Uprising). Step inside the box...

 

They took from their surroundings what was needed and made of it something more.

– “Primer” (2004), directed by Shane Carruth.

Solidarity and Collective Autonomy: An Interview with Woodbine

Woodbine recently published a text on getting organised within the pandemic, ‘Mutual Aid, Social Distancing, and Dual Power in the State of Emergency’.1 They have since transformed their space into a mutual aid organising hub for their neighbourhood of Ridgewood, Queens, and have partnered with a local homeless outreach organisation to start a food pantry.

On the politics of the pandemic and organising to protect those most vulnerable 

I know my left wing friends don't want to talk about coronavirus, but to me what is happening right now is terrifying and raises political questions at every level. I would like to see friends talking and thinking about what a political response might look like.

A Worker Informs a Lord on the Subject of the Guillotine

Adapted from Heinrich Heine, Wintermärchen. 1844.

 

 

“King Louis the fifteen died,

 Quite peaceful, alone in his bed.

The sixteenth, however, was guillotined,

Along with Queen Antoinette.

 

The queen showed great courage,as has been told, given the severe situation,

Although her small dog did yelp and did cry

While she suffered her neck laceration.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Affair of the Burning Police Car

Extracts From The Counsel of Spent

Drawing upon the divagating adventures of the fondly missed Inventory journal (1995-2005), Inventory have authored a new book in a series commissioned by Nina Power for Book Works. We have taken the opportunity to preview this cavalier text that traverses the cosmological scale and the anxieties of everyday survival under latest capitalism.

The V&A’s butchered chunk of Robin Hood Gardens is a vile and arrogant monument to the social cleansing of London. Architecture, or a reified slice of it, is preserved and celebrated for aesthetic contemplation at the very same moment that it is destroyed as people’s homes. It’s an obscene spectacle, where working class housing is usurped for middle class pleasure, social vandalism whitewashed by the circuits of cultural heritage.

Can We Recapture London?

Artists in the City is a deep red and surprisingly meaty anthology covering 50 years of SPACE Studios’ activities in London. Josephine Berry’s review balances the claims for a struggle for freedom in the arts with a critical eye towards the emergent modes of the neoliberal city

 

‘the present is not sustainable and any futures will require many hands and a lot of rebuilding’

– David Morris, ‘DIY’, Artists in the City

 

Subscribe to RSS - Urbanism