MAP 2013

I sent just off some info re- the next OccuLibrary incarnations for the Dallas-Fort Worth-wide MAP 2013 exhibition, so I'll share them with you here.

Those incarnations will include:

1. Secret Sociality, an installation of an intimate, partially-“hidden” library of books and other materials relevant to art and social issues.  This will be in Eastfield College's main gallery along with works by two other, internationally-known artists.


2. Art as Social Wormhole, a reading group/“artificial M.F.A.” course in classic and recent texts on aesthetic issues relating to art's potential to speak to or influence political realities. The group’s home base will be The Reading Room, with some meetings at venues exhibiting art works relevant to the readings.


3. A Yankee Doodles Sing-A-Lot Sing-A-Long program, in which kids engage in activities and learn songs relating to themes of historical or social interest. 

All events are free and open to the public.

Exhibitions and events will run Oct. 1 - Nov. 24, except that the Art as Social Wormhole reading group will continue for the equivalent of one semester's readings.

See MAP 2013 for more info about other projects included in the exhibition.

For more info about the OccuLibrary's projects (volunteers welcome!), please contact us via a comment (we won't publish comments containing your e-mail or other personal info).

Yankee Doodles at Oil and Cotton

A second Yankee Doodles Sing a Lot Sing Along took place at Oil and Cotton, Dallas, this last week.  More photos here.

OccuLibrary "Open Source" Materials

If you like the OccuLibrary's mission, we invite you to contact us, or to re-create any of the incarnations we've come up with, or to invent your own.  You are welcome to use the materials we've developed:

A two-page information sheet about the project. 

The script with quotations from great artists and thinkers that we invited people to read for the camera in the GlamROccuLibrarymentary Trailer Shoot.

Print-ready PDF's of the poster-sized sandwich boards worn by one of the OccuLibrarians. 

The mini-zine we distributed (we're currently tweaking this but will add a link soon).

Some of the songs and other info gathered for the Yankee Doodles kids' program (I've requested these from the organizers and will add the link when I get them).

If you do create an incarnation, please tell us about it!

Photos and More from "Co- Re-Creating Spaces"

If you missed the exhibition at CentralTrak, you can see photos of the show (with info about the works shown) here. More on the Co- Re-Creating Spaces tumblr blog.

(Image right: Karen Weiner with Celia & Frank Eberle, 451 degrees (2011), OccuLibrary card catalogue.)

"POPLAB" Debuts!

The unit, titled Werkberg, was created by sculptors Cassandra Emswiler, Kristen Cochran, and Greg Metz, and is part of the Co- Re-Creating Spaces exhibition at CentralTrak, 800 Exposition Ave., Dallas, that opened on Nov. 17, 2012, the first anniversary of the nationwide Occupy demonstrations that authorities presumably hoped to avert by evicting all the camps within the preceding 24 hrs.

The Werkberg houses a selection of enjoyable yet empowering books and videos donated by various collaborators, as well as projected views of artists' work spaces (the unit was partially inspired by Gregory Sholette's Dark Matter).

The show includes a related work, 451 degrees, by Karen Weiner with Celia & Frank Eberle, which functions as a card catalogue for the library (I'll try to get a pic of that and post it here soon).

The exhibition "surveys how artists are questioning and subverting existing systems, contexts, or spaces – the law, the economy, history, the news, language, etc. – and contributing to their re-imagining and re-creation, recognizing that 'reality' itself can be both art medium and art object, and speculates how developments in the virtual and the actual might affect one another."

In addition to the artists mentioned above, the show also includes works by Morehshin Allahyari; Nadav Assor; Amy Balkin; Aram Bartholl; Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler; Linda Bilda; Irina Botea; Martha Colburn; eteam; Cao Fei; Yevgeniy Fiks, Olga Kopenkina, & Alexandra Lerman; the Institute for Wishful Thinking; Martha Rosler; Dread Scott; and the Yes Men with Steve Lambert; and it was curated by Carolyn Sortor and Mike Morris.

See the exhibition through January 5, Sats. noon - 5pm or by appointment (subject to changes over the holidays); more details at Co- Re-Creating Spaces.

Happy B-day, Occupy!

A friend in Baltimore shot this photo this evening.

Exhibition at CentralTrak; Event at The Reading Room

We've been quiet but busy.

We now have a cool crew committed to creating the first POPLAB! More details will be announced soon, but I can tell you it's scheduled to debut at an exhibition that Mike Morris and I are co-curating, which will open at CentralTrak on Nov. 17 – mark your calendars!

The OccuLibrary has been invited to be included in Make Art with Purpose, itself an art project created by Janeil Engelstad. Among other things, its MAP website helps people connect with a selection of other art projects that are designed to lead to positive social and environmental change.

Meanwhile, Danette Dufilho and Anne Lawrence are creating an OccuLibrary-inspired project called the Yankee Doodles Sing-A-Lot Sing-A-Long. This will be a series of programs for kids in which they'll participate in sing-alongs while learning about the songs' historical significance. The first event will take place Sunday, Aug. 19, from 4 - 6PM, at The Reading Room art gallery, in cooperation with the gals from Oil and Cotton, who will conduct a related visual art activity. All ages welcome; I and my literally or figuratively kid-ish friends can't wait! The Reading Room is at 3715 Parry Ave., Dallas.

UPDATE: You can now see video of the Yankee Doodles program at Art this Week (thanks, Richie and Kate!) (Image right by Elijah Sala.)

Updated OccuLibrary needs:

People to help wrangle books for the POPLAB
People to help catalogue them
Grant writers or other fund raisers
People who are good with people
People who can get big things done
People who can get small things done
People with good ideas or advice
And more!

A Few Thoughts Behind this Project

. . . (among others):

An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.
–Thomas Jefferson, Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Digital Edition, (1760-1799?).

Knowledge is power.
– Sir Francis Bacon, Religious Meditations, Of Heresies (1597).

A balance of power requires a balance of knowledge.

A modern economic system demands mass production of students who are not educated and have been rendered incapable of thinking.
– U.N.E.F. Strasbourg, On the Poverty of Student Life (1966).

Hatred never ceases by hatred;
But by love alone is healed.
This is an ancient and eternal law.
– "Dhammapada," Ch. 1, the Twin Verses 5, as quoted by Maha Ghosananda

There is no responsibility without freedom;
No freedom, without power;
No power, without knowledge;
No knowledge, without love.

Through the ages, the powerful have sought to limit our access to important knowledge by gaining control of the media and education and by defunding or otherwise attacking sources they can't control. In our time, the internet has become a vital “public square” for free expression, but as Lawrence Lessig observed in Foreign Policy as long ago as 2001, "[t]he innovation commons of the Internet threatens important and powerful pre-Internet interests. During the past five years, those interests have mobilized to launch a counterrevolution that is now having a global impact."

The infowar is not a war against or for any particular nation. Rather, it’s a struggle between old and new power structures over who will control information. In such times, the dissemination of truth becomes a subversive act.

And as Julian Assange suggested at the New Media Days 2009 conference, Denmark, “[Wikileaks] can't do it alone . . . We spend our efforts getting [the information] to you and allow you to publish it. But you've got to turn it into a story and make it moving to the population.”

While info can serve as a weapon in the infowar, it’s not the only one. P.r. can obscure and distort; data doesn’t inevitably empower. Sometimes it takes art to create personal, actionable insight; or, as artist William Powhida put it in What Has The Art World Taught Me? (2012):


. . . or at least, lure them toward it.