[Autonogram] June 2012 Autonogram!

Sun Jun 3 16:10:57 EDT 2012

Greetings Autonogram Subscribers,

It's June again with the school year nearing its end, while in Quebec 
students continue to carry on their unlimited general strike (which has 
gone on for well over 100 days now). Both of those events call out for 
some hope and joy, and an update on recent publications and news from 
Autono-land. Without further delay, here they are:

1. New Titles: 19 & 20: Notes for a New Social Protagonism; The El 
Martillo Project; Walking Archives: The Soy Children; Occupy Everything! 
Reflections on why it's kicking off everywhere; Plastic Factory; and 
Punkademics.

2. Punkademics Release Event

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3. Artpolitik Site launch

**

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**

1. New Titles

19 & 20: Notes for a New Social Protagonism

Colectivo Situaciones

/An 18^th Brumaire for the 21^st Century: militant research on the 
December 19^th and 20^th , 2001 uprisings in Argentina... /In the heat 
of an economic and political crisis, people in Argentina took to the 
streets on December 19^th , 2001, shouting /"¡Qué se vayan todos!"/ 
These words -- "All of them out!" -- hurled by thousands banging pots 
and pans, struck at every politician, economist, and journalist. These 
events opened a period of intense social unrest and political creativity 
that led to the collapse of government after government. Neighborhoods 
organized themselves into hundreds of popular assemblies across the 
country, the unemployed workers movement acquired a new visibility, 
workers took over factories and businesses. These events marked a sea 
change, a before and an after for Argentina that resonated around the 
world.//

Colectivo Situaciones wrote this book in the heat of that December's 
aftermath. As radicals immersed within the long process of reflection 
and experimentation with forms of counterpower that Argentines practiced 
in shadow of neoliberal rule, Colectivo Situaciones knew that the 
novelty of the events of December 19th and 20th demanded new forms of 
thinking and research. This book attempts to read those struggles from 
within. Ten years have passed, yet the book remains as relevant and as 
fresh as the day it came out. Multitudes of citizens from different 
countries have learned their own ways to chant /¡Qué se vayan todos!/, 
from Iceland to Tunisia, from Spain to Greece, from Tahrir Square to 
Zuccotti Park. Colectivo Situactiones' practice of engaging with 
movements' own thought processes resonates with everyone seeking to 
think current events and movements, and through that to build a new 
world in the shell of the old.

More information <http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=331>

Buy the book here 
<http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&cPath=71&products_id=682>

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The El Martillo Project

Eclectic Electric Collective

In 2010 an inconspicuous looking suitcase was sent from Berlin to Mexico 
City containing a 39-foot tall inflatable silver hammer. Thus began /El 
Martillo/'/s/ odyssey to protest the United Nations Climate Conference 
in Cancún. /El Martillo's/ short, but glorious life, climaxed when 
protesters from /Marea Creciente/ (Rising Tide) stormed the conference 
complex fences, gigantic hammer above their heads. In full view of the 
press Mexican police tore the inflatable to pieces. Within an hour 
global the media corporations declared /El Martillo/ a symbol of the 
climate changes protests as its image traveled across the world.

The El Martillo Project documents the whole process from its conception 
and construction to the media flurry it sparked off. Included are 
numerous full color images and documentation of the project; texts and 
analysis by David Graeber, Alex Dunst, and Cristian Guerrero; an 
interview with John Jordan from the Laboratory of Insurrectionary 
Imagination; and a fold out technical manual and plan for creating giant 
inflatable hammers.

More information <http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=357>

Buy the book here 
<http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&cPath=71&products_id=687>

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Walking Archives: The Soy Children

Eduardo Molinari

"Eduardo Molinari has produced a compelling document demonstrating that 
the process of recombination can be wrenched from capital's oppressive 
grip, and put to use to expose and critique its expansion from modern 
imperialism to a molecular invasion that establishes full spectrum 
biocolonization. Juxtaposing fragments of political and cultural 
history, political theory, mythology, and ecological study, in 
conjunction with personal memories and observations, Molinari produces 
an associational web that yields a long-awaited radicalization of 
relational aesthetics." -- Critical Art Ensemble

Who are children of genetically modified soy production? What disowned 
bastards are produced by the hybridization of agri-business, biotech, 
capital, and culture?

To answer these questions the /Archivo Caminante/ (Walking Archive) 
embarks on a trip through the opaque and strange world of genetically 
modified soya plants in Argentina in search of its inhabitants, forms 
and structures, languages and narratives: the forces that swirl around 
the soya rhizome.In the style of /Gulliver's Travels/ it makes visible 
some of the routes in the soya chain giving shape to a new international 
division of labor food policy in global semiocapitalism.

More than 50% of the cultivated lands in Argentina are for soya 
production, with 90% of that area covered by Monsanto products and 
representatives. This agrarian system and its results are only possible 
using Roundup herbicide, the brand name of Monsanto's glyphosate. The 
rhizome formed by soya production dives deep into the Argentine society: 
it organizes new political alliances, and, above all, modifies the 
social and cultural structure of the country. Is there a transgenic 
culture inside semiocapitalism? Does the soyazation process modify 
culture and society, or is it the other way around, and soyazation is 
only possible in a transgenic culture?

More information <http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=365>

Buy the book here 
<http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&cPath=71&products_id=688>

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Occupy Everything! Reflections on why it's kicking off everywhere

Ed. Alessio Lunghi & Seth Wheeler

Penned after the 2010 European student unrest and before what is now 
commonly referred to as the "Arab spring" began to escalate, BBC 
/Newsnight /economist Paul Mason's "20 Reasons Why It's Kicking Off 
Everywhere" sought to establish an understanding of the motivations 
behind these globally disparate, yet somehow connected struggles.

What roles do the "graduate with no future," the "digital native" or the 
"remainder of capital" play in the current wave of unrest? What are the 
ideas, ideologies, motivations or demands driving these movements? How 
is struggle organized and coordinated in the age of memetic politics and 
viral ad campaigns?

This collection of essays seeks to further explore Paul Mason's original 
20 Reasons in an attempt to better understand our turbulent present.

More information <http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=372>

Buy the book here 
<http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&cPath=71&products_id=686>

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The Plastic Factory

Ron Kolm

"The quintessential short fiction of its time, The Plastic Factory's 
minimalist surface sits atop a terse inventory of the inner costs of 
living outside the professional managerial bullet train, looking through 
the display windows at the swatch-life, emerging with the antithesis of 
the yuppie-preppy sensibility. Every phrase glistens with the dull sheen 
of the bog slime rising all around these characters acting out the 
anomie of the soul in the Reagan era when the American Dream got 
hijacked from everyone outside that cozy 1% at the top of the food 
chain. This is the voice of their prey: listen up!" --- Robert Siegle, 
author of Suburban Ambush: Downtown Writing and the Fiction of Insurgency

Buy here 
<http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&cPath=71&products_id=683>

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Punkademics

Edited by Zack Furness

//

/The basement show in the ivory tower... /In the thirty years since Dick 
Hebdige published Subculture: The Meaning of Style, the seemingly 
antithetical worlds of punk rock and academia have converged in some 
rather interesting, if not peculiar, ways. A once marginal subculture 
documented in homemade 'zines and three chord songs has become fodder 
for dozens of scholarly articles, books, PhD dissertations, and 
conversations amongst well-mannered conference panelists. At the same 
time, the academic ranks have been increasingly infiltrated by 
professors and graduate students whose educations began not in the 
classroom, but in the lyric sheets of 7" records and the cramped 
confines of all-ages shows.//

Punkademics explores these varied intersections by giving voice to some 
of the people who arguably best understand the odd bedfellows of punk 
and academia. In addition to being one of the first edited collections 
of scholarly work on punk, it is a timely book that features original 
essays, interviews, and select reprints from notable writers, musicians, 
visual artists, and emerging talents who actively cut & paste the 
boundaries between punk culture, politics, and higher education.

*Contributors:*Milo J. Aukerman, Maria Elena Buszek, Zack Furness, 
Alastair Gordon, Ross Haenfler, Curry Malott, Dylan AT Miner, Ryan 
Moore, Tavia Nyong'o, Mimi Thi Nguyen, Alan O'Connor, Waleed Rashidi, 
Helen L. Reddington, Stevphen Shukaitis, Michael Siciliano, Rubén 
Ortiz-Torres, Estrella Torrez, Daniel S. Traber, and Brian Tucker.

More information <http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=436>

Buy the book here 
<http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&cPath=71&products_id=689>

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2. UK Punkademics Release Event

Here's Three Chords, Now Form a Journal

:: A Book Release / Discussion :: Brighton, June 7^th , 2012 ::

Cowley Club <http://www.cowleyclub.org.uk>, 6PM: 12 London Road Brighton 
BN1 4JA

Book Release & Discussion with McKenzie Wark, Richard Gilman-Opalsky, 
and Stevphen Shukaitis

The academic ranks have been increasingly infiltrated by professors and 
graduate students whose educations began not in the classroom, but in 
the lyric sheets of 7" records and the cramped confines of all-ages 
shows. And taking up the call to learn three chords and form a band, 
academics in recent years have extended DIY tactics into the academic 
world in terms of anything from autonomous publishing to free 
schools.Come join us to celebrate the release of /Punkademics/, a 
collection of essays exploring the bastard convergences-mutations of 
punk rock and the academy.

Facebook event page <http://www.facebook.com/events/387680207937772/>

Event planned in conjunction with the Situationist Aesthetics conference 
<http://situationist-aesthetics.blogspot.co.uk>, which will take place 
at the University of Sussex on June 8^th .

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3. Artpolitik Site Launch

Inspired by the Institute for the Future of the Book, Minor Compositions 
is launching a digital form for the forthcoming book Artpolitik: Social 
Anarchist Aesthetics in an Age of Fragmentation by Neala 
Schleuning.**Over the next month the entirety of the draft manuscript 
will be posted here <http://artpolitik.digress.it>. **

Comments and discussions will be integrated into revisions of the book 
before it is printed later this year (which will, as with all other 
Minor Compositions titles, be available for free download).

Description of the project:

Artpolitik examines the relationship between art and politics, focusing 
on radical political aesthetics in western culture since the end of the 
nineteenth century.Drawing from Surrealism, Socialist Realism, the 
Situationist International, capitalist consumer aesthetics, and critical 
theory, Neala Schleuning elaborates a social anarchist approach to 
aesthetics.

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That is all for now. More to follow shortly.

Cheers

Stevphen

--

:: Autonomedia:: Seditious & Delicious ::

http://www.autonomedia.org

http://www.myspace.com/autonomedia

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