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City/Network

No, these people don’t know what they want, but they’ve grown used to virtual spaces where that can be discovered; where a manifesto is on a wiki, and where consensus building allows populism, complexity and ambiguity to coexist. They are trying to forge these spaces in the city; simply come by the occupation, talk to some people, be Kanye West and stride silently through, be a banker who cannot help but face the perception of bankers, or be a police officer who is genuinely torn about what to do. The Occupy movement forces us to question the city in, weirdly, almost the same way that a facebook redesign manages to cause so much dissatisfaction; it throws a space we take for granted in our face and demands to know if this is what you expected. (read more)

Skateboarding, networks and the occupy movement. A brief flit through some ace thinking from Felix Cohen

reflections

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My Dad and Stories

Verbatim, straight from the transcription of the conversation I had with my father for the scratch performance of the same name I’m working up this weekend and 2 days next week for the Little Festival of Everything. Slightly more info on this previous blog post.

“But otherwise I think the only way that you can have a big impact if by changing people’s views, by actually getting hold of their heart and squeezing it and saying; look at this. And I think as you say, it’s having the story that triggers the emotion in the individual, which then says ‘yeah, that’s not right, we need to change this’. Because you won’t get, there’s too many pressures on people, and I think this is where capitalism wins through most of the time; there’s too many pressures on people to stand out, to stand up, to say ‘no’, and I think by doing what you’re doing in terms of the stories, you know okay you can only get some people but that can make a big difference, than, you know, you as an individual amongst 200-300,000 people making a lot of noise down the street.”

my dad picking something from a tree
my dad, in Kent, just before I was born.