Audio/video archives and print downloads of lectures, workshops, interviews, and publications
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COUNTER PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRIES LECTURE TOUR
Counter Productive Industries was originally a critical art project about Labor, curated by Nato Thompson and Josh MacPhee in 2000. A small group of us later took on the title as a conceptual umbrella under which we threw a large range of Chicago-based critical art campaigns and public interventions, all loosely linked through overlapping, anonymous models of collaboration. For many years, we would attempt to tie together our varied collective art - activist practices into a unifying auto-history. While this proved to be a futile excercise over time, it did result in the CPI roadshow/lecture tour, and a few years later resulted in the publication of "Trashing the Neoliberal City: Autonomous Cultural Practices in Chicago from 2000-2005". |
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"Trashing the Neoliberal City: Autonomous Cultural Practices in Chicago from 2000-2005"
Edited by Daniel Tucker and Emily Forman, Learning Site, 2006: From the Introductory Essay: As the territorial boundaries of the international 'ownership society' expand, we witness our last public square being wired for surveillance and renamed after a corporation. With this sweeping expansion, we feel an urgent need to reclaim, rebuild, and redefine public space as not only an essential component of democratic participation, but also as an open field for play, hope, and critical reinvention. Towards the ends of that reinvention, this publication will take a look at a unique period of cultural activism that took place in Chicago from 2000 to 2005, in which activists, artists and hybrid coalitions responded to the spatial shifts in power created by neoliberal economic restructuring with strategic experiments in public space reclamation, tactical intervention, and the creation of counter public-spheres.. [READ ONLINE..] |
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BUILDING THE TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS TV STUDIO:
An interview with Emily Forman about PILOT TV: Experimental Media for Feminist Trespass [Originally published in Clamor Magazine and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest] "Imagine a three story media production studio that appears for one weekend, brings hundreds of queer and feminist independent media producers together for the video taping and staging of their own “television shows,” talk shows, historical reenactments and skill-sharing workshops. In October, Pilot TV did just this by creating a unique space for collaboration, asking questions and building community in a wonderful and experimental temporary autonomous television studio... [READ THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE] |
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HOUSE MAGIC
This year I was asked to do a number of talks about my research and involvement in Barcelona's squatted social center movement; Primarily as a part of Alan Moore's archival/research/event series, 'House Magic'. A transcript of one of the conversations we had at ABC No Rio is also included in the publication of the same name, 'House Magic 2' I also spoke about Barcelona's social movement infrastructure as a part of the Institute for Anarchist Studies 'Direct Democracy' panel at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit. It was a very interesting panel, with folks talking about prefigurative political and social projects in the US, as well as in Venezuela and Bolivia. |
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In September I gave this new talk in NY, as part of the thoughtfully-conceived 'Not An Alternative' programming series: OPEN-SOURCING THE CITY: INVITED AND UNINVITED PARTICIPATION " Drawing from her own practice and from first-hand research, artist/activist Emily Forman will take us on a visual tour of the contested Neoliberal City, highlighting the ‘uninvited participation’ of its discontent inhabitants; grandmothers, squatters, and artists, joined together in a shared struggle for spatial justice [. . .] |
A video version of this talk/slideshow should be up soon. |
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MISCELLANEOUS TALKS:
One of the ongoing facets of my practice has been a commitment to the performance of public speaking; in workshops, panels and lecture tours, and on the fly. Some of the presentations have included improbable names like: “The Artist as Urban Planner”, “Direct Actors and Trans-Feminist Television”, “Cartography for Activists”, “Strategies against Authorship”, or “Making Home a Site of Struggle: Prefigurative Politics in the City from Below”. I've given talks at numerous universities and independent cultural spaces as well as museums such as MassMOCA, the New Museum, and Mexico’s Sala de Arte Publico David Alfaro Siquieros. I have also had the pleasure of speaking about my work at academic/activist research conferences like the College Art Association, the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition, and the U.S. Social Forum. |
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