� � August 5, 2003����������������������������������������������� Contact: Luther Blisset (312) 515-7364� dtucke@artic.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Counter Productive Industries presents COLLECTIVE PRANKS, PROTEST GRAPHICS, AND SPACE RECLAMATION

Where/When:
August 17, 8-10pm @ CellSpace, San Francisco; 2050 Bryant St. www.cellspace.org
August 18, 7pm @ AKPress Warehouse, Oakland; 674-A 23rd Street� www.akpress.org
August 20, 7pm @ Arts in Action, Los Angeles; 1919 W 7th St (4th Floor) artsinactionla.org
August 21, 7:30 @ C-Level, Los Angeles 963 N. Hill Street (back alley entrance) in
���� Chinatown� www.c-level.cc/

Why/Who/What:
Counterproductiveindustries.com presents COLLECTIVE PRANKS, PROTEST GRAPHICS, AND SPACE RECLAMATION, a west coast tour of Retooling Dissent, the video documenting creative resistance projects from protests against the World Economic Forum.� It features collaborations and tactical media by The Institute for Applied Autonomy, The Bikewriters, StreetRec, and Spain�s Las Agencias/New Kids On The Black Block.

Accompanying the video is a series of presentations drawing on a network of critical art projects and activism from Chicago.� These projects range from large-scale political actions, spontaneous events, flexible collaborations, and temporary collectives.

One of the projects presented is the Department of Space and Land Reclamation (DSLR), an ambitious three-day campaign which sought to reclaim all the space, land, and visual culture of Chicago back to its public citizens.� DSLR brought hundreds of artists, activists, and community groups together for a weekend of interventions, presentations, graffiti, trespassing, pirate radio, community meals, loitering, hacking, guerrilla gardening, public performances, parties, and discussions.

The infectious energy of DSLR catalyzed a number of other initiatives such as the utopian festival of local community groups, The Autonomous Territories of Chicago.� These growing critiques of economic globalization and its familiar relative, gentrification, spawned the construction and installation of a fake affordable housing development Daley Village and another project involving the critical marketing of a real property by a our very own real estate agency Pioneer Renewal Trust.

Other tactical media organized around Israel/Palestine, 9/11, Chicago�s graffiti abatement policy, the "war on terror", and the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) will be shared, as well as video and discussion of the wild, spontaneous street occupation and direct actions against MTV�s The Real World Chicago.� These projects represent a unique strain of activist cultural practice which should be of interest to artists, activists, and students alike.� Project organizers and participants will be available for discussion.

For more information about the tour see: http://www.counterproductiveindustries.com/tour .

Retooling Dissent is distributed by AKPress and has been showing around the world at venues like the IMPAKT Festival (Utrecht, The Netherlands), Version>03 Digital Arts Convergence at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago) and Artists Television Access/Other Cinema (San Francisco). Retooling Dissent has continued to serve as a useful tool for organizing actions as well as highlighting alternative and creative tactics that various radical arts collectives have been pursuing. For more info, see: http://www.counterproductiveindustries.com/retoolingdissent .