August 9, 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:

Dates in LA area:

August 20, 7pm @ Arts in Action, Los Angeles; 1919 W 7th St (4th Floor)

artsinactionla.org

August 21, 7:30 @ C-Level. Co-presented by the Journal of Aesthetics and

Protest, with artist Lize Mogel speaking on the production of public space in

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



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