Screening on Infoshop Culture

by Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Sunday, Feb. 26, 2006 at 6:54 AM

Out of Boulder Colorado, this is a pretty detailed and thoughtfull documentary looking into different infoshops around the country. Screening at Betalevel on Monday Feb. 27th at 7:30

Screening on Infosho...
infoshoppicture.jpg, image/jpeg, 400x300

Journal of Aesthetics and Protest present-

Living Room: Space and Place in Infoshop Culture
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a documentary film directed by Courtney Kallas and Liz Simmons
(film makers will be present. they are on a coast-to-coast tour)
http://www.livingroomdocumentary.org/


Monday February 27th at 7:30 PM
betalevel in Chinatown

Infoshops and a Place-based Culture of Resistance:
We live in a society where public places that people feel like they are an active part of and can use for non-economic purposes are increasingly rare. Public spaces where people can go in order to feel like a part of a community and to participate in creating a transformational culture of resistance to the dominant society are even more rare. One exception to this general scarcity of alternative public spaces is the emergence of Info-shops in urban centers across the United States - and indeed around the world. Info-shops are community spaces that facilitate access to traditionally marginalized information while providing a physical space for people to build creative projects of resistance to current forms of destruction and domination.
We focus on six infoshops in the film: the Lucy Parsons Center in Boston, Breakdown Book Collective & Community Space in Denver, Jane Doe Books in Brooklyn (RIP), the Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley, The Back to Back Worker-run Cafe in Portland, OR, and the Wooden Shoe in Philadelphia. We decided to approach the film from a point of view interested in interrogating the importance of place and space in relation to 1.) peoples daily lives in urban areas 2.) the creation of activist movements for social change 3.) the decline of open/free public, non-commercialized space 4.) ways that privilege and oppression are manifest physically in space 5.) ways in which people participate in place-making exercises and/or resist feelings of placelessness.

Introductory Notes by Ava Bromberg-
co-author of Belltown Paradise / Making Their Own Plans, a book that focuses on diy projects that change the city without relying on precedent or city madates. Portland, Chicago, Hamburg, and Barcelona.


for directions to betalevel:
http://betalevel.com/directions/

Journal of Aesthetics and Protest
www.joaap.org