TEMPORARY SERVICES

From the website of the music magazine NME:

"Everclear announce gig at Guantanamo Bay

The rockers will perform for US troops

Everclear have announced that they will perform at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba over Memorial Day weekend.

The Portland rockers will play a show at the US Naval Base in Guantanamo for soldiers stationed there.

They have also announced that they will perform over 4th of July weekend at the Marine Corps base at Kaneohe Bay, Oahu.

“These two (shows) are important to the band,” said frontman Art Alexakis.

“There are folks in uniform all over the world, and at home, looking out for us -- and to play for them is an honour. Not a bad way to spend the holiday weekends.”

Everclear are currently touring the US."

This is a level of disgusting that fills me with rage so great I lose my ability to articulate and start openly wishing for the band's plane to crash land in shark-infested waters on the way over. So with that, I'll turn things over to some of the comments left by one poster on NME's site:

"well that's just great. whilst the soldiers enjoy their comparatively luxurious accommodation and wine and dine to free live music, their illegally held detainees are denied basic human rights. their basic religious views are completely disregarded whilst their holy scriptures are urinated upon. above all that there is just a general disregard for their humanity, with water boarding and other despicable methods of torture common place; people being beaten and tortured with broken glass, barbed wire, burning cigarettes. lets not forget the use of sexual assault as a form of interrogation and general degradation; for example, the strewing of menses over the face of one inmate... by playing for them Everclear are basically condoning everything that camp stands for. Fucking disgraceful."

This web page shows four simple improvised weapons that Guantanamo inmates have created in an attempt to attack guards. According to the web page, prisoners staged a false suicide to lure guards into their compound.

Several more images can be found here: http://www.southcom.mil/pa/News/May%202006/News060519-002.htm

The photo above shows a crude weapon made from a broken fluorescent bulb.

This is really good news. Finally some sanity and a rejection of the corrupt, ideology-driven, paranoid, authoritarian persecution of Kurtz by the Justice Department and asshole extraordinaire, John Ashcroft!

---

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 21, 2008

CONTACTS:
Email: media@caedefensefund.org
Edmund Cardoni: (716) 854-1694
Lucia Sommer: (716) 359-3061

JUDGE DISMISSES MAIL FRAUD CASE AGAINST BIO-ARTIST KURTZ

Buffalo, NY—A process that has taken nearly four years may be coming to an end. On Monday, April 21, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara ruled to dismiss the indictment against University at Buffalo Professor of Visual Studies Dr. Steven Kurtz.

In June 2004, Professor Kurtz was charged with two counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud stemming from an exchange of $256 worth of harmless bacteria with Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

Dr. Kurtz planned to use the bacteria in an educational art exhibit about biotechnology with his award-winning art and theater collective, Critical Art Ensemble.

Professor Kurtz’ lawyer, Paul Cambria, said that his client was “pleased and relieved that this ordeal may be coming to an end.”

The prosecution has the right to appeal this dismissal. How the prosecution will proceed is unknown at this time. If an appeal were undertaken the case would move to the New York Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City.

Lucia Sommer, Coordinator of the CAE Defense Fund, which raises funds for Kurtz’ legal defense, said, “We are all grateful that after reviewing this case, Judge Arcara took appropriate action.” She added that “this decision is further testament to our original statements that Dr. Kurtz is completely innocent and never should have been charged in the first place.”

BACKGROUND ON DR. STEVEN KURTZ AND CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE

Critical Art Ensemble (which Kurtz co-founded in 1987 with Steven Barnes) has won numerous awards for its bio-art, including the prestigious 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Grant, honoring more than two decades of distinguished work. The group has been commissioned to exhibit and perform in many of the world's cultural institutions—including the London Museum of Natural History; The ICA, London; the Whitney Museum and the New Museum in NYC; the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, DC; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; der Volksbüne, Berlin; ZKM, Karlsruhe; El Matadero, Madrid; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Museo de Arte Carrilo Gil, Mexico City and many more.

For more information about the case, please visit: caedefensefund.org

--

The Library of Radiant Optimism for Let's Re-Make the World is a side project I do with my partner Bonnie Fortune - we usually use the shortened Let's Re-Make for easy-reading purposes. This is an exhibition we have contributed to.

Brett





The Audacity of Desperation

First stop: The Urbana- Champaign Independent Media Center
May 7th - June 15
202 S. Broadway Suite 100
Urbana, IL 61801

Urbana Opening Party: May 7, at 7pm with a screening of video shorts

Urbana Closing Party: June 4, at 7pm, with the kick off of Continental Drift an itinerant discussion on Neoliberal policies and cracks in global power. Continental Drift will be traveling though the Radical Midwest Cultural Corridor, starting at the IMC with conversations about the Audacity of Desperation and presentations by Kevin Hamilton, Brain Holmes, Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri. For more information see:
http://radicalmidwest.blogspot.com/

Next stop: Sea and Space, Los Angeles, CA,
October 23- November 16
(more details this summer - watch election results with us there)

The Audacity of Desperation is an art exhibition, political action, and on-going dialogue. This show confronts, expresses and unravels states of desperation. Artworks by activists, artists, enthusiasts, and very concerned people, are made in editions of 100 with the intention of free distribution to audiences. In this way, these artworks will be activated outside of the exhibition space and in domestic spaces, on bodies, clothes, bags, and in public spaces.

Public Release

In front of the Alvarado Blvd Taco Truck in Echo Park.

Sunday April 20th

Celebrating An Atlas of Radical Cartography
event in collaboration with Routes and Methods (www.routesandmethods.org/)

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email contents

1. fun parking lot event!
2. public space and public art problems down by the LA River

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1. fun parking lot event!

Public Release!!*
Sunday, April 20th, 2008, Echo Park, Los Angeles
--> 7-8pm bookstand opens
--> 8-10ish Public Release!!* (performances and such)

Public Release!!* is a parking lot collaboration between RoutesAndMethods and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest in celebration of the Journal Press' An Atlas of Radical Cartography and Issue #5.

An Atlas books will be on sale for $25 (a $5 discount)
Issue 5 also available.

Location:
The Vons parking lot by the Taco Truck on Alvarado, just north of Sunset, right before Alvarado merges with Glendale Blvd.

You are invited
--> bring something or someone picked up along the way
----> park, lock, walk; then processions and car-iographies
----> consume late night tacos and groceries
----> extend invitations without alienations
----> rant away with radio play
--> and your departure


*a Kaprow inspired event, though not endorsed by moca

More info is on the website www.RoutesAndMethods.org and there is even a downloadable Poster of which we made 100 to be hung throughout Los Angeles // drawing by Jane Tsong // design Dept. of Graphic Services

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2. public space and public art problems down by the LA River

Our friends over at NatureTrumps, an LA River Blog (http://naturetrumps.wordpress.com) have been telling us about an issue. It seems that there is a conflict brewing between the city and FOLAR (Friends of the Los Angeles River). FOLAR sponsored a permitted mural painting event on the concrete banks organized by graffiti artist and gallerist Man One. The city doesn't ike the artwork and now wants FOLAR to remove the work or pay $70,000 cleanup fee.

For more info, go to http://naturetrumps.wordpress.com/


-------------------------------

3. Stop the war


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4. Other announcements

Oh Yeah, An Atlas For Radical Cartography Editor Lex Bhagat will be at Farmlab this friday. Farmlab (for out-of-towners) is a eco-art center down by the LA River and the train tracks.



Hello!

We always appreciate your comments, suggestions, ideas and feedback. Be in touch.
Look below to get off this list. We finally got a real list serve service (thankfully).

Right on.

Hello friends of Temporary Services! A bunch of things to report:

1). Kawabata Makoto featured in TEMPORARY CONVERSATIONS - a new interview booklet series.

We just finished our 79th publication - the first booklet in a planned series where we give over an entire half-letter size booklet to an interview with someone whose work and ideas we value and want to share.

The first booklet consists of an interview with Japanese musician Kawabata Makoto of the band Acid Mothers Temple and a little introduction to the Japanese psych rock scene that his music emerged from. We sat down with Kawabata last May and got it all into print just in time for Acid Mothers Temple to play Chicago (see photo!). Twenty pages, purple paper, metallic ink on the back cover and a nifty die cut job on the front. If you'd like a paper copy of the booklet, send a couple cash dollars or a buck and a 6"X9" S.A.S.E. with $.92 postage, or something you published in trade to our P.O. Box.

We'll post a free PDF online shortly as well.

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2). SUPERMAX SUBSCRIPTIONS - up and running and in need of your help!

Supermax Subscriptions seeks to connect the surplus of well-traveled citizens to a population that never goes anywhere: prisoners in American supermax prisons.

Airline frequent flyer miles often expire before it is possible to save enough of them for a free airline ticket, seating upgrade, or other costly prize. Supermax Subscriptions asks people with these surplus miles to exchange small quantities of unused miles for magazine subscriptions to supermax prisoners. For as few as 400 miles, you can give the gift of a yearly magazine subscription to a prisoner with little or no reading material.

The first goal of Supermax Subscriptions is to provide every prisoner in Tamms C-MAX supermax prison with at least one magazine subscription. Men in Tamms are in their cells 23-24 hours a day in permanent solitary confinement. Men at Tamms eat alone, pray alone, and walk the exercise pen alone. Some men arrive at Tamms with mental problems, and the strain of long-term isolation makes many more break down. Suicide attempts, self-mutilation and other psychological problems are common at Tamms.

We have already filled over 50 subscription requests for as many prisoners! We still have other prisoner magazine requests left, however, and surely more coming in the mail so if you have miles from American Airlines or Delta, please get in touch, tell us how many miles you have to donate and we'll connect you to prisoners in need. Contact: supermax@temporaryservices.org.

This project is a collaborative effort by Tamms Poetry Committee, Sarah Ross, Temporary Services, and you!

http://www.temporaryservices.org/supsub.html

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3). Personal Plastic in OFF THE GRID at the Neuberger Museum of Art.

Purchase NY, March 30 – June 1, 2008.

We are presenting a mix of new and old items made from plastic bags, images of plastic bags in peoples' home, plastic bags in the wild, and a large selection of our booklets. You can also pick up a new free poster at the show.

From the museum's web site:

"Off The Grid features works that subvert and circumvent conventional infrastructures. ... Interested in alternatives to corporate and commercial applications and proprietary refinement of communication technologies, Off The Grid assembles media works by contemporary artists making social and ecological
responsible art."

http://www.neuberger.org/

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Thanks for reading this, and we hope to see and hear from all of you soon!

Temporary Services
(Marc Fischer, Salem Collo-Julin, Brett Bloom)

Temporary Services
P.O. Box 121012
Chicago, IL 60612 USA

The Copenhagen Free University ceased its activities by the end of 2007 and in connection with the abolition of the project we have written the following statement:

WE HAVE WON!

In the spring of 2001 we demanded: All Power to the Copenhagen Free University. We had just opened a free university in our home in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen. This impossible demand was put forward in the form of a manifesto intented to provoke and unsettle the collective imaginary and open new potential paths of action. We wanted to take power.

The manifesto was written in a very specific socio-political context preceding September 11th 2001. It was written in a mood of confidence. With the Copenhagen Free University we wanted to reclaim power and help undermine the so-called 'knowledge economy' - a term used to describe the new economy that was consolidating around the turn of the millennium. The unrolling of the knowledge economy was a part of the neoliberal campaign for control orchestrated by the financial and political elites and the term made clear what kind of ambition was at the core of this campaign: the financialisation of our brains, our nervous systems, our subjectivity, our desires, our selves.

In the midst of the unrolling of this economy, we intended to push the limits and develop new means to stem the invasion of our life by the abstract calculations of capitalist valorisation. It was our intention to picket the social factory, preventing an imminent and clearly hostile take over. We opened our flat as a space for social research and exploration within a context shaped by the hard material facts, fluctuating passions and affective instabilities that characterized our daily life. We wanted to turn the tide. We took power by using the available means: a mattress became a residency, the bedroom a cinema, the living room a meeting space, the workroom an archive, our flat became a university. Opening our private space turned it into a public institution. The Copenhagen Free University was a real collective phantom, hovering.

At the same time, many art workers in their hunt for a new function in society and new sources of income were getting involved in the corridors and boardrooms of the companies and corporations of the neoliberal economy. The artists acted as consultants and legitimators in branding and business activities relating to new ethical and social responsibility schemes and human resource management. The anger and hopes of the revolutionary avant garde had been deemed naive and artists were adapting to a new landscape of immaterial production. This told a sad story about society's lost ability to dream.

When turning to the education sector we saw that universities across the globe were increasingly restructuring and adapting to corporate practices. Ideas of autonomy and independence in research were quickly falling out of fashion. Not only was the usability of the knowledge produced in universities becoming a contested area, the distribution of intellectual property was becoming a key lever in the new economy. The Copenhagen Free University made it clear that universities do not necessarily have to reflect the hegemonic structures of society; universities could be organised and based in and around the everyday knowledge and material struggles structuring people's lives. Universities could in fact counter the hegemonic structures. We tried to open a new front at least.

By reclaiming one of society's central means of knowledge production, the machinery of the university, it was actually possible to create spaces that were not based on capitalist valorisation. For us 'free' mean gratis and liberated. Everybody can open their own university, it is a simple action. By self-organising universities people can, in a very practical way, counter the free market restructuring of the official universities by re-appropriating the concept of the university as a place for the sharing of knowledge among students (as the first universities were defined). With the Copenhagen Free University we wanted to break into the university as one of the imaginary institutions of neoliberal society and create a new image, and a new potential path of the possible.

Six months after we opened the CFU, 9-11 happened and the War on Terror pushed the anti-capitalist movement onto the defensive, having to react to all the emerging wars unfolding in the following years. The global civil war was invading our lives and imaginations. This broke the back of the anti-capitalist movement right after the victories of London, Seattle, Gothenburg and Genoa and turned it into the much more vague so-called Social Movement whose objectives became reformist and unclear. Despite this, arrays of de-centralised and self-organised initiatives were still developing and proliferating at grassroots level. Swarms of projects engaging in developing alternative ways of life, building on friendship, extending networks, and with clear cultural, social and political aims, were still coming into being. These community based initiatives were usually resisting formalisation and avoiding the spectacularisation of politics through the useless and pacifying academic seminars, art exhibitions and publications that have increasingly characterized the mediation of critical culture in recent years. We also checked into this circuit occasionally and got a taste of the forces that are producing schizophrenia and resignation in us.

During our life at the CFU we have encountered the way in which the authority of the word 'university' works on many levels. On a very practical level, people from across the globe started to write to us, applying as students and lecturers; people were using the CFU as a means of getting into increasingly privatized archives, people were using the CFU to obtain job references, people were using the CFU as a means to get into the fortified first world . . . These and other incidents make plain how embedded the authority of institutions is in the global imaginary. But it also tells us how fragile ruling power is when you play with its language and its basic definitions. The drive to self-determination despite the neoliberal knowledge economy was also demonstrated by all our sister self-organised universities that have mushroomed everywhere in parallel to our own development. It has never been about joining the CFU, or any other university, but about opening your own university.

One thing is the fact that a self-instituted university is messing around with the institutional power relations. But on a structural level the question is what conceptions of knowledge are actually pervading the self-institution? Knowledge for us has always been something that is evaporating, slipping between our fingers. It is not something that we treat as a truth or a possession but something living, a relation between people. Truth is always the truth of the masters, the proprietary knowledge is always the knowledge that separates people into those who posses and those who don't. Knowledge for us is always situated and interweaved with desire. The kitchen, the bed, the living room made up our anything-but-sterile laboratories. Dreams, unhappiness, rage were all over the architecture. Knowledge is at the same time about empowerment, making people able to understand and act closer to existence and despite the distortion of the spectacle. The research projects we initiated worked as invitations to share rather than drives to accumulate. There have been no singular end products; of importance were all the various experiences and conclusions that people carried into their own lives and networks after taking part in the activities at the CFU. This is why we haven't published papers or dissertations to wrap up the research projects that we have worked with. We found that the research and the knowledge spun at the CFU did not need a closure. But the institution did.

The Copenhagen Free University has never wanted to become a fixed identity and as a part of the concept of self-institutionalisation we have always found it important to take power and play with power but also to abolish power. This is why the Copenhagen Free University closed down at the end of 2007. Looking back at the six years of existence of the CFU we end our activities with a clear conviction and declare: We Have Won!

The CFU Abolition Committee of 2007 /
Henriette Heise & Jakob Jakobsen


Please note our last publications, e.g. Poster and Propaganda from the Copenhagen Free University and TVD's with television programs from FreeUtv you can watch instead of mainstream crabby television: http://copenhagenfreeuniversity.dk/pubdk.html. And the CFU website has been updated with new texts, video streams etc.


The Copenhagen Free University, Læssøesgade 3, 4. sal, 2200 Copenhagen N
http://copenhagenfreeuniversity.dk

WHERE WE ARE NOW: LOCATING ART & POLITICS IN NY
Wed Apr 2, 6:30-8:30 pm
Judson Church by Washington Sq. Park - 239 Thompson Street at W. 3rd (NYC)
Dear Colleagues and Friends,

In October of 2007 a call was circulated for a meeting amongst art, academic and activist institutions and individuals to discuss the merits of a coordinated strategy that would raise awareness around the multitude of art political discussions and projects in town while having a real impact on the politics of New York City, and beyond.

One month later more than 60 representatives from a range of institutions convened, and the Where We Are Now network was born. Our goal is to demonstrate how powerful critical voices still exist, ones that cry out for global justice, agency and participation. Using the pivotal moment of the 2008 presidential election, we share a sense that the times have changed and are ours to claim. Through activities as diverse as art exhibitions, days of decentralized action, street performances and pedagogical conferences, we seek to gauge the status of the political in contemporary art, and consider how we may act as resources to one another and to other communities within and beyond New York City. Please join us on Wednesday, April 2nd for a big meeting at Judson Church.

WHO IS WHERE WE ARE NOW? Individuals affiliated with the following institutions: 16Beaver, A.R.T. (Activist Response Team), ABC No Rio, Ad Hoc Arts, Alwan for the Arts, Culture Task Force, Art in General, ArteEast, Artists Against the War, Artists Space, Arts and Democracy Project, August Sound Coalition, Autonomedia, Bard, Billionaires for Bush, Bluestockings, Bronx Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Rail, Cabinet, Canal Chapter, CEA, Center for Urban Pedagogy, Circus Amok, Columbia, Conflux, Cooper Union, Creative Time, dBfoundation, Direct Action Project March, e-flux, El Museo del Barrio, European Courier, Exit Art, Eyebeam, Film Annex, Flux Factory, free103point9, Gallery Aferro, Newark, Global Medical Relief, Glowlab, Groundswell Mural Project, Hip-Hop Theater Festival, Hunter, J. Mandle Performance, Just Seeds, Kitchen, Little Switzerland, LMCC, Location One, Make Films Not War, MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MoMA, Museum as Hub, New Museum, Nonsense NYC, Not An Alternative, NYSCA, NYU, NYU Environmental Health Clinic, Opsound, Parsons the New School for Design, People's Production House, Pond: art, activism, & ideas, Pratt, Precipice Alliance, Printed Matter, PS1, Queens College CUNY, Queens Museum, Queens Museum, Repo-History, Rhizome, Storefront for Art & Architecture, Studio Museum, School of Visual Arts, The Center for Civic Participation: Arts & Democracy Project, The Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, The Queens Council on the Arts, Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School, Wesleyan Center for the Arts, Whitney Independent Study Program, Y Gallery, The Yes Men and many independent cultural activists.

PROJECTS
The Conference and Pedagogy Working Group seeks to examine how individuals and groups acquire and exercise social and political agency through collective aesthetic practices and-taking its cue from the group's name-is particularly interested in the situation at this moment in this (porous) city. We probe the interface between theory and practice.

Projects:
* Two public assemblies in the Fall, bracketing the presidential election, to produce four or five distinct incidents of political agency. They will be structured like charrettes (modeled on design charrettes, an often entertaining and effective combination of concept and mobilization) with specific challenges that call for immediate practical solutions developed within a few hours. It will be required that the outcome of each charrette will find a public platform-provided by the institutional members of Where We Are Now and other organizations-to ensure long-term impact beyond the one-day event.

The Arts in Action Working Group is dedicated to facilitating projects that actively engage the act of voting. We relate to the act of voting as something that happens, not only once in every four years, but as something that could happen more often (perhaps all the time). Voting, as we understand it, can take the form of, but isn't necessarily limited to, the act of casting a ballot. It is an act that does not represent the end of an electoral narrative but instead is imagined as the beginning.

Projects:
* A distributed city-wide day of action in the early summer, and another in mid-Fall, to take place in galleries, lecture halls, and in the streets.

* Regular meetings for artists, activists, writers, curators to promote projects and plug in.

THE COMMUNICATIONS WORKING GROUP aims to create an infrastructure that allows us to deepen our understanding of existing resources, build new ones, collaborate, and impact New York.

Some of us want to marry art, activism, and critical practices here in New York.
Some of us want pandemonium in the streets.
Some of us want to offer a way to frame and interpret collective art-activist gestures.
Some of us want a bird's eye view of art and activism in New York City.
Some of us want to engage contemporary art and academic institutions in the service of change.
Some of us want to see New York City step into political discussion with all of the voices that we have at our disposal.
Some of us want art to inform and interrogate activist practices.
Some of us want technology to further art and activism and hurry things up.
Some of us want to broadcast diverse voices.

http://www.wherewearenow.org/

Our good friend, Nicolas Lampert, has organized this exhibition and series of events.

---


Jesse Graves, Mud Stencils

Seeing Green encourages artists to leave the confines of the studio and take an active role with the community, to collaborate and address issues of the environment, and to open a dialog with the public.
Guest curator Nicolas Lampert invited over 40 local artists to work on a project for the duration of eight
months. During the month of April, 2008 the show will be exhibited at Woodland Pattern Book Center in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin where the gallery will serve as a hub space, informing the viewer and the public of the many environmental projects taking place throughout the city, exhibiting visual work and books, screening films and holding discussions and events based around the exhibition.

http://seeinggreenartshow.wordpress.com/

Calendar:

Seeing Green opens at Woodland Pattern Book Center (720 E. Locust St., Milwaukee, WI.) on Saturday, April 12, 2008, 5:00-9:00pm

Additional events:

Reading by California author Rebecca Solnit, Sunday, March 30th, 2:00pm

Curator talk by Nicolas Lampert 4:30-6:00 / Film Screening, Wednesday, April 16th, 7:00-9:00pm (Screening of 5 minute films and videos on urban ecology issues by: Lane Hall, Lisa Moline, Lindsay Holden, Brandon Bauer, Ray Chi, Laura Klein, Eddee Daniel, Suzanne Rosenblatt, Spencer Tepper, Zachary Nesgoda.)

Artist/Scientist/Community Activist talk, Wednesday, April 23rd, 7:00-9:00pm (presentations by Susan Simensky-Bietila, Chris Cornelius, RiverPulse)

Artist/Scientist/Community Activist talk, Wednesday, April 30th, 7:00-9:00pm (presentations by Raoul Deal and Larry Adams; Mary Osmundsen, Andrea Fuentes, Jose’ Medina, Monica Gonzalez and Adolfo Garcia; Lane Hall, Lisa Moline and Dr. Rudi Strickler)

Seeing Green is co-sponsored by UWM Cultures and Communities/Institute for Service Learning Co-Sponsorship Award, the Milwaukee Arts Board, and the Windhover Foundation.

Hello all,

Two weeks ago, Supermax Subscriptions sent a mailing asking every man incarcerated at Tamms C-Max unit if they would like to receive magazine subscriptions: free gifts from people with surplus airline award miles that they'd like to exchange for gift subscriptions. Tamms C-Max is a no contact, permanent solitary confinement prison in Southern Illinois. The men have been
there for years on end — many for ten years. They have no communal activity, no phone calls, no programs, no education, no work, no librarian, and virtually no reading.

Already, over ten percent of the population has replied to our mailing. The magazine requests are pouring in and we have men who would like to receive everything from Newsweek to the Wall Street Journal to Horse Illustrated. Clearly the need for reading materials is dire and we are excited to start the process of helping these guys out.

Here's where you come in.

1) If you have award miles on Delta or American Airlines, please contact us at:

supermax@temporaryservices.org

Tell us how many miles you would like to donate. The minimum number needed for the least expensive subscription is 400 miles.

2) We will then send you the name, inmate number and address of a prisoner(s), along with his/their subscription requests.

3) You can then log in to your award miles account, find the page that lets you give a gift subscription, fill in the prisoner's information and send them the magazine(s) they've requested. Note that the prisoner will not see your personal information or even who gave them the subscription unless you send them a postal letter. The gift subscription interface can only send the gift recipient an email note, and prisoners at Tamms do not have access to the internet.

4) After you send a gift subscription to a prisoner, PLEASE email us and tell us the name of the prisoner(s) and the magazine(s) you sent. At this point we will note that they have been taken care of to avoid people sending out duplicate subscriptions.

Thank you for your interest and possible participation! If anything is unclear, please don't hesitate to ask!

all the best,

Supermax Subscriptions
[Tamms Poetry Committee, Sarah Ross, Temporary Services (Brett Bloom, Salem
Collo-Julin, Marc Fischer)]


More about Supermax Subscriptions:
http://www.temporaryservices.org/supsub.html

More about activism against Tamms:
http://www.YearTen.org/

Major article about abuses at Tamms on Alternet:
http://www.alternet.org/story/80440/

Supermax Subscriptions seeks to connect the surplus of well-traveled citizens to a population that never goes anywhere: prisoners in American supermax prisons.

As most of you know, frequent flyer miles often expire before it is possible to save enough of them for a free airline ticket, seating upgrade, or other costly prize. Supermax Subscriptions asks people with these surplus miles to exchange small quantities of unused miles for magazine subscriptions to supermax prisoners. For as few as 300 miles, you can give the gift of a yearly magazine subscription to a prisoner with little or no reading material.

The first goal of Supermax Subscriptions is to provide every prisoner in Tamms C-MAX supermax prison with at least one magazine subscription. Men in Tamms are in their cells 23-24 hours a day in permanent solitary confinement. The men have been there for years on end—many for ten years. They have no communal activity, no phone calls, no programs, no education, no work, no librarian, and virtually no reading (mostly children’s books). A magazine subscription is one way to give these men your support. Your gift will not be taken for
granted.

In conjunction with the Tamms Year Ten campaign, we are kicking-off the Supermax Subscriptions project on the day of the ten-year anniversary of the opening of Tamms supermax prison. Together, we will sign letters to each man in Tamms C-MAX, asking them to pick their magazine preferences. Please join us—each handwritten signature will show them that someone on the outside knows and cares about their situation.

This project is a collaborative effort by Tamms Poetry Committee, Sarah Ross, Temporary Services, and you!

First Event!
WHERE: Mess Hall, 6932 N. Glenwood Ave, Chicago 60626
WHAT: Potluck & letter-signing with information & entertainment.
WHEN: March 8, 2008, 6pm-8:30pm.
CONTACT US: supermax@temporaryservice.org
FURTHER INFORMATION: www.YearTen.org

Coming Soon: Participating prisoners! Watch this page (http://www.temporaryservices.org/supsub.html)to learn which Tamms prisoners will participate and how to send them gift subscriptions.

Airlines: Check these airlines to sign up for a mileage awards plan, check your travel mile balance and to find out how to redeem miles for magazine subscriptions: American Airlines (http://www.aa.com/), Delta
(http://www.delta.com/home/index.jsp), other airlines may apply.

Overview of Prisoners' First Amendment Rights (download a copy in PDF form: http://www.temporaryservices.org/rights.pdf)

ANYTIME, ANYPLACE
A 2 DAY SYMPOSIUM ON
ART COLLECTIVES IN THE 21ST CENTURY

THURSDAY MAR 13 & FRIDAY MAR 14, 2008
Free to All- Please register online! http://www.pasadena.edu/dmc-pcc/workshop
Sponsored by Pasadena City College's Digital Media Center

The artist groups participating in Anytime, Anyplace are some of the finest examples of 21st century creative collaborative efforts. A network of collaborative groups exists around the globe, exchanging knowledge, entering into conversations, and expanding the range of communication associated with art production. They work not only to challenge the systems of power and accepted strategies adopted by young artists, but also to serve as cultural agents who aggressively push the boundaries of art—what it does, what form it takes, and how it ultimately interfaces with our contemporary world.

SCHEDULE

DAY 1: Thursday, March 13th @ the PCC FORUM

* 7:00 - 7:45 pm Keynote Speaker: Grant Kester (critic and art historian)
* 7:45 - 8:15 pm Dessert and Coffee Bar
* 8:15 - 9:30 pm Guest Speakers: Brett Bloom and Salem Collo-Julin, Temporary Services

DAY 2: Friday, March 14th in R122

* 9:00 - 10:00am Registration
* 10:00 - 10:50am Session One: Futurefarmers
* 11:00 - 11:50am Session Two: Temporary Services
* 12:00 - 1:00pm Lunch in PCC Art Gallery Courtyard
* 1:00 - 1:50pm Session Three: Temporary Travel Office with Sarah Ross
* 2:30 - 6:00pm Tour with Temporary Travel Office to former 1984 Los Angeles Olympic sites

Sponsored by the Pasadena City College Digital Media Center, one of six centers representing the Multimedia & Entertainment Initiative as part of the State of California Chancellor's Economic

The Version Festival (http://www.versionfest.org) has been hosted in Chicago for many years. This year's theme is Dark Matter, inspired by the writings of Greg Sholette.

Here's a call for proposals from the Version organizers:

Version is coming upon us soon.

We want you to know that the deadline for submitting a proposal for version>08 festival is Feb 25, 2008.

please make it happen :: http://www.versionfest.org

we are especially looking for groups and spaces to participate in our NFO XPO program during the festival. if you want more information on how to do that email ed (at) lumpen dot com

what is the NFO XPO?

The NFO XPO (pronounced "info expo") brings art groups, spaces, community organizations and individuals together to exchange ideas as well as provide a public platform for each group to present themselves. We view it as a trade show for experimental art, emerging spaces, and radical exchange. It's our version of what an art fair should be.

Through the presentation format of a booth or table, based on a hybrid art fair meets science fair model, we will facilitate straight-forward exchanges about what is going on locally in various communities, from neighborhoods in Chicago, to cities all over the world. Media and art collectives, artist installations, galleries, community projects, alt spaces, and other art/activist initiatives are highly encouraged to participate.

Version on
DARK MATTER

In 2008, Dark Matter is all around us. Us artists, us activists, us outlaws. All of us, we are engaged in a culture war and economic struggle against establishments in all their guises. We form communities to counter the alienation of everyday life, and the commercial and institutional structures that stifle reality. We desire another world.

And we're not alone. As artist-activist Greg Sholette says, "a hidden social production has always found its own time and space apart from hegemonies of power and the objectifying routines of work. This dark matter resistance extends well beyond conventional conflicts between labor and capital to form a murky excrescence of affects, ideas, histories, sentiments, and technologies that shift in and out of visibility like some half-submerged reef."

In 2008, we think it's time for things to shift. It's time to re-ignite dormant forces within the murky worlds of radical culture. It's time to dive.

And how? From April 17-27 (11 days), we are gathering to celebrate, identify, discuss and act on the workings of Dark Matter. Version>08: DARK MATTER will showcase emerging, progressive trends in art, politics, technology and music. We'll gather and see how our peers in the counterculture create work, spaces, tactics and strategies. We'll witness multiple possibilities for the future, and leave ready to act.

To read more about Dark Matter and the inspiration for this year's theme visit Greg's website http://www.gregorysholette.com/index.html

Some of you may already be on the Temporary Services email list, but for those who aren't, (why aren't you?), the gist of what we're re-posting below is that we need your plastic bags -- any color, the kind you get from the grocery store or liquor store or department store, whatever... we're also looking for photos and if you get them to us in time, you'll be in this show in upstate NY.

if you're in chicago, you can contact salem or marc directly to give us bags. Questions? Contact servers at temporaryservices dot org.

thanks! and feel free to forward.

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Hello all! Sending virtual mittens and hats for those of you dealing with the
chill of winter, like we are here in Illinois.

It's been a while since we sent an e-mail. We've got a lot of new stuff brewing
that you'll hear about soon, but for now, we have some requests for you!

1) Bag It, Again
2) Picture This
3) Give It To Us


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1) Bag It, Again

Remember our Personal Plastic exploration from last year? If you're new to us, or just want some reading material, here's the booklet we made in conjunction with an exhibition we created for WHW's Galleri Nova in Zagreb:

http://www.temporaryservices.org/zagreb_booklet.pdf

Despite everyone's hard work, we are still surrounded by plastic bags! So we're working on a revisit to Personal Plastic that will be on display in a group exhibition coming up in Purchase, NY.

And here's where you can help out: we need tons of clean plastic grocery and shopping bags for a giant mound in the middle of the exhibition space that will compose one part of our presence.

We'll take any kind of plastic bag -- the ones you get from the grocery, department store plastic, liquor store bags, etc.

You can mail or bring the bags directly to the gallery:

Attn: Temporary Services Plastic
Neuberger Museum of Art
Purchase College, SUNY
735 Anderson Hill Rd
Purchase, NY 10577
USA

The exhibit, "Off The Grid" will run from March 30 - June 1, 2008. No bags after the show closes, please.


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2) Picture This

Do you have a section of your kitchen or home that is dedicated to stowing
these excess plastic shopping bags as they accumulate? We collect photos of people's bag collections in their homes. You can see some of our friend's bags (and our own) here:

http://pics.livejournal.com/tempserv/gallery/0003rt4f

here, for example! here's artist Bert Stabler's bags! (and a Paul Nudd poster to boot!)



We're also taking photographs of some of the Public Phenomena created by the intersection of discarded plastic bags and the rest of our world. We're interested in bags in trees, pieces of bags caught on fences, bags in sewer
grates, bags flying across parking lots like tumbleweed...

Send us your own documentation of your bag accumulation or bags that you've observed in public. We'll blow up and print some of our favorites and include them in this exhibition.

HOW TO DO IT

** Please send us a photograph of your storage recepticle or collection of excess plastic shopping bags. You can also send photos of bags caught up in public situations. 300 dpi photos are required for print quality.
3" X 5" would be fine. If the file is too large to attach, feel free to send us files using free services like http://www.yousendit.com.

** Let us know your name, the town you live in, and the name of the person who took the photo. We can use an alias or nickname if you tell us to. We'd love to give you and your bags credit for your collaboration, though!

**Photos should be emailed to: servers at temporaryservices.org

You can also mail a CDr of images to our PO Box. We'll need photos by March 15, 2008 at the latest if they are to be considered for inclusion in the show so bust out your camera and act now!


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3) Give It To Us

We use our journal to share news and things we find interesting. We would love to have your help to build this into an even bigger resource. Check out our blog (you're soaking in it now!) and if you find any of the things we post interesting and you want to contribute, please shoot ideas our way.

We also continue to maintain a list of groups that work together at Groups and Spaces:

http://www.groupsandspaces.net

We welcome additions, corrections, and suggestions for this ever-growing list. The groups we have listed so far are a variety of historical, currently working, based in art, theater, performance, activism, and other cultural
contributions.

Our friend, the teacher, artist, and writer Alan Moore, is currently working with students in Florida who are annotating this list along with other lists of groups. We're excited to be a part of this. Have a look at what we've got so far and tell us what you think!


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Thank you all!
Temporary Services
(Brett Bloom, Salem Collo-Julin, Marc Fischer)

Temporary Services
P.O. Box 121012
Chicago, IL 60612
USA

TS friend, and super-brave (the man leads expeditions to remote tracks of public land to take long-distance photos of secret military bases!) artist and experimental geographer, Trevor Paglen was on Public Radio International's "The World" show on Thursday, February 7, talking about his book of images of patches from groups working on top secret government contracts.

From "The World" web site:

The meanings behind the patches that some in the military sew on their uniforms can be obscure, but author Trevor Paglen did his best. His new book is called, "I could tell you but then you would have to be destroyed by me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World." Marco Werman speaks with him.

Listen: http://www.theworld.org/wma.php?id=0207083

Trevor's book:


"I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Black World"

Here is a link to an online collection of patches, and also a supplement to the book:

http://www.paglen.com/tellyou/index.htm

Last week I took my students from the Guerrilla Art class I'm teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to see the books that the Harold Washington Library Center has captured from TS's Library Project from back in 2001. Approximately 25 books from the project can be viewed in Art reference on the 8th floor. Here is one student, Dan, modeling Zena Sakowski and Rob Kelly's three "White Lame Eh" books - each book unfolds into an article of clothing. Photos by Andrea Mattson.

5:30 PM
Sunday, February 3, 2008

Experimental Station
6100 South Blackstone Avenue
Chicago
USA

"Past and Futures, Still" seeks to expand the network of discussion to include more people from Chicago and the surrounding area who are interested in looking critically at strategies for change. This event is an extension of 'What We Know of Our Past – What We Demand of Our Future' held at Mess Hall January 18-20, 2008: http://www.letsremake.info/whatweknow.html.

Description of the Event:
There has been an enormous amount of activity related to critical art practices over the last years in Chicago, making it an international hub for this work. In particular, we now see that there has been a kind of reliance on a certain form: the exhibition-as-symposia, festival, concentrated cluster of 'related programming.' We see the form proliferating, but also reaching its limits. Feel Tank and AREA have both in the past year used this form to mobilize large numbers of practitioners, activists, and folks in other fields working and thinking in parallel to make, talk, act, and learn together. Tonight we come together to further define this form as our way of blending exhibitions, activism, dissemination, and social life. And then, hopefully, begin to imagine new or different forms for future activity, forms which open possibilities not available through the exhibition vehicle strictly.

To begin with, we wonder: what impact did this past year's activity have? What are the lasting implications of all this activity? What are the limits of the forms used? In a short first half, the participants will offer their perspectives in the form of a question, which will have embedded within them certain understandings of our current socio-political conditions. For a long second half, presenters and audience together will take each question in turn, with plenty of room for other voices and views.

And, in between the first and second halves, as we mill, munch, and get resettled, we will hear a very brief invocation of what happened forty years ago, on the Tet holiday, just for added historical perspective.

So, please join us for an important discussion between Feel Tank and AREA, plus your contributions. Feel Tank will be represented by Rebecca Zorach and Mary Patten. AREA will be represented by Daniel Tucker. Dan S. Wang facilitates. Brett Bloom & Bonnie Fortune introduce. The wider network and community will be represented by... you! Together we look (and maybe find?) a way to keep moving forward.

Food provided, but bring something if you feel like it, it won't hurt.

This is a business card we sent out to announce the very first evening of services we provided as a collective. This event happened at our office space on the 11th floor of the building at 202 S. State Street in Chicago. We offered haircuts, juicing, letter writing, and more.







We recently got around to making a pdf of our Library Project booklet. Above are images from the booklet. You can download it here: http://www.temporaryservices.org/library_project.pdf

Oliver Ressler continues to initiate interesting work. I hope to get a chance to see his latest film with Zanny Begg, which is listed here. We have posted announcements about other things that Ressler has been up to or controversies about his work. Check em out:

http://tempserv.livejournal.com/74753.html
http://tempserv.livejournal.com/74753.html
http://tempserv.livejournal.com/34274.html
http://tempserv.livejournal.com/36229.html


A film by Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler
40 min., 2008

“What Would It Mean To Win?” was filmed on the blockades at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany in June 2007. In their first collaborative film Zanny Begg and Oliver Ressler focus on the current state of the counter-globalisation movement in a project which grows out of both artists’ preoccupation with globalisation and its discontents. The film, which combines documentary footage, interviews, and animation sequences, is structured around three questions pertinent to the movement: Who are we? What is our power? What would it mean to win?

Almost ten years after “Seattle” this film explores the impact this movement has had on contemporary politics. Seattle has been described as the birthplace for the “movement of movements” and marked a time when resistance to capitalist globalisation emerged in industrialised nations. In many senses it has been regarded as the time when a new social subject – the multitude – entered the political landscape. Recently the counter-globalisation movement has gone through a certain malaise accentuated by the shifts in global politics in the post 911 context.

The protests in Heiligendamm seemed to re-assert the confidence, inventiveness and creativity of the counter-globalisation movement. In particular the five finger tactic – where protesters spread out across the fields of Rostock slipping around police lines – proved successful in establishing blockades in all roads into Heiligendamm. Staff working for the G8 summit were forced to enter and leave the meeting by helicopter or boat thus providing a symbolic victory to the movement.

“What Would It Mean To Win?”, as the title implies, addresses this central question for the movement. During the Seattle demonstrations “we are winning” was a popular graffiti slogan that captured the sense of euphoria that came with the birth of a new movement. Since that time however this slogan has been regarded in a much more speculative manner. This film aims to move beyond the question of whether we are “winning” or not by addressing what would it actually mean to win.

When addressing the question “what would it mean to win?” John Holloway quotes Subcomandante Marcos who once described “winning” as the ability to live an “infinite film program” where participants could re-invent themselves each day, each hour, each minute. The animated sequences take this as their starting point to explore how ideas of social agency, struggle and winning are incorporated into our imagination of politics.

The film was recorded in English and German and exists also in a French subtitled version. “What Would It Mean To Win?” will be presented in screenings in a variety of contexts and will also be part of the upcoming installation “Jumps and Surprises” by Begg and Ressler, which will present a broader perspective of different approaches to the counter-globalisation movement.

Concept, Interviews, Film Editing, Production: Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler
Interviewees: Emma Dowling, John Holloway, Adam Idrissou, Tadzio
Mueller, Michal Osterweil, Sarah Tolba
Camera: Oliver Ressler
Animation: Zanny Begg
Sound: Kate Carr
Image Editing: Markus Koessl
Sound Editing: Rudi Gottsberger, Oliver Ressler
Special thanks to Turbulence, Holy Damn It, Conrad Barrett
Grants: Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur; College of
Fine Art Research Grants Scheme, Sydney

Further Information:
www.ressler.at
www.zannybegg.com

“It’s a sad day today to hear of the passing of a truly innovative sound auteur - Dave Day (born David M. Havlicek, of The Monks; December 11, 1941 - January 10, 2008), banjo player for the incredible 1960’s garage band The Monks. The Monks have been far overlooked as not only a musical group, but one who shucked all standards and actually, according to many, paved the way for Punk.

They were American GIs stationed in Germany, who in their off-time formed a band and went on to create an entirely new sound, as well as being credited for pioneering an underground at Scene in Hamburg, a place which they decided to make home. They were often deemed as “the anti-Beatles” creating a musical formula based on bare bones rock-and-roll, but used their instruments in a purely rhythmic way rather than focusing on melody. With guitar technique that relied heavily on feedback and dissonance, drums straight from the cave and experimentation with non-rock’n’roll instruments, their sound was at the time pure noise and havoc.

Dave Day replaced his banjo strings with guitar strings, playing it in the style of a guitar sans melody, and made it strictly an instrument of hard percussion. Their attire was crucial and controversial: they shaved their heads in monkish fashion – bald in the center with a ring of short hair around – wore all-black clothing and ropes around their necks. While much of their lyrical content was semi-political and satire, they actually sang directly about hate and personal anger (ex-girlfriends, etc.) with no guilt attached, which was completely out-of-context at the time.

Pranksters and instigators, they never gained much recognition in the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame, but have been noted by many Punk and post-punk artists as being a primary influence. I consider myself to be extremely lucky to have not only performed on the same bill, but to witness their truly magical and incredible reunion show in Las Vegas three-and-a-half years ago."

Our friend Philip Von Zweck passed along this sad news this morning. Not sure of the source but I've seen another mention of Dave Day's passing from Seattle's Light in the Attic Records. The Monks were an extraordinary band and their album "Black Monk Time" is pretty much required listening. On a trip down to Green Castle, Indiana, members of the temporary grouping Biggest Temporary Gang Ever blasted the shit out of The Monks in the car to keep us happy during the boring drive. Their raw, timeless, forceful and obnoxious music will always be remembered and rocked out to.