Monthly Archives: November 2005

Transformative Tactics

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Celebrating the launch of Richard Day’s book, Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements (Pluto Press/Between the Lines)

Wednesday, November 16, 2005, 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Toronto Free Gallery, 660 Queen Street East (w. of Broadview)

gramsci_is_deadWhat strategies and tactics are today’s activists using to achieve social transformation? Are taking over the state or trying to reform its structures the only way to achieve meaningful social change? Or are direct-action tactics, for example, potentially more effective?

Join us for a participant-led conversation and celebration around these questions. Some of our guests include Adrian Blackwell, AnarchistU, Todd Irvine, David McNally, Stuart Vickars, Cynthia Wright, and others to be confirmed. The evening will begin with short video screenings by John Greyson, Rick Palidwor, and Pedestrian Mob. After the forum, everyone is invited to continue the conversation at a party in Toronto Free Gallery!

Supported by Between the Lines.

Here be Dragons: Cartography of Globalization

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An exhibition initiated by Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry
here_be_dragons2
12 Nov. – 17 Dec. 2005
Opening reception: Sat. 12 Nov., 8-10pm
Toronto Free Gallery

Centuries ago, map-makers wrote the phrase ‘here be dragons’ on areas that were outside of their known world. Where should this phrase be written on contemporary maps of political and economic territory?

Recently, activists, artists, and researchers have used the form of the map to visually represent the distribution of power, the circulation of information, and the organization of control in the age of capitalist globalization. These critical cartographers make visible the vast networks of national governments, transnational corporations, and international institutions which channel massive flows of people, labour, interests, dollars, and meaning. Making the complexities of our present more graspable, counter-cartography furnishes us with pedagogical tools for cognitively navigating the class-divided, politically administered, and digitally mediated world we live in.

But the point of these maps isn’t to say: ‘Look how trapped we are.’ These networks are contested, and vulnerable. And there exist counter-networks, on whose nodes a multithere_be_dragons1ude of protagonists are searching for and inventing emergency exits. Maps of these powers ‘from below’ give expression to creative resistances and workable alternatives. These are a different type of dragon.

Believing that counter-cartography is a political provocation, the Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry is initiating a series of participatory events during the mapping show as forums for the discussion of questions raised by these critical cartographers. Where are the dragons today? How might we navigate a course within, against, and beyond the enclosures of the known world?

The exhibition features maps, texts, audio, and video by: