This is work was produced at the Okaisional cafe Game Cock Inn in Hulme.It was set some fifteen years ago as a collective. "The OKasional Cafe is a squatted space which holds a daily cafe, regular vegan meals and functions as a radical space for meetings, organising actions, workshops and events. Recently we were at the ‘Gamecock Pub’ on Boundary Lane on 25th February – 18th March 2012. OKcafe usually runs for 2 – 4 weeks with several months break between each cafe."
It was gratifying to be in a space were there was a different dynamic on property.The space was anyones, to do so as they pleased.Aside from this apparent lack of structure there was one that was solid.Solid in the sense were no one had an authoritive privilidge to overide antother.Here group decisions are made on consensus.Still with me, heres a link to the 'safer spaces policy'
http://okcafe.wordpress.com/about/safer-spaces-policy/
I've never been made to feel more welcome.It was awesome to be in a situation like this.Watching the point of any heirachical sturcture just piss down the drain.I learnt that basis of any heirachy even art school.Does nothing but supress creative expression.Constrained by taste.Imprisoned by aesthetics that just copy and recipricate old values.The ideas of Post post-modernism or metamodernism topple in on itself like a deck of cards.At least with modernism out look on life was optimistic.Its seems devoid of worth to base everything on irony on,on cynacism on irony of irony.Folding in on itself quicker and quicker as it tries to envelope everything thoughts will become useless, subsequently art will become useless.
Victims of our all knowing pluratity we will see our selves as gods.Actively encouraged to have dual lives existing on interactive planes that remove ourselves from real human contact.
Am i myself, or am I comodity for people to apreciate and de-apreciate.I couldn't possibly just be me, could I.Should I asign myself to a defined era, should i approiate myself to a people or a fashion.Maybe the best option is to just merge my identity with existing themes.This seems to be an approach valued by this world, so called icons and phenomina of the present.
Its not enough to be presented with the spectacle every minute of everyday.We are encouraged to become a brand ourselves.To become a projecting part of it.The prophecy of social networking made good the use of valueing emotions as a comodity.
The utopian ideals of self governence and collective autonomy promised by the internet are falsities.A life contained within the boundaries of a screen is emblimatic of our current predicameant.In its appeal to connect the entire world is its subtlty of its oppression.Direct marketabillity to the left and too the right of your visual lives.
Even if you can ignore the pestering objects of desire encroaching on what appears to be your life on screen.Projecting a false ego on to others and onto ourselves is in fact a hard task.It takes so much time to make sure your brand stands out over the infinite plethera of others. Its cripplingly compelling human tendency to relate and to feel related too.These feelings that used to be tangible can be relfected in some type Orwelian new-speak ('like','dis-like' 'dig').
All that has come of the new freedom promised by the internet has now become an infinite plane of opression.The binery form we invented for our computers has now become our lives.Online or Offline.
The 'ACTA Laws'allowing the U.S govt, carte blanche internationaly to seize assets, shows how a ounce utopian ideal of cyber space has become forced under the constraints of the physical world.Under the guise of the never ending 'War on Terror', the U.K govt plans to extend its Anti-terror legislation for U.K national security.Under these new aplications of this despotic law we have our emails,texts and website visits monitered.Recently too the anti-squatting legislation has criminalised the occupying of residential property.
My hope is that this would lead to more sub-versive action.People re-claiming space on mass.Especially places were corporate interests are heald in higher regard than the rights of individuals.Certainly the Reclaim and the Occupy movement are testament to this.
O.k cafe and the people i met there were enlightening.On a localized level people can exist in a community of peace and freedom without fear of opression.
Pleas follow and support
http://www.okcafe.wordpress.com
OK CAFE MANCHESTER
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