A Letter from Occupy Amsterdam ( received via media team mailinglist)

Hello all,

with this letter I want to annoucne that I liek to call on all responsible members in our group to come together, as soon as possible, with also the external supporters of our common goals to discuss and implement the following:

- organizational model and structure
- deciding exactly what jobs we have, what they are about, and who will do them
- discuss a brief simple set pof houserules and work rules
- set up communicationlines that function and are followed and respected


today I have been working with Robin all night to try and save whatever is left of the mess of our organization and see hwo to implement that
when he went to bed I tried to get everybody up to take care of the CNN crew, and help make this into a success
then I spent the entire day – apart from 6 hours of sleep in between – on helping people on teh chat and trying to reach people in the mediatent which was hopeless and not successfull because simply NOBODY did his job there, NOBODY moderated teh chat when I was off sleeping and NOBODY was available or reachable for all kinds of issues and questions from many people
and on top of it all, I get yelled at, have had several deadthreats against me from idiots on the chat and a membetr of this list (!!!) and have been treated with utter disrespect and rudeness

I have witnessed mediapersonel bring in friends in teh tent to hang out, drink alcohol and smoke joints;
I have seen perople completely disregarrding protocols and policies that were discussed and implemented
I have met incredible rudeness, lazyness, disinterest and plain stupidity from some members who just do whatever pleases them
I have seen our g ood name and our image to the public being ruined by members who fidn iut funny to film junks acting crazy for the live cam, who think it is helpfull to openly attack fellow moderators in teh chat, or just decide against an implemented order on the chat
I have seen vital important plans an doptions go to runs because soem members decided ‘they diudnt feel like doin what was asked’ or just felt ‘they wanted to do something else and well just fuck it’
I have witnessed saturdaynight how our crewmember Gijs was very ill, lying on teh ground, and several members just playing stupid clips and music extremely loud, some whiel enjoying their joints, some intoxicated with teh smell of alcohol around them, and then o top of it some felt it was a perfecvt time to play porn!!!

all of this in teh working space that needed attention and where there was always work to be done, urgently

I have seen many people desperately trying to get answers, to ask questions, and to address issues, to help an dsupport us, but just walking on a dead end, against a wall, because there simply isnt anyone who listens in the tent (literally)

sometimes it seems – as Dmitri said very wisely last sunday – that the leaches rule in this camp, also in our team! There seems to be a complete lack of basic respect, a lack of udnerstanding what is at stake here, and a complete lack of knowing what RESPONSIBILLITY means

I have invested tremendously these 10 days to support occupy, truely belieivng in i t; made huge sacrifices to get therem, brings tons of food and supplies, an entire suitcase full of warm clothes, another with first aid materials, fire extinguishers for our mediatent, brought my own chairs, gastanks, borrowed money to finance things, bought cases for the mediatent, and spend mopre then 120 euro on cellphonecosts
in return I have not heard anyone thank me for all my efforts, nor for what I brought, nor for all teh time I spend there to jkeep saving occupy, kill fires, help people out and make it work
apart from some people like Ernst, Marc, Geert, Dennis, Robin, Suzanne, Niek, Benoit, Dmitri (forgive me if I forget one or two) I have encountered a complete lack of any respect whatsoever

and the endresult at this moment is that people from all sides are falling apart, peopel in our crews get burned up easily uinder all teh stress, and ewe loose most of our support in teh country

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!!!!!

This is not a free-play-camping!
this is not a place to act out, date, use drugs, get drunk and just do whatever pleases you!
our future is at stake and it seems at this moment we are about to loose teh battle

after a long night of complete insanity in teh chat, of endless trolls, grievers and nutcases,
after not getting any help whatsopever from anyone present from teh team, in fact got dizzed by soem and sabotaged i n my work by some,
after retrying with them time after time after time, I decided to klet them figur it out for themselves
I unbanned everybody, and removed restruictions to login
immediately ALL the trolls came back and started talking their own crap about all kinds of stuff except Occupy Amsterdam

I find it impossible to do my job under these circumstances!

further more, I notice there are all kinds of mediagroups, communication between eachother is at least troubling and challenging, informations not shared, and at the moment I think there are more tools and options for communicatiosn set up then I can think off, most of them only shared by small numbers, leaving many out, and therefor keeping teh same chaos

I am convinced many of you are incredibly motivated and have worked their asses off all these days and I deeply respect that, same as I did from day 1
but this MUST stop immediately, and we have to get organized, get communications running, and develop a way of behaving taht is helpfull for our common goal, an drespectful of eachother and our people in teh field, and the country as a whole

if we don’t, Occupy Amsterdam is finished

please feel free to contact me on this letter or write the entire group
but in all cases, lets not forget our common goal
and the incredible challenge and urgency of our occupation
we MUST win this battle!!!

best wishes for all, including the guy who wants to kill me

V M

Spectre discussion...

From: Rob Myers
Subject: Re: [spectre] Re: (fwd) Sign the Petition: Release Ai Weiwei
Date: April 15, 2011 12:09:59 PM GMT+02:00
To: spectre@mikrolisten.de

I don't give a shit about Ai Wei Wei and his publicity juggernaut, but nor do I give a shit about chippily opposing "cultural elites" or whatever. Vapid negativism leads to supporting reaction in word and deed with the warm glow of virtue in one's heart, and here we are.

Support all artists whose freedom is attacked (including Heath).

- Rob.

Click for MORE

Spectre discussion...

From: Andreas Broeckmann
Subject: [spectre] (fwd) Sign the Petition: Release Ai Weiwei
Date: April 14, 2011 3:03:13 PM GMT+02:00
To: spectre@mikrolisten.de

On April 3, internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing airport while en route to Hong Kong, and his papers and computers were seized from his studio compound.
Sign now! we need to reach 100,000 signatures!
http://www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei#?opt_new=f&opt_fb=t

'The members of the international arts community express their concern for Ai's freedom and disappointment in China's reluctance to live up to its promise to nurture creativity and independent thought, the keys to "soft power" and cultural influence.

The initiative has been taken working closely with Jerome Cohen, the leading Chinese human rights lawyer who is working on Weiwei's case, and who believes that this action could be effective.
To support the petition you can link it on your website, on Facebook and Twitter sites, in order to quickly reach millions of people.'

We need to reach 100,000 signatures.

From: heath bunting
Subject: Re: [spectre] (fwd) Sign the Petition: Release Ai Weiwei
Date: April 14, 2011 8:06:19 PM GMT+02:00
To: Andreas Broeckmann
Cc: spectre@mikrolisten.de

andreas broeckmann

can you explain why you are campaigning for this person ?

are you sure he not guilty of tax evasion ?

does the fact that this campaign is supported by so many elite organisation not make you question this campaign ?

i didn't note much interest or support in my case when i was arrested every time i entered or exited the united kingdom or when i was disappeared by the UK secret police and accused falsely of bomb threats at a london airport - i was facing up to 7 years in prison

this was a result of my work with borders and identity and i still live
under surveillance

in the similar manner that no one benefits from my rise through the art stratosphere, hence no rise or stardom, who is benefiting from Ai Weiwei and his hyper inflation in the attention economy ?

Ai Weiwei campaign seems a classic case of elite people protecting their own transgressions (tax evasion) and profiting from disaster capitalism rather than universal human rights and human rights workers, such as artists

would there be an international campaign by elite institutions to support a independent artist, such as myself ?

this seems a very similar situation to julian assange. instead of the social network supporting a member of the blood rank, we should be supporting social justice and human rights and those that work using such methods

Ai Weiwei is clearly a member of the international blood rank posing a social networker - an astroturfer

this strikes me a co-option of the social network for the purposes and values of the elite

hope you can answer some of these questions

hope you are well

heath bunting

From: Andreas Broeckmann
Subject: Re: [spectre] (fwd) Sign the Petition: Release Ai Weiwei
Date: April 15, 2011 8:14:47 AM GMT+02:00
To: spectre@mikrolisten.de

heath,

thank you for these questions. i will think about them carefully, since i assume that these are the kind of questions that people like myself will have to answer when they get in the hands of the chinese stasi, should the chinese stasi choose to ask me questions about why i supported a campaign for the release of ai weiwei.

http://www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei

because you now know that i have this association when reading your questions, i assume that you will understand that i would rather not enter into this interrogation now. such interrogations are structured to make people say contradictory things which harm them and others.

i respect you as an artist and your work (e.g. http://status.irational.org/ ), and because of that respect i choose to assume that the imputation in your questions - that ai weiwei might be in prison for good reason - is rhetorical and strategic. (besides, i believe that people who evade taxes should not be put in prison, but forced to pay taxes.)

i support the campaign for the reslease of ai weiwei because i believe that he is wrongfully imprisoned, like many other people in china (and elsewhere). he is a figure-head, and the campaign has, in my understanding, an important 'symbolic' dimension in that it is directed against the lack of freedom of speech and freedom of the arts.

i did not know that you were arrested. it is of course a problem of the attention economy that i didn't know about this. is it cynical to say that, while i despise that fact that you get arrested regularly because of your work with borders and identity, i am glad that you have been arrested by people acting on behalf of authorities that released you again soon afterwards, rather than also arresting your partners and keeping you under arrest away from the public eye for an (as of yet) indefinite period of time. the latter is what is happening to ai weiwei.

should this happen to you and i know about it, i will also support the campaign for your release.

regards,
-a

...

A Thread on "What is network and/ or networked art?"

T(able)O(f)C(ontent)of this starting thread HERE
1st post HERE

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