Mortgaged Lives- book now available / and so forth

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Journal of Aesthetics and Protest

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Oct 16, 2014, 10:26:02 AM10/16/14
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Mortgaged Lives (From the Housing Bubble to the Right to Housing)
by Ada Colau and Adrià Alemany (English translation by Michelle Teran)
Originally published in Spanish under the title Vidas Hipotecadas

Since the economic crisis of 2008 and before, people and movements in Spain have been experimenting with
how to radically alter the terms of their lives away from the interests of the connected, wealthy and greedy and
towards livable lives.


215 pages
$10 + $6.99 shipping anywhere in the world - ( purchase info here)
 
 
 
book launch at the London Anarchist Book Fair!
This saturday october 18th
 

 
1. On Mortgaged Lives
2. Issue 9 available online/print update.
3. Cool new books from other publishers.
4. W.A.G.E. Arts minimum wage and standards
5. Los Angeles area Art Teacher's Unionizing Drive (+ photo).
6. Berlin Assembly
7. Et tu CalArts?
8. Nov. 30th, lost species day.
 
.....
1. On Mortgaged Lives- book and purchase info.
 
Since the economic crisis of 2008 and before, people and movements in Spain have been experimenting with
how to radically alter the terms of their lives away from the interests of the connected, wealthy and greedy and
towards livable lives.

Mortgaged Lives tells the story of the PAH, the Platforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (Platform for People Affected by Mortgages). The PAH is massively popular yet outsider social movement that has been driving the most direct challenge to the authority of the state and corporations to rule, directly focusing its social energy on materially and politically addressing Spain's home bankruptcy crisis.

Written by two of the founders of the PAH, Ada Colau and Adrià Alemany, Mortgaged Lives explains the causes,
analyzes the role of the public administrations, reveals the fight carried out by the PAH with first-person accounts, and offers
advice and resources for defending the right to housing and avoiding abuses of power by the banks and financial institutions.

Spain is in an extended moment of radical political transition, this book offers an insight into both one of the organization and two organizers who are helping  drive the democratic insurgency

Journal of Aesthetics and Mortgages

"How did a handful of people in a room in Barcelona grow to become Spain’s nation-wide anti-eviction movement? How did those in mortgage arrears, a sector of society overwhelmed by debt, faced with the immanent possibility of homelessness and often suffering from unemployment, become a political actor which could place the housing crisis at the centre of the national conversation and put collective action back on the map for millions of people?

To answer these questions is to understand the Plataforma de Afectados por La Hipoteca, (PAH, the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages) the most dynamic, widespread and popular of the movements which have arisen in Spain since the crisis of 2008. For activists and those concerned with social change across Spain, the PAH has been a game changer. The organisation, formed through a grassroots network of local groups and with strong participatory and horizontal characteristics, has re-written the rule book of effective political action. To date, it seems to us the significance and the potential of the movement is currently being woefully underestimated outside of Spain."                                                              - from Provisional University in "Six lessons from Spain's Anti-Eviction Movement"
 
 
.....
2. Issue 9 available online/print update

- The online issue is now available here!.
http://www.joaap.org/issue9/9toc.htm
 
A li'l while back, we announced that our issue 9 print issue would be out in September.
September has come and gone, but our issue hasn't. We are expecting it soon.

Contributions by: Brendon Baylor,  Zach Blas,  David Buuck,  Paula Cobo-Guevara,  duskin drum, Anna Feigenbaum,  Dr. Fabian Frenzel,  Sarah Lewison,  Patrick McCurdy, Not An Alternative,  Gabriel Saloman,  Heath Schultz,  Michael W. Wilson

Also, this issue's associate 3 part radio documentary is available online, too.
 
.....

3. cool new books n' stuff (one thing not so cool).
 

"Tripwire, a journal of poetics, is devoted to a counter-institutional exploration of radical and experimental modes of contemporary poetics, art, and cultural politics."
 
David Buuck's contributor to our recent issue 9 is entitled, "We Are All Sound, Poetics and Public Space in the Occupy Oakland Movement"

b. Fred Dewey's The School of Public Life,
published by Errant Bodies Press.
(http://www.errantbodies.org/doormats_4.html)

Fred is a writer, political thinker and cultural organizer, the book is well writen and Fred offers a somewhat unique perspective on the current state of affairs, in both the arts and broader society.

"Built out of two decades of interventions into politics and culture, The School of Public Life records the author's efforts to revive and rethink public space form Los Angeles, Lowndes Counte, alabama and Cork Ireland to current day Berlin and beyond... From work in the neighborhood councils movement to directing a space for culture in Los Angeles to examing the peoples need for poetic description and the relationship of time to existential politics, the book seeks to re-examine communitey life, art, history and principles of self-government against the abyss of economics, parties, and constructed powerelessness..."

"The book explores the works of thinker Hannah Arendt, the poet Charles Olson, dancer and poet Simone Forti and lesons to be drawn from the New England town meeting, artist Joseph Beuy's Office for Direct Democracy, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama, Experiments at Black Mountain College and Beyond Baroque, and Rosa PArks and the Montgomery bus boycott.
 
 
Collection of writing on matters avant garde, by practitioners and thinkers. Contributors run the gamut from Bruce LaBruce to Christine Wertheim, Richard Kostelanetz to Negt and Kluge, Judith Malina to Zany Begg.
Fun for all. Nuf' Said. 
 
Half Letter Press, that irrepressibible bunch, publisher.
pdf now available, book to be printed soon.

"Essays, interviews and case studies of artists working with ecological issues in the Nordic landscape," of interest, especially because there's a lot of interesting work happening there.
(check out at Half Letter Press their title Against Competition)
 
.........
 
4. W.A.G.E. Arts minimum wage and standards
 
The good people at W.A.G.E. (that's Working Artists and the Greater Economy ) have hammered out a certification program to be prominantly displayed by qualified arts organizations showing that they uphold both labor rights and fair fees for  artists' "work".
 
All this hard certifying work is taxing for the WAGEragers, and so they're doing a fundraiser. Donate...
 
 
.....
 
5. Los Angeles area Art Teacher's Unionizing Drive (and wyld foto).

After a Sunday October 12th consciousness raising and rabble rousin'  event at Human Resources in LA, folks affiliated with both the SEIU, the art scene and the SoCal art schools began circulating this petition to support the rights of LA Art School adjunct faculty to Unionize.

Please sign the right to unionize petition here. http://action.seiu.org/page/s/artfac

(really nice lighting, signage and music!)
 
.......
 
6. Berlin Afternotes.
 
Afternotes on the Assembly for Art Workers

On September 12th ArtLeaks initiated an Assembly for Art Workers, with the support of Flutgraben, Haben und Brauchen, and the Arts & Economics group. Read the report-back here on Art Leaks.
http://art-leaks.org/2014/10/15/afternotes-assembly-for-art-workers-and-related-events-in-berlin/

......
 
7. Et tu, CalArts?
 
 
....
 
8. Novemeber 30th, Rememberance for Lost Species day.
More on this sad holiday of rememberance here-
http://onca.org.uk/remembrance-day-for-lost-species/
 
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