Parking the words

Watching ‘Can you dance’ with all its glitzy lights, ohh la la, carnival and cheese atmosphere, but still warmth for those who want to show themselves and their possibility. I wondered whether the largest amount of people who came into the DAG last time did so because it was a tad gaudy? (As what’s her name said, ‘an assault on your senses’? It was lots of colour lights, partly cos I didn’t know how to make them just white… and 3 projected screens plus 3 Imacs with still and moving image, moving from one element to another.

Not so understated it feels distant and unlinked or that its prenioius so ‘cerebral’ as Sophie calls me, that there is abstraction within and around it. Can’t touch it, as I can’t see it. (Feeling something of a breeze as I sit on the Downs in hardly clothes in the shade. It’s where there was a free space. I’ll move soon ‘cos I need, want to be warm but outdoors. It’s April and it’s lovely, it’ll be lovely for so long…

OH audience engagement. Flyers and conversations – this is a gallery – where will be if cuts continue? What is its future? AHRC ..Come in before its gone… stolen away again before we really every got it. Even if you think galleries are for them, whoever they are? (The Bourg..)

Our fees, some central government and a Hodge podge of other stuff fund this but ultimately by US! The new undergrad fees will be £8.5k….at LSBU and MA fees? No idea, they are already costly, especially those without virtually any contact time.

NEED TO DO?

1. Basic Flyer

2. More details as to why am I doing this
Evaluation or sign up sheet? Comments?

Oh I love writing and thinking and working out plans with this. You never know, I never know, what do I need to say or show…

· Rough CUT

· Cutaways

· Possible additions

· Students

· TUSC candidates

· Kingsley Abrahams?

· Dave Sinc and photographs

· KM – How you see life now? Biggest let down labour, Under 25 and skirt.

I want to show you how far we’ve come. And how far we have to go.. (Like I know? Like I can really see that?) It’s only a step in, touching upon so much that has happened, just touching but at the same time they gave us that. What else we need to have within it… young people, participation, housing and Lyn, …

Perhaps add the international and women’s element from KM? Or does it feel so flippant? But its light, with layers of what oppression looks like and how people are seen? And that’s important. I can’t tell you the whole story of the 47 but touch upon it and a little about those involved and what they did, how they did it, and wheat they mean to how they are how and live their lives.

I’ll have feedback for Lisa and me and that can be added by 5^th May and then something more by the week of the 16^th MAY. (CHECK ROXY??)

If I show it, even rough-cut version 2 into an academic space what happens…if I put it into an arty space like the Roy what happens? But it will always be a private screening… invited guests only. Already sets the tone I guess? Cllrs? RMT?

This seems like a long time ago but its so not. WAPPING – Marx exhibition (be good to go as a union group? _ link to mayday or another event. That just depends. (Weird when people decide to walk so close by where they have the whole park to wonder… nosey what is she writing, why? Why now? Why here?

In the cold shade, with no virtually no clothes on, she’ll move, but it’s been productive and I’m not scared by what I have to do… alone…or in association with others.

I’ll find a warm spot and sit in the sun, read and maybe call Tina & Karen. It’s nice to chatter. And I have taken my thoughts, my circular worlds down to take me somewhere else. I so need you words; I so needed to be here and there in my everyday writing you for me…. And it lifts and centres me (really am I going to put this shit in my blog… oh god, you do show yourself up?)

NSSN Bulletin 38 - Stepping up for acton

With unions such as the ATL now looking at strike action over pensions, the
battle to fight the cuts is now deepening & widening. We would like to
encourage supporters in branches, regions and anti cuts groups to consider what
they could do to support to develop national co-ordinated action against the
cuts.

NSSN NATIONAL CONFERENCE
The 5th annual conference of the NSSN will be on Sat June 11th this will work
well to link in with delegates attending to share information and develop
stronger links for action against the cuts and just prior to co-ordinated
action. We would also appreciate it if people could register for the
conference in advance http://tinyurl.com/6kdzycc

UPDATES:
National union conferences will also be taking place and we have a bulletin we
would ask all supporters to distribute. We are aiming to have fringe meetings
as well. http://www.shopstewards.net/news.73.htm

Our Health Service Not for Sale demo – Tuesday 17 May assemble 5.30pm
University College Hospital, march to Department of Health. As more and more
cuts are proposed such as those in Lewisham & adolescent Mental health services
of £500,000 it is crucial to step up the battle for our services.

SALTEND UPDATE: At a mass meeting of the locked-out workers today, Vivergo's
offer of cash was rejected and it was agreed to re-start the protest in the
morning. http://www.shopstewards.net/news.74.htm messages of support: Keith
Gibson: geminis@geminis.karoo.co.uk 07743135183

Lincolnshire county Council workers to look at strike action against the 900
post cuts. Union rep argues for a needs budget!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-13150339

NUJ Journalists at Tindle Newspapers in Enfield, North London, are currently on
strike until 5th May against cuts. Over one third of editorial staff that have
left has not been replaced, and the remaining workers are facing increasing
exploitation, with only 3 reporters producing 9 newspapers a week!
strikegazadpres@hotmail.co.uk or FOC Jonathan: 07917 871 421

RMT announced this morning that it is to ballot for strike action and action
short of a strike on Heathrow Express in a dispute over pay. In addition, RMT
today called for direct talks between the Mayor, unions and passenger groups,
and demanded an immediate halt to tube jobs and maintenance cuts, after what
the union described as 24 hours of tube hell this week.

AFFILIATE
Great to hear a few new affiliates come through this week including Coventry
CWU & Bolton Trades Council. You can now affiliate online so please do or post
us a cheque. http://www.stopcuts.net/affiliate.htm.

Other Dates for your Diary:

Thur 28th April - Workers Memorial Day - Remember the dead & fight for the
living!

Manchester: 9:30am to 11:00 am at Mechanics Institute. Rally at Peace Gardens
Chorley: 6pm Astley Park, Chorley
London Hazards Protest at DWP London, SW1H 9DA

Nuneaton Against the Cuts public meeting on Thursday 28th April 7pm Bentley
Road Sports & Social Club 23 Bentley Road, Nuneaton, CV11 5LR

MAYDAY - International Workers Day!
Fri 29th April
Dundee Mayfest 11.30 Hiltown Park, with anti royal wedding party from 1pm

Sat 30 April
Croydon Mayday 11am Croydon Trades Union Council march and celebration Elmwood
Road, West Croydon to Ruskin House (speakers and music from 1pm)

Leeds Mayday Assemble 11am @ Victoria Gardens (outside Leeds Art Gallery)

Swansea No to Public Sector Cuts – Defend Jobs and Services! Assemble 12:00,
at the Guildhall, marching to rally Castle Square

Sun 1st May - London Assemble 12:00 noon, Clerkenwell Green, London EC1
http://www.londonmayday.org/home.php

Ipswich- Demonstration 11am Giles Circus, Princes St & March to Alexandra Park,
with family events on till 6pm www.ipswichmaydayfestival.co.uk

Youth Fight for Jobs Jarrow fundraiser - 7 - 11pm sponsored by RMT and PCS
young members' network at Slaughtered Lamb Pub, Great Sutton Street, EC1V

11th May - The Hardest Hit demo, disabled people from across the country will
be coming to London to demonstrate their anger and lobby their MP about cuts in
benefits and services by the current government along with raising their
concerns about the welfare reform bill. Assemble 11.30am Embankment/Horse
Guards Avenue

Exhibition - Anniversary of Wapping
The Marx Memorial Library with UNITE and NUJ is hosting an exhibition to mark
the anniversary of the Wapping / News International dispute of the 1980s. The
exhibition starts on Sunday 1 May www.marx-memorial-library.org

Join – Affiliate – Get involved!

info@shopstewards.net
http://www.shopstewards.net/index.htm
http://on.fb.me/fNkaIo

NSSN Anti-cuts campaign:
http://on.fb.me/eolOEE
http://www.stopcuts.net/

Quotes on Art..purpose ?

To a colourless world, art brings an element of colour. To lives without meaning it gives a ray of hope. Art in all its forms makes us lift up our eyes, if only for a fleeting moment, above the dreary everyday existence, and makes us feel that there is something more to life than this, that we can be better than we are, that the relations between people can be human, that the world could be a better place than it is. Art is thus the collective dream of humanity, the expression of a deep-seated feeling that our lives are not what they ought to be, and a passionate if unconscious striving for something different.

Marxism and art

An Introduction to Trotsky's Writings on Art,

by Alan Woods

http://www.marxist.com/ArtAndLiterature-old/marxism_and_art.html

1908 Trotsky wrote the following prophetic lines: "You see, visiting art exhibitions is a terrible act of violence that we perpetrate on ourselves. This way of experiencing artistic pleasure expresses a terrible barracks-capitalist barbarism [...] Let's take a landscape, for example. What is it? A piece of nature, arbitrarily amputated, that has been framed and hung on a wall. Between these elements, nature, the canvas, the frame and the wall, a purely mechanical relation exists: the picture cannot be infinite, for tradition and practical considerations have condemned it to be square. So that it should not crease or buckle, it is framed, and so that it should not lie on the floor, people hammer a nail in a wall, fix a cord onto it, and hang up the picture by this cord. Then, when all the walls are covered in pictures, sometimes arranged in two or three rows, people call this an art gallery or exhibition. And then we are forced to swallow all this in one gulp: landscapes, genre scenes, frames, cord and nails...

"But what I want painting to renounce is its absolutism and re-establish its organic link with architecture and sculpture, from which it has long been detached. This separation did not happen by accident, oh no! From that time, painting has undertaken a very long and instructive journey. It has conquered landscape, has become inwardly mobile and intimate, and has developed an astounding technique. But now, enriched with all thee gifts, it must go back to its mother's bosom, architecture... I want paintings to be connected not by cords but by their artistic significance to walls or to a cupola, to the purpose of a building, to the character of a room...and not hanging like a hat on a hat stand. Picture galleries, those concentration camps for colours and beauty, serve but as a monstrous appendage to our colourless and unsightly daily reality." (Culture and Revolution in the Thought of Leon Trotsky, p. 67-8.)