Montreal Screening

Despite the rain, our Montreal screening in Griffintown went very well. Around 10 people showed up with unbrella's and braved the summer drizzle. Unfortunately it made discussion very difficult as we were afraid that it might turn into a down pour any minute. We got through the whole program however, and received some positive feedback.

The MoneyProject will be screening again in Montreal at the Griffintown Cultural Corridor where there is located the Dalhousie outdoor installation space.

Saturday August 21 (rain date is the 22nd), 8:30 pm at the corner of Ottawa and Dalhousie.

DALHOUSIE

A Griffintown community initiative

In a cul-de-sac nestled between the CN viaduct and the New City Gas, DALHOUSIE is an outdoor space in which to celebrate all forms of expression. This is your invitation to participate in a continual series of events to take place at the corner of Dalhousie and Ottawa Streets across from Griffintown’s Jardin de Concertation et de Consultation.

Citizens are encouraged to participate in interactive works, installations, exhibits, musical events, spoken word, performances and workshops, expressions of arts and sculpture, opinions, lectures and ideas in an outdoor urban environment.

Information about scheduled events will be posted at http://griffintown.org/corridorculturel/

A Tshirt version

Signifying financial crisis.

THE BRAZEN SERPENT

Artist's Statement: Two signs both signifying exchange.
The idea came to me about two days before the G20 demo to take the two signs and juxtapose them into one. The dollar sign represents money as the medium of exchange. The crucifix represents the conjunction of unconscious sacrifice with the body as the ground of the value/semantic exchange. Sacrifice is a subset of exchange (as is substitution in the of case the making of an image). The work recourses the fundamental crisis point in the Mosaic Code of the making of the Brazen Serpent. It's working title is "nehush/nahash: Nehushtan". The three Hebrew letters Nun-Het-Shin could be read as nehush-brazen or nahash-serpent (The letter nun has the meaning of serpent in the ancient Hebrew semantics of the letter). The Mosaic Code was greatly concerned at its inception with the eradication of the semantic ground of the image still inherent in the vocable sign. Moses' creative inspiration was to make the serpent out of brass, fusing the medium with the message. Seeing it consciously was "sin" and salvation. Viewing it unconsciously caused death.
Nehushtan was the name given to the Brazen Serpent when it was worshipped during the time of King Hezekiah.
Money in the digital age has no real form. It exists only as an image of value in exchange. The word money has its root in the Latin monere, meaning warning.

Protesting the G8/20-- art by Michael Ricks

As you all know the Resist G8/20 week-end was a crazy circus of police repression. Everyone is now engaged in heated debate and there will be more fallout from the events to organize around. The police repression mirrors the economic repression of the G8/20 organization which does not represent the interests of people but sees us as mute fodder for their agenda. We see the nature of this system operating through discipline and threat of both economic penalty for an inability to conform to the capitalist regime of life behind which lies the threat of pure force for active dissent and desire to discuss and participate in the democratic process.

Junction resident Michael Ricks took this opportunity to make a symbolic gesture with this wonderful sculpture that we alternately carried at the Saturday rally. The response by our fellow protesters was overwhelming to this work, they were really able to work the symbolism into their understanding of what was going on.


This photo was taken by Nick Van der Graaf

New Blog items

I have added a link to China Labor Watch. As well there are two new pages: one is the talk I didn't quite get through at the People's Summit, and the other is a list and some descriptions of all the video's in the MoneyProject, which will eventually be complete.

People's Summit Update

MONEYPROJECT UPDATE:

Hi Everyone,

It has been an intense weekend I think for everyone, those who were downtown and those who watched, and now we are immersed in various debates around the issues raised during the resistance to the g20/8 and the police tactics employed and the money spent....I hope these are productive even though they are often painful...

The MoneyProject screened during the People's Summit which was a great context for the project. Michael Ricks and I attended a great workshop on the war in Afghanistan and I attended three others: one on the Alberta Tar Sands, I also went to the Peoples Assembly on Climate Change, and the other with Rebecca Garrett on the De Beers gold mine in the First Nations Northern Ontario community of Attiwapiskat.

It was unfortunate for the MoneyProject that the workshop before us went over their time, so we started late, and thinking that there was no one using the room after us, I didn't object. However, some volunteers told us we had to leave the room, so after the screening and a short talk about the project, we had no time left for a discussion with the audience.

This set of circumstances was beyond frustrating for me as the rest of the workshops that I attended were very discursive and interactive and I found this very exciting, there was a real attempt made to democratize the discussion and involved the audience, and I really wanted this for the MoneyProject as well. It has really given me food for thought as to how to really reinforce the interactive aspect of the project since sitting and watching video is a very passive activity. Kelli Keily commented to me that it seems to be the making of video that is interactive and where a lot of discussion happens, as well as the meetings. However, I am thinking that this is something to consider at our next meeting.

Nevertheless, I am happy that those who stayed to watch the whole program could maybe fit some of what they saw at the MoneyProject into their other experiences at the People's Summit and the weekend of protest, and am very content to have been a part of such very well organized events.

FUTURE SCREENINGS:
We have one home screening organized for Montreal on Monday July 12th at Michael Ryans house for his and Riaz Mehmoods friends. They both have pieces in the MoneyProject. We expect about 10 people there.

more details on other possible screenings this summer to be confirmed.

That is all for now, lots of stuff to think about post summit....

all the best,
Kim Jackson

This is the poster MRicks made for the screening. We're excited to be a part of the People's Summit and have finalized the new program. We are also looking forward to two more screenings this summer, hopefully one in Montreal and the other a home screening here in the Junction, Toronto.

A statistical analysis proves that more equal societies work better for everyone.

http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/

The 2010 People's Summit looks amazing, check out their schedule here: http://peoplessummit2010.ca/section/2

The MoneyProject will be screening on Saturday, June 19th from 3-4:30pm. Information about the screening is listed in the Program page under the section Economic Justice.

G8/20

The MoneyProject will be screening during the Toronto G8/20 people's summit. Details forthcoming!

Corporate Fascism Ascending

http://www.truthout.org/1106095

Classical Classism

The Poverty of Philosophy

Malalai Joya-" I do not fear death; I fear political silence in the face of injustice."

In the midst of a war economy where nothing is called by its right name Malalai Joya is a remarkable example of speaking truth to power. At 25 she was the youngest person elected to the Afghan parliament and was expelled for her honest criticism of its corrupt practices. I post this as reminder of the power of testimony over political opinion.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16378

Mike Ricks sent us this interesting link. It's a video group in India that maps where activist videos get made. You watch the videos by selecting a location. As Mike says: "It really grounds the media dialogue in terms of place."

http://canvaspix.wordpress.com/

Rebecca emailed me this great link to the website of the Toronto Video Activist Collective:

http://www.tvac.ca/

Craig, Rebecca and I went to the big G8/G20 meeting on Sunday. It seems to be a wonderful group of diverse people who are committed to an intense week of events around the time of the summit. It is in the early organizing stages and they have only carved out an outline so far. However, one of their main purposes, besides protesting the summit seems to be laying the groundwork for a connected movement in Toronto that can support each others issues and projects. Rebecca commented that the various movements have been pretty isolated from each other for a long time. so this seems interesting.

There is a "Peoples Summit" planned (June 18-20th) followed by four theme days during which various activities and actions will take place (June 21-24): climate and environmental issues, Indigenous Sovereignty, economic and migrant issues, and war and occupation. I think the three or four days of the G8/G20 summit (June 25-27) will be for various types of protests.

There was a lot to absorb, but between Rebecca and I this is what we agreed we had heard.

I announced that the MoneyProject would like to screen during this time and people seemed very responsive. One gentleman approached Craig after interested in the project, Vince, so I will add him to our email list.

There are many committees who are going to coordinate this massive event, the "Action Committee" seems to be the one scheduling all the different events together. The Arts committee is gathering the arts people together to see how that can unfold.

THERE IS AN ARTS COMMITTEE MEETING: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28TH, 1-3PM AT THE WELLSLEY COMMUNITY CENTRE, ROOM C. corner of Sherbourne and Wellsley.

I will be going to this, if anyone wants to come let me know and we can meet...

I think it will be great to show the Moneyproject during this time...

here are some links to get in touch or find out about meetings and stuff going on...

community.mobilize@resist.ca

http://g20.torontomobilize.org/

Kelli and I had a meeting today and she is gearing up to start her MoneyProject Video. She is thinking about doing her video about child rearing in a capitalist society and the ethical and survival issues she confronts as a parent. This will be an interesting contribution to the whole I think.

Money as Opiate: Opiates as Money
Narcotic capitalism at its best. Interesting article from the Guardian.

Hey everyone, I think it's time we had a new photo-graphic header for the Money Project blog. Why do I think this? Well, when you go to post a link in another forum -as I just started to do with the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament FB page- what shows up is a street scene together with a snippet of the latest post. I think we need a visually graphic/photo merged with text and readable at thumbnail size for link purposes and a verbal tagline that goes with the image as descriptor/title. You get one shot at peoples attention out there on the web. We want to make sure people get the message. What do you think?

Hazel, they're beautiful.

Here are Hazel's images from the vigil

Here are my vigil photos.

Hazel sent out this call, and I wish we could have come together for it. I will burn a fire and send out a prayer tonight in response to this call.

Here is one video from the MoneyProject

We are gearing up for our third meeting this Thursday where we will screen a new video project and talk about future screenings. The G8 summit is coming to the Toronto area which might afford us (no pun intended) a good opportunity to intersect our art making with history in the making.

I am doing a course on Marx's Capital vol, 1 right now and it is very expanding, the text is much more profound than I had imagined only ever having read references to him or short excerpts ( and David McNally is an excellent teacher for anyone interested). Marx had some very key understandings as to the nature of capitalism. I am struck by his key concept of alienation: the fact of our lack of control or connection to the products of our labor, that what we do and the value of our work is controlled by the market, not by individuals in community, seems to affect all our relationships like a virus. Every time we have the possibility to face each other, face our mutual needs in survival, the market intervenes by abstracting and alienating our labor from ourselves and each other. Thus instead of participating with each other, we expect modern agencies, governments, banks, granting institutions, social workers, to deal with what happens in our community, we always have to find money, time, resources, outside... we go to the market before we turn to each other, how can we have any agency this way?