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?