QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology,"
Greer CNN Politics.com, September 4 2009
Talarstenen Puhujakivi Speaker's Stone
Säg vad du vill i Ekenäs!Puhu suusi puhtaaksi Tammisaaressa!Speak your mind in Ekenäs!View recorded speeches and comments:
Talarstenen Puhujakivi Speaker's StoneLOCATION:
Galleri Elverket
Gustaf Wasas gata 11, Ekenäs, Finland
This installation was active from 5th of February to 15th of March 2009: You will still find the stone in the courtyard next to Galleri Elverket. Previously, you heard a bull and by that, knew you had arrived. However, now, look under the blue lamp.
This project was part of Pia Lindman's retrospective at Galleri Elverket 5.2 - 15.3 2009 and funded in part by Pro Artibus, Finland
For more info visit
Pro Artibus or check the blog
Talarstenen
Old quotes of the week
The Skip Gates arrestis really a bit depressing for me to read about :-((When i was a teenager I wasnt aware of the term 'racial profiling' but I understood the phenomena PERSONALLY.As a 17-year old at "the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Arts and Science"(yeah thats its full "proper" name) starting my student career as an architect I remember the humiliation when police surrounded me on MacDougal street in the West Village after a "neighbor" telephoned them that a BLACK MAN was needed to be stopped from what ever he was doing.Yes that was ME. Looking at the various examples of what we have as colonial townhouse architecture from "New Amsterdam'. No I wasnt even trying to even GET in these places. I was always on the public sidewalk.I remember this more than 25 years later because it has made me less willing (ie: "FEARFUL") of allowing my normal/natural/human curiosity to grasp aspects of the world around me.This in general means (to this day) I can hardly look at things in comfort and not think that there will be someone on some telephone calling the police.I looooong ago stopped browsing inside of Department stores (after the relentless security guards walking behind me).Even the security guards at the Supermarkets here in Berlin make ME nervous because of these experiences even though I am no longer in the USA-I am now irrationally "programmed'.I can also remember waiting for my young brother to return from camping. I waited on a door stoop on the Upper Eastside and was about to be arrested for prostitution. I explained , naive that I am, why I was waiting-but was told this was irrelevent and that I should leave or be arrested.All of these leave still a bitter taste in my memory because I realize that I have often been 1 millimeter away from being thrown into a prison system just for being ME. It gives me no "real" sense of personal safety. Let's say I just dont have the same freedom as a snoopy white granny (I'll never forget seeing two well dressed white-grannies stealing chocolate in a chic shop in the Marais-Paris and thinking to myself that I would have been the one the shop keepers would fear)Jean Ulrick Desért, 23rd of July 2009
A certain excess which was kept under check in previous history, is in capitalism elevated into the very principle of social life, in the speculative movement of money begetting more money. And, perhaps it is only today, in global capitalism in its “postindustrial”, digitalized form, that existing capitalism is reaching the level of its notion: perhaps one should follow Marx’s old, antievolutionist motto that the anatomy of man provides the key for the anatomy of the monkey.paraphrazed from Slavoj Zizek, 17/06/09 in La Communitat Inconfessable
[In New York] Bloomberg controls public advertising and the commercial press - and the police have the assignment of making "peaceable gathering" impossible - but they can't stop people from meeting each other and sharing opinions in public space. We can still do that. We can find each other. The cops were always a step behind us yesterdayBilly Talen 05/13 2009
But my experience with that is that if you look at the abolitionists, the suffragists, the labor movement, civil rights movement, in the end, the change always happens when good people break bad laws and accept the consequences, that some people actually have to engage the law through the grassroots movements of nonviolence.Father John Dear, Anti-Nuclear Activist
Democracy is not an absence of disagreement; it gets its virtue from its love of dissentSpinoza rephrased by artist group Freee
A true exercise in democracy. If only the opinion of every individual could be considered on a national scale, on every major issue, in the form of daily referendums.This would be active democracy - the evolutionary progression of representative democracy. Theoretically impractical? With the advancement of modern computer technologies this should not seem so unreasonablesarpedonia on October 29 2008
Democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner
Don Shappelle at 2:10pm September 29 2009
First day of Democracy in America, The National Campaign at the Park Avenue Armory NYC
Soapbox Event opened again with Democracy in America, The National Campaign exhibit at the Park Avenue Armory, NYC this Sunday 09/21/08. We kept the boxes going from 11AM to 10PM!!
This was an energizing day with many interested and interesting minds, works, and speeches coming together. Thank you Nato Thompson, for this bold, much needed, smart, inspiring, and fun show! Thanks to Creative Time for taking on this risky and bold endeavor. Thanks also to all the enthused and helpful volunteers!
Personal thanks to Soapbox Production Manager Janine Slaker and Speaker Agent Loren Allston, who stuck it out all day long. You gave me strength.
At the bottom of this page I have uploaded recordings of the speeches: check out
The Missile Dick Chicks video below for something hilariously burlesque and the unplugged off-the-cuff Victor Sheely.
You still have a chance to participate! Welcome to the Soapbox Event next Friday and Saturday (09/26 from 12 to 3PM and 09/27 from 3PM to 6PM) at Park Avenue Armory!
Scroll down to the bottom of this page to find more videos.
Please post comments and speeches, and check in again.
Pia Lindman
THE SOAPBOX EVENT
THE FIRST EVENT WAS AT
FEDERAL HALL NATIONAL MEMORIAL
26 WALL STREET, NYC
SATURDAY APRIL 5TH FROM 2 TO 5 PM
Pia Lindman thanks everyone who showed up at the Federal Hall in April; volunteers, speakers, film crew... you helped create a truly energizing event!
41 speakers delivered speeches almost non-stop. We will post excerpts of these recordings here shortly.
If you have any questions or would like to contribute to this project by volunteering or otherwise, please contact Pia by email, piuska@mit.edu. If you want to contribute by writing to this blog click on the link for instructions to participate.
In Soapbox Event, Lindman pares down the structure of democracy to the elemental forms of free speech: human bodies, live voices, and space. This performance investigates the construction and breakdown of collective structures, and how they influence individual expression in democratic decision-making. The event highlights the relationship of embodied speech to the bare life of an individual, in the context of increasingly mediated communication.
GROUND RULES FOR THE SOAPBOX EVENT
- each participant will be given one soapbox
- with the soapbox, each participant is also given one minute of free speech
- participants may form coalitions
- the soapboxes of the members of a coalition can be stacked together to create a higher speech podium
- a representative of a coalition may speak as many minutes as there are stacked boxes (members in the coalition)
We will not be using microphones or any amplifiers. Obtaining greater height serves to elevate a speaker and have their voice project better into the space.
