HISTORY OF SQUATTING IN THE UK

From Aaron's reports (@aaronlakoff)

Jim is a resident of London, England, and a long-time organizer with the Advisory Service for Squatters, A.S.S. Here he speaks about the history of squatting in the UK, going as far back as the 1300's. This interview looks at squatting's relationship to the anarchist movement in the UK, the changing legal framework around squatting, and squatting within a framework of other social movements in the country.

The Advisory Service For Squatters is a collective of unpaid workers who have beenrunning a daily advice service for squatters and homeless people since 1975. It grewout of the former Family Squatters Advisory Service, which was founded in the late 1960's. ASS publishes The squatters Handbook, the twelfth edition of which is the current one, and has sold in excess of 150,000 copies since 1976. ASS offers advice on how to squat, legal help to squatters and helps fight evictions and challenge police abuse of the homeless.


READ THE INTERVIEW HERE
or just listen to the interview via radio4all.net

Images via the UK Squating Archive

THE FIVE RING CIRCUS OPENS ITS GATES

via Irish Blog

Five Ring Circus: the London 2012 experience @ Infoshop

JUST DO IT RELEASED UNDER A CC LICENSE

Last year I posted the documentary "JUST DO IT: A TALE OF MODERN-DAY OUTLAWS".

Since the download source is gone anyway I figured it was worth to post this again since it has now be released as a free copy.

More info on justdoitfilm.com!

DOWNLOAD THE TORRENT VIA VODO
or buy a copy on DVD at their store

THE HUNTER S. THOMPSON SHRINE

The Hunter Thompson Shrine was created on Snowmass on February 20, 2006 (on the one-year anniversary of his death), by a band of his friends and admirers, consisting of five people. They call themselves the "Glorious Leaders of the Underground Movement (GLUM)--The Creators of the Hunter S. Thompson Shrine." They go by the following names: RUSTY HEMATOMA, MISTER Z, R. W. FEATHERSTONE, PHLEGM THROWER, and MR. QUICK. Included in the Shrine are numerous photos, an American Flag, a gloved arm with “Gonzo” written on it, a lizard covered with multi-colored jewels, an air horn, a “Rolling Stone” magazine cover, several newspaper articles, Tibetan prayer flags, The Woody Creeker, a bottle of Mr. Bubbles, and other items.

(excerpt from  aspensnowmassshrines.com)

Every winter on Presidents' Day the GLUM updates the shrine, they also hike each year to the shrine for a camp out on August 20. It is located at the Snowmass ski area, near his home in Woody Creek. On that day in 2005, six months after his death on February 20, his cremated ashes were shot into the sky during a private ceremony at his home in  Aspen, Colorado, by a cannon. It was launched from a 47 meter tower that was topped by a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button - the symbol that he used for his campaign when he ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, as part of a group of citizens running for local offices on the "Freak Power" ticket. The platform included promoting the decriminalization of drugs (for personal use only, not trafficking, as he disapproved of profiteering), tearing up the streets and turning them into grassy pedestrian malls, banning any building so tall as to obscure the view of the mountains, and renaming Aspen "Fat City" to deter investors. Thompson, having shaved his head, referred to the Republican candidate as "my long-haired opponent", as he wore a crew cut. This private ceremony dubbed the "Gonzo blastoff" was held at his home Aspen, Colorado.

In 1978 Thompson & Steadman began to plan his funeral. It was recorded and included in FEAR AND LOATHING IN GONZOVISION (BBC Documentary). It contains several scenes of them planning the event. Thompson told the BBC that wanted his ashes to be launched by a cannon from the monument he designed himself. So eventually during his funural his family and friends made his last wish come true.

Astlas Obscura article on the shrine.

More pictures and information at aspensnowmassshrines.com

SQUADSPACE SQUATTERS' HANDBOOK

SquatSpace is an Australian collective of artists and activists.
Want to know more?

The Squatters' Handbook is a resource for homeless people. It provides practical and legal information required by those seeking to find housing for themselves in abandoned buildings. The book does not seek to incite "illegal" activities (trespass is a criminal offence in NSW) but to provide essential information to people who might need it. Squatting has always been a tactic for finding housing in urban areas, all around the world. With the burgeoning real-estate investment market in Sydney, rental properties for low-income earners have become unaffordable in the last ten years. At the same time, the waiting list for public housing grows longer, while the state government sells off its available housing stock to developers. The Squatters' Handbook merely provides information to those already inclined to seek their own solutions in this unfriendly social environment.

Squatters' Handbook Chapter 1

Why Squat? Why Not?
Are you being squeezed out by ridiculously high rents and the gentrification of cities? Tired of waiting for disinterested governments to come to your assistance? Fed up with sleeping in parks/bus shelters/friends’ lounge room floors? Want to create and control your own living space? Take matters into your own hands — Go squat! There have been squatters for as long as the concept of owning land has existed: squatting on land that legally belongs to someone else takes place all over the world. There are probably as many reasons for squatting as there are people who squat — here are just a few of the things that motivate them.

Unaffordable rents
Despite government policies aimed at promoting ‘affordable’ housing, it’s clear that the number of low-income people able to afford housing is rapidly decreasing. The cost of private rental accommodation is increasing exponentially, pushing many low-income earners away from the areas in which they and their friends live. The private rental market is largely deregulated and tenancy laws afford low-income earners little protection from the increasingly exorbitant rents demanded by landowners and their real estate agents. It’s profit margins that count. Look at the scale of urban gentrification in Sydney at the moment — it doesn’t look like abating in the near future does it? Relax. It’s only natural — the strong over the weak. One day, when you can afford to purchase property of your own, you will understand. You too will give the gift of rental accommodation to someone who has enough money to afford it but not enough to return the gift. And they will give you the security you need for further speculation in real estate. Everyone’s a winner!

Why Wait Endlessly for Handouts?
Public housing once may have been an alternative. But with waiting lists as long as they are, and with waiting time of up to 12 years, government housing is not really a viable option for many. As governments become visibly less interested in housing low-income people — by selling Department of Housing land to private developers, cutting back on spending for new housing, outsourcing their role to private contractors in ‘community housing’ — it becomes more blatantly obvious that to rely on their goodwill to satisfy your housing needs and wants is a ploddingly dangerous mistake. People used to squat government-owned buildings before any others because it was thought there was more room to negotiate with ‘public’ authorities with a ‘conscience’, than with ‘private’ property speculators and companies who were more obviously concerned with ‘making money’. Now there are no doubts that such a comforting distinction cannot be maintained. What is ‘public’ space and what is ‘private’ space? They seem to have melded and colluded some time ago, and if they are keeping any secret it is this: welcome to a world without clear borders where power is much more diffuse and consumption (of goods, services, information) is all-encompassing.

If you can’t afford to purchase private property — or simply don’t want to assist private property owners to purchase more property by paying them excessive rent — there is no need to wait for the private rental market and/or the government to provide a solution to your housing needs. There are hundreds of houses/buildings left empty right now while people who are in need are left homeless or live in substandard and unaffordable accommodation. Help yourself and solve your own housing problems — squat in these buildings before the owners let them rot!

Maintain your Independence
Squatting allows you autonomy. Despite the ‘threat of eviction’, squatting actually gives you a high degree of control over where and how you choose to live. It enables you and the others that you squat with to learn a great deal about how to repair a building and organise your living space according to your individual and collective desires — a privilege usually reserved for owners of private property. And when you create that kind of autonomy you tend to actively participate in maintaining it, rather than simply waiting for the government / rental market to try and provide housing for you.

Town planners and ‘housing experts’ have long been perplexed as to why government programs to ‘house the poor’ in Western and non-Western countries fail to satisfy people’s needs for housing and community, while self-help squatter settlements around the world have been so successful. The answer lies in the autonomy that squatters create and maintain for themselves by taking control of their own housing problems.


Continue reading here

VIVIR LA UTOPIA

(Spanish with English subtitles)

Living Utopia is a unique documentary that blends the historical account of the origins and development of the Spanish anarchist movement, and the revolution of 1936 — illustrating an anarchist society in action.

Workers opened communal cafes where people could eat for free. Communities set up food committees to arrange food supply with the countryside — market commerce and money was replaced in many areas by distribution according to need. Free schools, universities and health programs were set up and administrated by the workers themselves. Rural areas were collectivised. This experience, in which about 8 million people participated, showed that anarchist organisation of society could indeed work in practice. It truly was a Living Utopia.

This documentary-film by Juan Gamero consists of 30 interviews with those involved, and is both an informative and inspiring piece of research. The testimonies of the anarchist militants are very moving and show the constructive work of the social revolution in Spain, as well as the amazing educational and cultural events which lead up to 1936. Interviews are combined with visual materials such as manifestos, photographs, excerpts from film documentaries, portraits and other relevant graphical elements.

COPENHAGEN STREET ART

Source: My Anarchist Pilgrimage

More @  My Anarchist Pilgrimage

ANARCHISM IN AMERICA - DOCUMENTARY

Anarchism in America is a 1983 documentary, directed by Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher, and produced by Pacific Street Films. It has been re-released by AK Press to DVD. The film begins by explaining the filmmakers' interest in anarchism based on their involvement in the group Transcendental Students while in film school at NYU. The film includes interviews with influential anarchists Murray Bookchin, Paul Avrich, Jello Biafra, Mollie Steimer and Karl Hess, and with poet Kenneth Rexroth. It also discusses the Spanish Civil War, the 1917 Revolution, the influence of Emma Goldman and the case of executed anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti.

The film labels anarchism as the only ideology that is staunchly anti-authoritarian, and discusses how anarchist ideals align with the revolutionary, independent spirit of America from rural communities to urban zones.

NEW LAW COMING TO BAN SQUATTING IN JAMAICA

Jerome Reynolds, Gleaner Writer (original source) 

The government has signalled that it will be moving to ban squatting.
Minister without Portfolio in the Housing Ministry, Dr. Morais Guy, in his contribution to the Sectoral Debate in Parliament yesterday said the ministry is looking at implementing a modern Trespass Act which will address the issue of squatting. 

Minister without Portfolio in the Housing Ministry, Dr. Morais Guy.

The current Act was drafted in 1851. 

Dr. Guy added that the administration is also seeking to correct one of the country’s biggest social challenges. 

He said he will be seeking the support of the different ministries under which various pieces of legislation exist that can be applied to addressing issues related to squatting. 

Dr Guy highlighted that 15 to 35 percent of Jamaicans are estimated to be living in squatter settlements or abandoned buildings. 

According to him, an assessment in 2008 by the Squatter Management 
Unit of the Housing Ministry, identified that there were over 700 squatter settlements across the country.

He said it revealed three types of squatting in Jamaica: agricultural, residential and commercial with the most dominant type being residential.

HAKIM BEY WITH 69DB AND OTHERS

Hakim Bey Talks with users of Public Netbase
March 18.1995

Excerpt from the transcript. May I advice you to read the full transcript.

SEB:
On that point for me it's interesting living in a communal group. The way that suddenly you realize that the whole process of what you are doing is in fact an ego game, that you are working out amongst all the other people involved - we all come from western society.
It took me psychedelics to wake up to be honest. And it took me being in a situation whereby Brittain had an underground movement which lasted for four years solid. And this movement was a Free Party movement. This was coming together thousands of people and all dancing underneath the stars for sometimes periods of two weeks. This were serious nights of partying. This brought us to the edge where we suddenly realized where our freedom lay.
Everyone thinks we are free, we were told that - and I believed it all the way - but suddenly when you push out and find out that by expressing your freedom you got riot police coming in and beating people up, suddenly you find out that your freedom doesn't stretch so far.
There is this issue in Britain of Commonland. I remember when we were in Leeds we were looking for a place to do a party. The traditional place in Britain is Commonland. I went to Leeds to have a look at the maps of Commonland, and all the land that was given to the people, there were only two pieces left. I checked both places. First was a field for a farmers corn and the second place was an airport... This is land that was given to the people for specific parties and festivals, put it's not there anymore, it's been sold off.

X:
This shows us that in the end you need physical space. If you want Immediatism, you want physical space.

XX:
Maybe we should go to virtual space.

X to H. BEY :
But this is a contradiction to immediacy, cause immediacy claims that you shouldn't use the media to come together but you use physical space. And in the end this is inconsistent.

H. BEY :
This is not exactly what I've said. What I said was that there is no Temporary Autonomous Zone without physical space. I didn't say that there is no interrelationship between cyberspace and physical space. Of course there's a relationship - there are many different kinds of relations. But what I'm talking about, how I'm defining freedom for the time being, if it doesn't include the body it is an illusion. If my eyes are free but my nose isn't, so this is not what I call freedom. I say there is no festival inside cyberspace. If it doesn't interpenetrate with the physical world, then it's simply another form of representation. Everything which was once lived, has now moved away into representation. And if this is felt to be a form of un-freedom, than it is precisely representation which we find ourselves in a struggle against.
In this sense it may be necessary to ultimately take up a very hostile stand toward cyberspace, or we may find it is a useful weapon, but we will not find our freedom in a machine. We won't find our freedom as a representation in a machine. I can turn myself into a cartoon figure going to virtual reality and act all kinds of fantasies but that won't be live, that would be representation. A representation of myself to the space and a representation of the space to myself. In that circularity there is no exit - there is no escape from that kind of viscous circle. So that's why I don't say that there's some dichotomy between the physical and the non physical but the one without the other is not freedom. You see what I'm saying?

XX:
No that's not true! Because you can leave this material world. It's not so easy but it's possible - you can go into immaterial, antimaterial world.

XXX:
For me that's an interesting point. All live is representational anyway, we are living in a type of illusion or cyberspace reality where we have these meat machines to walk around. Cyberspace doesn't exist yet. In the moment the closest space that we have to cyberspace is innerspace, where creativity - perhaps - ultimately comes from.

H. BEY :
Well, we all know, that there is no absolute direct experience - that the body itself is a medium, that proprioception is mediated by the nervous system etc. etc. But I still maintain that it is possible to construct a hierarchy of values in which certain things are more and certain things are less embodied. To simply take some kind of Berkleyan idealism, which is what I'm getting from you - to say that the body has no reality and therefore there is no difference between virtual reality, whether it be virtual or actual virtual reality, is something that I have to reject.
I don't see this lack of distinction. I know that there is a great platonic, mystical, gnostic dualist tradition, which you guys seem to be here today to represent, which really does believe, that we are going to leave our body, that there's some real eternal entity inside the body, which is going to escape and is going to heaven when you die. I don't know this shit and frankly I don't believe it - it's finished - I might as well go become a Christian.

XX:
I can show you this concept mathematically - you can proof it. Matter, antimatter - other forms of energy. The last human chess master - if the computer is better in chess than the best human chess master the same can happen to literature and music.

H. BEY :
First of all I've never met anybody from the antimatter world. So I don't have any opinion about the existence of consciousness within the world of antimatter.
Second chess can be reduced to mathematics, we know that this is true, but we don't know that literature or life or flesh can be reduced to mathematics. That has not been shown to my satisfaction and if it's shown to yours I would appreciate some references.

SEB:
On this issue, for me, you would help me if you would clarify the difference between meditation, the psychedelic experience, the trance dance, what happens at rave parties. I think on these lines as a backup to what I'm doing with the techno side and also looking at creativity and the idea of clearing the ego from the process and allowing pure source energy through. What is the difference?

H. BEY :
Possibly we're talking about different states of consciousness. My inclination is to think everything is real, which of course means reality becomes a very fuzzy concept. But I have experience of the world of the imagination too. It's on the level that one experiences it. It's of course very very real. It can change your life and through it you can change the world. So the imagination is clearly something which is as real, in this sense, as anything else. Virtual reality is as real, in this sense, as anything else. But I would go back to the idea of a practical hierarchy, which has to be ultimately, subjectively based. Is it doing it for me, or is it not?
On the bases of the only possible values, that we can create for ourselves - this kind of gradation of media, by which I mean language, body, everything, can arrange in some kind of a useful program for oneself, where certain spaces are more liberated. Certain modes of consciousness are more joyful. That's really the best I can say. .

SEB:
What about the idea of improvisation, the whole idea of reflecting the moment. How that is necessary to the development of the consciousness, it does seem to have the ability to pull the mind in and take it somewhere. This whole process is very important for culture and has been obliterated in the west for the past few hundred years but does seem to emerge through the subcultures and always has done.

H. BEY :
I think improvisation is a good key to this. If you can develope a kind of Zen-approach to this levels, so you need not use a hard and fast religion, ideology or philosophy to prejudge the utility of one level over the other that would be the appropriate modus operandi. The best way to go would be what I call a psychic martial artist.


Read the full transcript here: http://hermetic.com/bey/hb18-3pu.html

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!

p.s. : The header with the artwork by Cirkus Alien is gone, forever. Since people often thought I stole this image.. whilst I credited the artwork in our GET CONNECTED! page. But nobody seemed to notice.. I just liked it. But anyway.. fuck you - you won :D I changed it now.. and will never use anything I like again. Idiots :]

SQUAT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PARTY

by Gabriela Dworecki - squat-for-your-right-to-party.info

The documentary follows Matraka Sound System, a Spanish crew located in Madrid, on their quest to find a location for a celebration of free party/squat party culture. Filmed in Madrid in the summer of 2007, nearly 20 years after the birth of the free party movement, this documentary offers a glimpse of the constantly mutating underground electronic music scene. It's history, challenges, achievements and evolution can be viewed, through the lens of other social and political movements that break from the safe and familiar conventions of their original subcultures. Situated in a context of continual repression and public resistance, the film turns a subjective eye on a growing divide from within the scene, where critical self-assessment calls into question the validity of theories, notably those of Hakim Bey, that have been historically used to justify the movement itself.

A MESSAGE FROM YOUR GOVERNMENT

THE POUMTCHAK PATTERN

Correspondences Between
Rhythm, Sound, and Movement
in Electronic Dance Music
PhD Thesis by Hans T Zeiner-Henriksen

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!  POUM-POUM T'CHAK!

Brilliant thesis, I love it!

GRAB IT HERE (HTML)

   

OPTIMIZING ZOTF - ISSUE 4.5

op·ti·mize

verb /ˈäptəˌmīz/ 

1. Make the best or most effective use of (a situation, opportunity, or resource)
   - to optimize viewing conditions the microscope should be correctly adjusted
2. Rearrange or rewrite data to improve efficiency of retrieval or processing

TEKNO MET EEN K

 

A documentary produced and directed by Oscar Verschuur as a graduation project in 2003. He made only 100 copies that circulated between people involved in the scene. It was intentionally kept in a closed circuit to prevent having people their faces all over the web and beyond. It was later published publicly on our beloved Internet Archive.. which is loaded with treasures like this documentary.

Watched it a while ago and it just hit me that I never posted this..

..so here it is, for you to enjoy!

Oh and.. the main language spoken is Dutch..

because it documents the dutch scene :D

-signed captain obvious

  

Run time: 26 minutes 49 seconds