Artctic

I haven’t been at Occupy Wall Street much at all lately because I realized there’s certain studio work I need to get done before the weather worsens, not the least of which is making another waste oil-powered furnace to heat the uninsulated space. New York is expecting 2-4 inches of snow today, just as the NYPD and FD confiscated OWS’s generators. I’ve already worked out a personal solution that might work on their scale: heated vests. I’m not talking about the crazy-price ones either.

Hunters use battery-powered heated vests, gloves and socks so they can lounge in the snow until the perfect target shows up to plink off. Why shouldn’t protestors use them to hunker down in defense of free speech and a matrix of causes that all but the deliberately obtuse can discern?

Further to staying warm, I had my first successful lost-foam casting Thursday night, which was great because it kept me warm as well. The blast furnace is too smoky to go in the garage though, so to stay warm I might just rock the vest and gloves in the shop all winter. Why not? I only use NiMH rechargeables and condition them properly for maximum life. More on that, and hopefully the finished castings and OWS, shortly.

Actions at OWS: Rubicon? Duct tape bracers.

99% Bracer: for zip-cuff comfort.

First, to be clear: I don’t want to be arrested and will do nothing illegal to encourage it. Though I have to be up in 2.5 hours to catch the train to Occupy Wall Street, I just wanted to share a fun(ny) creative moment that’s very useful to all Occupations.

As I said, I will do everything to avoid being arrested, but I will also do everything to protect the continued occupation of Zuccotti Park to the extent that it does not abuse the park or locals. (I’m glad drumming was reduced to 2 hours a day between 1100 and 1700.) The effort to avoid arrest may come into conflict with defending the occupation.

So I wanted to be prepared in case I come down on the wrong end of that equation. Since this movement began many have been arrested for unjust reasons. I’ve seen enough videos and photos of wrists bloodied and purple fingers. So I just spent half an hour of precious sleeping time making ridiculous Conan-like leather bracers to keep my wrists from being lacerated or my circulation cut off if I’m zip-cuffed. When I couldn’t find the nylon twine to lace the bracers up, I became frustrated because I’d rather be in bed.

Suddenly I realized I could just wrap my forearms in duct tape. Of course that would hurt coming off, but more importantly it would strip a precise area of your arms of hair for a long time…which could look somewhat institutional if you work professional environments. Then I thought to cut the footie off a crappy old sock I should have thrown out years ago anyway and use it as a lining for a duct-tape bracer (above). Not only can I use old socks, but I can probably peel off and reuse the tape, thus keeping my hair—which you can see would be conspicuous in its absence.

We can’t all afford leather, tools, eyelets and whatnot. But we can surely all afford socks and duct tape. The latter is always around Occupy sites anyway. I’ll have my tape and scissors at dawn if you have the socks.

Actions at #OWS: Babylon

A Saturday night on the commons.

“Co-optation” is a hot topic among OWSer strategists this week. Besides the enormous support of several large unions, the possible support of the NAACP (reportedly, Ben Jealous is mulling it) and the considerable news coverage, there is the very real possibility of the movement being smothered by its own inclusiveness. Zuccotti Park has become a Babylonian sprawl of ideological dialects mirrored by a barely-contained material/matériel disorder.

Some appreciate this inclusiveness for self-serving reasons. I checked in with Solomon on 10/8/11, whom I had mentioned in my first #OWS post as “S.” in case he didn’t want to be known. I asked him what he was getting out of #OWS and he said with a leer, “entertainment, sex, free food. Look at that line to the kitchen, that’s socialism.” He gave me a wristband that led me to this website. He told me it was a “cooperative of artists and entrepreneurs,” but that’s not how it comes off. Now I know why he’s so cocky and arch: He aspires to cult leadership, and is trawling OWS for the impressionable.

The NY Times has attacked the inclusiveness and its sullying sequelae for local residents and the park, and rightly so. I have watched the movement get steadily ruder and messier as it grows. (In fairness, this partly a consequence of Zuccotti Park being too small.) Organizer C., whom I respect, told me the movement is founded on the anarchist cooperatives that briefly flourished during the Spanish Civil War. By all accounts those were truly democratic and responsible collectives. But he said this near a triad of 40″ plasma screens set up by “some leftist group,” and the red glow of whatever they showed illuminated several of the hypnotized tele-faces that I believe OWS exists to obviate. “Twenty people could sleep there,” he criticized, but the screens were gone when I returned to investigate.

Beehive Collective’s G8 Japan poster. {CLICK}

I’ve hoped to scrap with artists who went to OWS only when it became a media platform to cynically promote themselves, but I haven’t really found any. Noah and his coin masks has incorporated OWS into his larger “Summer of Change” narrative, which manages to be both elegant and pointed, and he’s been a periodic fixture from dawn. Someone who painted a ~3’x6′ mural including the Statue of Liberty, the Towers, an eagle etc. in oils that I first saw on “Radiohead Hoax Day” (9-30) only signed it on the back, which I discovered when I rolled it up to protect it. And the wonderful Maine-based Beehive Collective  (right) made a one-day appearance (10-07) where they owned the area under di Suvero’s orange megalith Joie de Vivre (indeed!) with their posters, patches and a printed supermural. When I asked their member L. about it, almost all of their “merch” was suggested donation, and the quality and topicality was unassailable. Really, I was only slightly annoyed by someone selling vaguely lefty buttons for his profit and a drummer (9-30) who played great funk breaks and solos to draw attention to his email address on the bass drum.

Will we continue to deserve the world’s attention? With freedom comes responsibility. Every OWSer, as an autonomous unit qua representative, should remember the dictum from Thus Spake Zarathustra: “Ask not free from what, but rather free for what?”

Occupy Wall Street: Ambient Juggernaut

This Greywater Processor and the Kombucha Stand are two serious improvements.

Of note today: the Thunderdome-style greywater processing system the kitchen has installed so that it can do dishes and reuse the water after a lengthy natural filtration. A Queens man even set up a Kombucha stand, complete with taps crowning a bar fridge, promoting his small business: “Beyond Kombucha.” His mother had done the art for his banner. Everyone could have a little glass of either oolong or yerba mate Kombucha. (Yerba mate was tasty.) It was a promotion-donation, about which I’m ambivalent.

Don't get excited, it's not beer. But have some!

Some kind of order is emerging at OWS in fits and starts, but you can still spill water across the newspapers and flyers on your cardtable or go without a donations bucket for several minutes while the only one at that table is being emptied. Apparently that $100 one guy put in it while I stood by was over the top.

My coverage of Occupy Wall Street is winding down: No more yelling in my headline, and the posts won’t be as frequent or larded with photos and video. It’s not that I’ve stopped going—I’m still there most days. It’s because the world has finally run with the ball, indeed they’ve started playing the Occupy Game all over the globe. This has forced mainstream and alt-media alike to do their jobs at last (early adopters like Democracy Now! notwithstanding). So my crazyquilt anecdotal coverage is no longer necessary, and I can return to regularly scheduled programming, such as it is.