Some leftie flack now -- We have put together a show of NYC rebel culture at the Rote Flora occupied social center in Hamburg, through April 3. It coincides with the SQEK conference in Berlin (the Squatting Europe Research Collective), March 29-31. That will be at New Yorck Bethanien, also an occupied social center. The texts below describe these rather unusual cultural and academic actions in squats.

1. -- Rote Flora solidarity show, Hamburg, Germany
2. -- Squatting Europe Research Collective (SQEK) conference, Berlin, Germany
"Nicht das Neue, nicht das Alte, sondern das Notwendige" -- No Wave Squatter Punk (Anti)Art Ausstellung, March 21-April 3, 2011.
This is an exhibition at the Rote Flora (Red Flower), an occupied theater in Hamburg, Germany on the occasion of their negotiation for renewal of permission to use... In other words, it is a solidarity show with this center for independent political culture. The show consists largely of art information sent from New York City by agents of Colab and ABC No Rio that show a continuous history of radical culture in that global city. (The Flora is described at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rote_Flora.)
Schedule:
March 21: Exhibition, ABC No Rio genesis, Films (Cave Girls + more)
March 24: (anti) art, zine, photo exhibition
March 27: DJ Battle, food, films (East Village Summer of Love + more)
March 28 and 31: documentation of Tompkins Square Park struggle (films), House Magic: European social centers in occupied spaces
April 1: Performance: Deus Ex Machina (Berlin)
April 3: Presentation by Alan W. Moore; wrap-up with "paint polit-kitsch like Daniel Richter" workshop (bring yer brushes!)
Presented by unlimited liability/Siebdruckwerkstatt Rote Flora/Radio Gargarin
links to the artists included or featured:
http://www.lisakahane.com/
http://patterson.no-art.info/
http://98bowery.com/
http://www.brickhaus.com/amoore/orig-index.html
http://collaborativeprojectsarchive.wikispaces.com/
http://andrewcastrucci.com/bulletspace/
http://www.abcnorio.org/
http://alliedproductions.org/
http://gregorysholette.com/
http://www.worldwar3illustrated.org/
http://flyspage.com/links.html
Press Release, by Michel Chevalier:
For two weeks an attempt will be made to put as much life and sense as possible into a mythical era that has not yet been fully understood: the tumultuous last gasps of musical and art rule-breaking in the capital of the twentieth century. In the first week, the Rote Flora will house an historical panorama (prints, books, posters, zines, videos, records) of the radically anti-commercial music, film and art-collective production that evolved in several low-income (and crumbling!) neighborhoods of New York City in the late seventies and early eighties. These people were not rule-breaking formalists of the ivory-tower type. Their struggles included attacks on the organization of society through norms, repression, and neoliberal "urban renewal" plans, and their gritty gallows-humor and clear focus was a karate kick against the sunny amnesia, the return to the 1950s, that Reagan and his friends in the consciousness industry propagated with their overwhelming means. Most of the rule-breakers we look back on said goodbye, forever, to normal careers and even, in the case of the many featured artists who were also squatters, to physical safety.
In the second week, the previous artifacts will be supplemented by the more recent research and concerns of some of the "survivors" of this time and place, in particular the information project undertaken by Alan Moore (Colab, ABC No Rio), dedicated to raising awareness of Social Centers in squatted buildings worldwide, of which the Rote Flora is an example. Moore's new book on politicized collectives between 1969 and 1985 will also be included in the exhibition, and he will come for a talk at the Rote Flora on April 3rd. Our program will be further amplified by food from the Volksküche, a DJ battle, video screenings, a performance by Deus Ex Machina (Berlin), and a satirical DIY treatment of a wealthy Hamburg polit-kitsch painter. This project is the first attempt to collect these materials on this scale in Europe.
The show website includes a text I wrote for the show:
https://sites.google.com/site/housemagicbfc/rote-flora-solidarity-show-s...
The Rota Flora show in Hamburg overlaps with the SQEK meeting in Berlin. The program for the Squatting Europe Kollective Meeting (SQEK) March 29-31, New Yorck in Bethanien, Berlin follows. The transnational Squatting Europe Kollective (SQEK) is a group of people dealing in the area between science and activism with squatting and urban movements. We want to share and discuss experiences in the different cities, and find ways to cooperat in theory and practice. We welcome all participation: squattingeurope [at] listas.nodo50.org
Program:
Tuesday, March 29
1pm-4pm – Governance and discourse about squatting; Dominant discourses on squatting in UK; Squats and urban governance in Paris; The Right to the City: To use or not to use urban space – records from Amsterdam and Düsseldorf
4pm-7pm – Database project: Italy/Rome – Netherlands/Amsterdam – Towards a database of squats in Madrid
Wednesday, March 30
1pm-4pm – Transfer: Squatters, places, cultures, tactics – How things move inside movements
7:30pm, Mehringhof – Public Meeting: Current Situation of Squatting in Europe
Thursday, March 31
1pm-4pm – How things are linked – from squatters to politics – A trial of squatters in Paris in 1955 – Between political opportunities and strategic choices: The protest campaign against eviction of CPO Experia in Catania (Sicily) – Configurations of squatting, especially conservational squatting – The influence of squatter movements on urban renewal and politics in Barcelona and Berlin
4pm-7pm – Without ending... House Magic: Circulating movement information in the sphere of art – Legality of squatting – Socio-legal framework for squatting in Spain
manifesto:
www.miguelangelmartinez.net/IMG/pdf/2009_SQEK__7_Dec_.pdf
notes from SQEK. London. June 24-27, 2010 at:
https://sites.google.com/site/housemagicbfc/about/sqek-london-june-24-27...
New Yorck in the Bethanien
http://www.yorck59.net/