New Writing! Where Possible Possibilities Are Possible.

Where Possible Possibilities Are Possible: Experiences and Forms of the Possible.

On the final day of 2008 I cycled to a tree in Eagle Rock, CA. My riding partner, in natty fisherpersons cap, was Kelly Marie Martin. The trip took us ten miles from her small house near smoggy downtown LA, through an industrial belt surrounding the LA River finally suddenly up a hill. This part of LA is filled with undeveloped hills available surprisingly for off-beat art projects. Breathing heavy, at the top we were met by a storm fence. We had to go around it to get at the scrubby chaparral behind.

We were told the tree was small and that it had a metal plaque at its base. From the fence, the flatland sloped gently through chopped grass and low shrubs to a dell filled with trees. Beyond that, the hillside continued wrapping around and out of site. We hadn't planned on a scavenger hunt. Walking downhill we didn't notice the police helicopter approaching, then banking abruptly buzzing north thirty-feet above our heads. Certain that someone had notified our trespass to LAPD we panicked, then considered if cops were on the way, time and reason were on our side. Not finding the tree we took a breath, sat, and talked about the year to come, the year that had been, and about bicycles and the culture of bicycling.

LA had been thought of as a car town. My friend Kelly has been a part of the creation of contexts, which for the last several years have been working hard at fostering the possibility that someone might actually think to take a New-Years-Eve-Day bike ride in Los Angeles to begin with. She participates in a project prophetically called The Bicycle Kitchen. Through tenacity, generosity, and an open spirit, the central image, and open signifier of the bike, and everything it represents, has been a part of numerous, spaces, associations, events, restaurants, stores, projects, radio programs, performances and civic initiatives emerging in urban Los Angeles. The Bicycle Kitchen has helped create a frame for the generation of a world of interactions and occurrences around bicycles. Insignificant among these was this adventure bringing us on our late December ride to the baby eucalyptus. Eventually we located the tree and its plaque. It sat on the edge of a steep ravine shaded by larger eucalypti. The police never showed.

Except for two details the tree is unremarkable. It looks planted (though it aint) and cared for in the otherwise mature grove. The trees keeper is organizer Lara Bank. Then there's the plaque itself declaring Tree and Space and the URL treeanspace.org. Lara created Tree and Space, in January of 2008, as an extension of her onsite, yet equally anti-materialist, indoor space called Sea and Space. The tree, you are told, if you check the URL, is to function as a stage for any performance that happens to take place near or around its branches. When Lara first planted the tree it was a pine, but that died. So an oak was planted, but that died. Now it's the eucalyptus that, not a native species, appears hardy. The website also offers this:

A space defined by a tree planted to serve as a location for public art practices. It is unregulated and open to all to utilize. A brass marker is placed on location to aid in tree identification. Anyone can perform or do an artwork at the tree

On Kelly's suggestion we plucked and pocketed a leaf from it. These leaves accompanied us for an early dinner of Mexican huaraches and our mellow bike rides home. It's in my wallet still- green and sandwiched between the folds.

Before leaving the hillside with the eucalytus, I took a moment to stare out across the valley with the freeway over to the San Gabriel Mountains with the sun setting over it, on that last day of 2008. I thought on the year that I hoped would meet me in 2009- the people I would know- how they might influence me and I them- the changes that I, and the world, would experience and how we all would face the unknown future. And then I tried to authentically feel the metaphor that I am hoping to construct for you here: which is the full extension of the space defined by the context of tree down the hillside into the city up to the mountains and down the ocean and over the country and the water to envelope the entire world, which for that moment and always with the tree at Tree and Space would be at the very center of, and around which unregulated performances could and certainly would happen and the tree would be their to aid in finding them, but certainly not necessary for this at all, locating the possible permutations of experience that I might have, regulated and unregulated by time, space and the laws of people, nature and the universe. The tree as a possible stage shapes, and is shaped by, infinite possibility.

A partial list of possible titles available on amazon.com

Are Other Worlds Possible?

A Movement of Movements: Is Another World Really Possible?

Another World Is Possible.

Realm of Possibility.

The Politics of Possibility.

Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority.

Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire.

All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas.

Zapatistas: Making Another World Possible.

Workers' Control: Another World Is Possible.

Another World Is Possible: A Manifesto for 21st Century Socialism.

Another World Was Possible.

Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible.

Another Dinner Is Possible.

Another Production Is Possible.

Impossible Will Take a Little While, A Citizens Guide to Hope In a Time of Fear.


I am interested in the phenomenology of open-ended generative practices- alternatively labeled as social art and activism. Both the problem and benefit of possibility is there is so much of it that it gets away from you. For the last year I've been locating activities that explicitly or indirectly aim to generate other things in order to try to gain a hold of this elusive way of being.

Possibility infers something other. Specifically in general it is a useful term because it doesn't add up to, or necessarily even promise all that much, though it could. It's not saying "Fish" nor is it saying "cut bait", it's not saying "state sponsored socialism" nor is it saying "corporate sponsored kleptocracy". It's not even saying a "new puddle of mud". It's saying all these things and none of these things- but perhaps it's not. Anything is possible really. And perhaps this is the point. Possibility insists that there might be things out there. It may be the options directly on the table; it could be something wholly different. Possibility presents itself simultaneously as both pornography and as an alien. We will understand it when we see it, or we just won't.

It emerges at a time when people are looking for different ways to be with one another and the planet. As such you can read about it in texts regarding both social art and anarchism. Both disciplines employ models of person-to-person sharing that let context, not received truth, determine understanding and outcome.

The artwork is presented as a social interstice within which these experiments and the new "life possibilities" appear to be possible.
            Nicolas Bourriard from "Relational Aesthetics"

In 1998 Nicolas Bourriard coined the term "relational aesthetics", in a book of the same name, to describe artwork with a long lineage that came to his attention in the mid 1990's. For some, the term has stuck. In his writing, Bourriard portrays a situationist's sensibility in describing an art practice that "arises from an observation of the present". Detournement is less the goal of the institutionalized artists' projects that Bourriard describes, but rather the creation of situations. And as a quasi-situationist, Bourriard premises that these "space-time elements", or "interhuman-experiences", create models of living beyond the confines of failed utopias and languages of "calls for better worlds". As if artists in museums and galleries where alchemists stumbling upon the future through the creation of formal experiments between themselves and publics.

On art- Bourriard wishes to talk about formations rather than forms. This is because he sees relational practices as a natural extension of arts discursive purpose. Art is an encounter between an artist and a form, and then a public and that form. As a pivotal part of the looped information cycle the open-ended art creates- the public is part of the logic of the relational art- in the pivotal conversation between the artist his mediations and a final and ever moving meaning.

I suggest that we need to think instead of the coming communities in the plural, but not in the form of liberal pluralism, and that we need to guide our relations with the other communities according to the interlocking ethico-political commitments of groundless solidarity and infinite responsibility.   
-Richard J. F. Day, Gramsci is Dead

Outside galleries and museums, Richard J. F. Day in the book Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements describes a contiguous project of activists to cultivate another world. Power and the concept of hegemony (the ability to represent and maintain the illusion of power) is suspect with Day's conception of anarchism. As new forms of art refuse to be set within finite and definitive objects, newest anarchist methods, according to Day, proceed by removing the coercion of fixed terms from their practices.

Working genealogically and through affinities, anarchists have developed practices between people in highly contextual situations. These frames of encounter, developed as organizing tools by anarchists, have coalesced in forms of social organization that prefigure situations other than capitalism or communism. Day argues that working in the manner of open and groundless solidarity with open infinite responsibility- anarchists have been able to develop possibilities beyond the logic of both capitalism and Marxism from the everyday. Is this alien space?

The international of hope. Not the bureaucracy of hope, not the opposite image and, thus the same as that which annihilates us. Not the Power with a new sign or new clothing. A breath like this, the breath of dignity. A flower yes, the flower of hope. A song yes, the song of life.
        
-Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Mexico, January of 1996
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Possible Snapshots

A) Clarence Ridgely had been thinking of gardening. Surfing the Internet he serendipitously came across a call from an artist, Fritz Haeg. Fritz was looking for a homeowner interested in tearing up their front lawn to replace it with a vegetable garden. (Fritz is a Los Angeles based artist who implements platform-projects that can unfold at any site, they just need responsive operators). Open to the idea, Clarence with no ambitions other than to receive help with his garden, applied. He was selected. The front yard of his brick-porched white colonial home became the prototype "Edible Estate" garden for Baltimore, Maryland.

Clarence's neighborhood has both the feeling of faded suburban grandeur and suburban ennui. Stately homes from early 20th century, boulevard streets, driveways, all clearly built for first-ring commuters and their Model T's. The savannahs of grass lying between sidewalks and front steps sit silent except for swinging doors and occasional whines from construction tools. In contrast, Clarence's yard on a not-yet humid July morning is bursting with mounded vegetables, herbs, and insects. He stands tall to meet me, his lawn now a productive landscape. He visibly enjoys being in his garden. He's had folks from the museum out to help him including Fritz. He went to town for the opening there to. Mostly though he's here among the blueberries.

Far beyond the provenance of the LA artist, during the course of my conversation with Clarence the following events transpire: 1) A car approaches, lazily slows down, honks its horn. Driver waives to Clarence, drives on. 2) A large threatening dog bolts from its walkway across the street into Clarence's garden. Thankfully he runs playful circles around us, dashing about the beds as if its tongue were wagging with the bumblebees. 3) The dog's owner ambles over. Taking him by the collar the guy and Clarence chat in that neighborly way. Without asking, and clearly not expected to, he snaps from overloaded vines several red tomatoes. He walks himself, his dog, and the tomatoes back across the street, presumably to his own kitchen. Next summer perhaps he'll plant a front yard garden with Clarence's guidance.

B) The Junior Ambassador is red funky food cart on an empty and unremarkable lot on a youthful street in Portland, Oregon. It's also a portal to the nation of Mostlandia. Mostlandia was discovered by an artist group known as the M.O.S.T. The collective had functioned as bureaucrats for the island nation, but they are now defunct. Today the only way to access Mostlandia is through the Junior Ambassador. In back of the cart, beyond the outdoor seating area, you'll see a garden that directly mirrors the landscape of Mostlandia. Otherwise you won't see much otherness. But If you ask Rudy, "the Junior Ambassador" who operates the cart, why things seem just a little off you'll find that the Junior Ambassador serves Mostlandian Cuisine. It consists largely of panwhiches and odd flavors of ice-cream.

The Capressi Sundae has all the ingredients of a Capressi Salad, except in another form. The Mozzarella cheese becomes ice-cream, the balsamic vinegar is cooked to a reduction standing in as hot fudge. The jimmies are shredded basil leaves. Visually the thing is a wonder- looking like a hot-fudge sundae with lime green sprinkles. Considering it though, you can't imagine how the concoction will come together in your mouth. Cheese vinegar Ice cream?

The afternoon I visited the Ambassador I purchased the sundae, as did a second customer; we sat at the same bench to eat. Where I approached desert with suspicion she, after pausing briefly to acknowledge it, dove right in. A big smile lit her face - her forehead broadened - visually an idea crossed her brow. Before I could say "what?", she looked up grabbed the salt and then pepper shakers from the table, and sprinkled both on gently melting white ice cream. Missing a beat to make the same leap of logic that she'd made, I followed suit. Salted ice cream, it tasted brilliantly! We chuckled together at what we'd experienced here in Mostlandia.


In 2007 the, then ad hoc, RNC Welcoming Committee produced an irreverent video. "We're Getting Ready" quickly went viral spreading on Youtube. The opening shot of the video is a digital clock turning from 5:59 to 6:00. The alarm awakens with Blondie's "One Way Or Another" jarring the silent frame. Next a black clad arm stretches out from bed to greet the morning. Its owner rises, ties on combat boots and proceeds to brush their teeth through a hooded sweatshirt and facemask. What follows is a game of video tag, the camera follows one anarchist till they come upon another. Here the video lingers on that meeting or lurches onward with a new subject's adventure.

Some of the activities portrayed in the video are mundane; sipping fair-trade coffee, riding tandem bikes, bowling. Otherwise it's a bizarro universe where thrown Molotov cocktails light barbeque grills, bolt-cutters trim-trees, and a tot on a tire-swing is dressed head-to-toe in militant black. As this was the campiest, most self-mocking propaganda video I'd ever seen, I was captivated. If organizers were this creative, this playful, anything could be possible during the 2008 Republican National Convention protests. My mind reeled:

GOP POLS CALL IT QUITS IN MINNESOTA.
IMAGINATION NATION DECLARED.
GARDEN CITIES ERUPT, WAR DECLARED WASTE, BIG OIL GOES KAPUT.
HUG THEY NEIGHBOR!

In February 2008 The RNC Welcoming Committee framed The Saint Paul Principles. The principles established common ground between people of difference who would be in proximity of each other upon arriving in St. Paul. None of these 4 principles determined what people should believe or stand for or against other than acts of state repression and the acceptance of divergent identities and strategies. The Committee facilitated meetings. In August of '08 the Welcoming Committee opened a warehouse convergence center to feed all comers and share resources. Like many activist convergence centers it could function as a staging area to generate contextual responses to situations on the streets.

The Welcoming Committee mapped the area surrounding the Xcel Center and divided it into seven sectors suggesting individuals and affinity groups fill them. "Swarm, Seize, Stay" was a "mantra" you might have heard had you been with individuals planning to move into them. Suggestions of what to do there included, dance, wear costumes, blockade. Like Fritz Haeg or the JR. Ambassador, the Committee functioned as stage-makers. They didn't place people in the drivers seat, but they offered suggestions on how to drive the car. The suggestions could (but needn't) be used to develop "autonomous self-sustaining alternatives" in the streets of the Twin Cities. Similar generative strategies had worked before in Seattle for the 1999 WTO protests and in San Francisco in 2003, when that city experienced a general insurrection that shut down the city when war in Iraq began. This knowledge flowed to St. Paul.

Ultimately eight members of the RNC Welcoming Committee were arrested, well before major protests surrounding the Republican Convention began. The RNC 8 were charged under a provision of the Patriot Act with "Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism". Ramsey County Attorneys, wherein St. Paul lies, didn't allege that any of the eight were responsible personally for any "acts of violence". Grimly the DA sought to hold them responsible for "violence" committed by other people. Where activists in the RNC Welcoming Committee believed they had set up an ethical framework to potentially generate the creativity of indescribable multitudes - law enforcement saw a possible threat to their power and authority, and dealt with it harshly.

Elsewhere in the Twin Cities, within a slate tiled Peavey Plaza, miles from the police state surrounding the convention, near the Minneapolis hotels' of the Kansas and Illinois delegations, light rain dripped from an improvised tent. Artist group Red 76 had set up a grill offering food to anyone interested. Watermelon and ripe tomatoes placed on paper plates and hamburgers provided the impetus for a pleasant and open-ended conversation directed by Sam Gould of Red 76. Citizens, hotel workers, veterans, errant delegates and reporters sought refuge in this generosity. The table was framed by a simple hand-lettered poster asking "How has the war affected yr. day to day?" I am unsure if this art event served as a counterpoint to confrontations that played out in downtown St. Paul. Does attempted insurrection compare with what was essentially a tea party?

At the end of Red 76's lunch, one of its soft-spoken facilitators, Mike, deemed it a success. He said, "I got rid of all the meat I brought to barbeque. There were no dominant voices. People felt comfortable to keep moving the conversation along in different trajectories. They stopped to let other voices in."


The structure of the possible is something that we are familiar with: non-hierarchical, improvisatory, designed to be used by an-other, generative of experiences. That these experimental platforms have produced outcomes beyond their origins is one of their pleasures. Cycling, and cycling together, is chic in Los Angeles. Having never talked to Fritz Haeg, gardeners in Texas, Wisconsin, and Washington describe themselves as a part of an edible estates movement. An open-ended diner/art event in Baltimore, MD (facilitated through a group that came to be known as Camp Baltimore) is credited with revitalizing both a bookstore and solidarity between previously disconnected urban activists. In the Oriels' Camden Yards, stadium workers are said to have a more just contract partly through this. Those diner conversations have directly generated an urban farm, a local newspaper, a free-store.

As creative successes within mostly improvisatory situations are tenuous; as reforms are the proviso largely of deep-pocketed institutions; as policy is frequently irrelevant in economically starved civic-spaces; as democracy is largely ossifies into abstract-ritual; as mechanisms of digitized industry replace rituals of flesh-to-flesh experience; as people's power is marginalized by a corporate state's defensive strategies; as life becomes harsher more barbaric, proscribed by economic limitations; as competition is the naturalized posture of culture; as social capital is the only sorts of wealth that people are able to rely upon- there is always the possibility for something other. Whether or not artists and activists can rely upon these frequently open-ended and occasionally aesthetic happenings to accomplish the goal of recuperation or change, this is an open-ended question.