Posted on January 15th, 2010 in AK Allies, Happenings
Okay, everyone, mark your calendars. Planning for the 15th Annual Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair is underway. AK Press will, of course, be there in all our glory…as will dozens of other great vendors.
The book fair website is still under construction, but some of the basic details are there… and now they are here:
SF County Fair Building, Golden Gate Park
Saturday and Sunday
March 13th and 14th
2010
Free – presented by Bound Together Anarchist Collective Bookstore
Speakers for the 2010 book fair are still being confirmed. At this point we’re happy to announce that some of the old and new friends speaking at the March 2010 fair will be John Curl, Andrej Grubacic, Lierre Keith, Gabriel Kuhn, Victoria Law, Penelope Rosemont, and John Zerzan.
(Additional information will be posted on the Schedule page)
See info on the Art Show page about the 2009 fair art show. 2010 details tba.
Bicycle valet parking tba
Kid / Family Space will be provided. More details later.
Visit our history page for some info on past year’s Bay Area book fairs, and to view posters from recent years by Hugh D’Andrade.
In the main hall about 60 vendors (booksellers, distributors, independent presses and political groups, from the local area, the west coast and North America) will be displaying books, pamphlets, zines, art, information and other interesting stuff.
Directions, Time, and Place
Posted on January 13th, 2010 in About AK
Greetings. Within my community of activists, dreamers, leaders, and lovers I go by Macio. However, if you were to ask my mother, she would tell you a different story.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, with roots stretching into the southeast parts of North America. In 2004, I left Los Angeles to attend school in Oakland, California. Leaving Los Angeles was bittersweet. On one hand it was my home, a place that had nurtured me, taught me hard lessons and given me opportunities to sneak into unbelievable concerts. I learned to navigate those streets first, before any others. On the other hand, it was time to go. Once I graduated from Mills College, I chose to live and work in Oakland. I experienced living in various different parts of Oakland, each of which I grew to love. I have worked in restaurants, bookstores, fund raising, copy stores, records shops, and the list goes on. Soon the streets became familiar and the faces like those of family. After six years, I can now call this city home. Oakland has provided me with a view I had previously never encountered before: one of hope, change, and acceptance. Since my residency in Oakland, I have been shown a thirst for a better world, the dedication to keep a dream alive, the recognition of one’s duties to the larger society, and the connection be between those duties and one’s own well being. I have the utmost intentions of giving back to my communities that continue to aid my growth and development.
Now, as a collective member of AK Press, I have access to an abundance of educational tools. One of the most prevalent lessons you are always learning here at AK is how to navigate working structures that do not adhere to hierarchical systems of power. This skill comes highly valued within communities that struggle to free themselves from the oppressive powers of state control, police tyranny, and the disadvantages inherent in many institutions. I am absorbing an array of information from the inner-workings of the book trade, self-management, business accounting, networking, and sales. Not to mention that my interest is peaked on a day-to-day basis by thousands of titles we stock in our warehouse; each projecting a unique aspect of radicalism and anti-authoritarian thoughts onto otherwise conventional mediums. I do not take this privilege lightly. My intentions are to share these skills with my communities in ways that will improve and empower our lives.
Aside from paid work, my days are occupied with many other forms of work. I have many comrades within my community and together we try to solidify our organizing efforts to have a stronger and more effective impact on our communities and others at large. While you may think this sounds strenuous and exhausting, you are right. However, some work can be done while playing. For instance, our efforts have manifested themselves in the form of a dance party called Ships in the Night. This queer dance groove takes place once a month and always benefits an organization, individual, newspaper, or cause in need of funds. While sweating it out we also help sources of alternative and radical thought stay on their feet in this money-grubbing world. I otherwise enjoy doing performance art, street theater, compiling resource guides, and making mixes for the hommies.
When I am not working on various community projects, art projects, or just plainly at work, I love spending time with my family, live music, and long walks on the beach at night. As for my future, I aspire to play with a big band, drumlime, industrial band, all girl string quartet nine inch nails cover band, and The Damned.
See You in the Streets!
Macio
Posted on January 12th, 2010 in AK Allies, Anarchist Publishers
Okay, this is a little late in the game, but any budding (or fully blossomed) anarchist scholars out there have three days to submit their application to receive a grant from the Institute for Anarchist Studies. Here’s the lowdown from their website:
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The Institute for Anarchist Studies awards an annual total of $4,000 in grants to writers and translators of essay-length works. Grant awards range from $250 to $1,000. Essay-length work is considered to be approximately 20 to 50 pages (10,000 to 25,000 words). Completed essays will be considered for publication in the IAS online journal Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, or as part of a forthcoming small book series in collaboration with AK Press.
Grant recipients will be expected to complete their project within six months of receiving the award (usually August 30 or January 31 of a given year).
Application deadlines are January 15 and June 15 of each year. These deadlines are firm, and applications received after these deadlines will be considered in the next cycle of grants. Awards are made in February and July, and replies will be mailed to all applicants within six weeks after the deadlines.
For more on the application process, see the FAQ (frequently asked questions) section on this Web site.
We strongly encourage all applicants to complete the application form online. If you are unable to apply online, please write us to request a paper copy of the application, or download and print the application form. Requests and completed applications should be mailed to: PO Box 15586, Washington, DC 20003
If you are ready to apply, you’ll first need to create an account on our system. Once you complete the registration, you’ll be able to start your grant.
Posted on January 11th, 2010 in AK Book Excerpts
As most of you know, AK has just released a brand-new book by Matt Hern, alternative-education activist extraordinaire (he edited Everywhere All the Time for us a couple years back) and, as it turns out, kick-ass radical urbanist. I’ll admit to being slightly skeptical about what this book could be when Matt first mentioned it, but after reading the first 10 pages, I was hooked, and so was the rest of the collective. Matt’s writing is down-to-earth, funny, and engaging—much like Matt himself, who I got to meet for the first time at last year’s NYC Anarchist Bookfair. I really can’t recommend this book strongly enough.
Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future makes the argument that a sustainable future has to be an urban future—but Matt’s clear about what his version of the urban future looks like: it’s a world in which resources and spaces are shared equitably, where decisions are made collectively by the people they affect, where differences (of culture, of opinion, of age, color, race, gender, and sexual orientation) are celebrated, and where we learn to live with less, and make the most of the space we have. It’s an image of the urban future that’s antithetical to sprawl, to investment opportunities, to McMansions, and to the whims of global capital. It’s about becoming, as Gustavo Esteva puts it in his praise for the book, “a dweller, an inhabitant, a real citizen—not just a resident, a consumer of residence.”
The book takes Vancouver—Matt’s own hometown—as its starting and ending point, but makes frequent stops in a variety of cities across the globe. They’re all fascinating, but one of my favorite chapters has got to be the one on Istanbul and the concept of population density, excerpted below. This was really the chapter that convinced me that we needed to publish this book. This chapter really exemplifies the methodology of the entire book, which is something that I would term “comparative urban analysis,” i.e., taking one city as a jumping off point for an in-depth examination of a different one, usually in a wholly unexpected fashion. So, for example, using the history of Istanbul’s rise to and fall from the seat of power in the Ottoman Empire as a way to broach a conversation about population density in Vancouver. Sound strange? It is. But what’s even stranger? It works. I’ve seen a lot of people try to do this kind of comparative analysis with varying results (frequently bad ones), but Matt really gets it right.
So, read on below, and then head on over to the AK Press store to buy a copy of the book, or join the Friends of AK Press program right now and get Common Ground in a Liquid City in your January shipment of books! And be sure to check out this short article Matt co-penned for ZNet on the impending Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.
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Even before he won the Nobel Prize, Orhan Pamuk was the best internationally-known writer from Istanbul and famed for his work on the city. He has written a series of novels with a style that is so capable as to occasionally come off as clinical, almost cold in its technical fluidity. It is a tone he doesn’t entirely abandon in his memoir, Istanbul: Memories and the City, but it is obvious right away that his complex relationship with the city pushes him into a different kind of emotional territory.
Pamuk roots the book in Istanbul’s sense of huzun, a very particular kind of melancholy he perceives as infused and endemic to the city as a whole and all its inhabitants. More than just melancholy, huzun has a spiritual root appearing in the Koran as a mystical grief or emptiness about never being able to be close enough to, or do enough to honor, Allah. Even that description is inadequate:
To understand the central importance of huzun as a cultural concept conveying worldly failure, listlessness and spiritual suffering, it is not enough to grasp the history of the word and the honor we attach to it.…
The huzun of Istanbul is not just the mood evoked by its people and its poetry, it is a way of looking at life that implicates us all, not only a spiritual state but a state of mind that is ultimately as life-affirming as it is negative.
Pamuk points to a new tinge in modern Istanbul, an end-of-empire wistfulness, a collective realization that the city’s best days are behind it. The opulent palaces and mosques and museums and mansions that dominate the city’s architecture are constant reminders that it was once one of the greatest cities in the world, the center of empire, the home of wealth and power.
Gustave Flaubert, who visited Istanbul 102 years before my birth, was struck by the variety of life in its teeming streets; in one of his letters he predicted that in a century’s time it would be the capital of the world. The reverse came true: After the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the world almost forgot that Istanbul existed.The city into which I was born was poorer, shabbier, and more isolated than it had ever been before in its two-thousand-year history. For me it has always been a city of ruins and of end-of-empire melancholy. I’ve spent my life either battling with this melancholy or (like all Istanbullus) making it my own.
I can’t imagine saying much that is less true of Vancouver right now. Every part of Pamuk’s description finds it’s opposite here in Vancouver: This is a young city of ebullient and energetic ascension, with all the attendant naïveté and optimism. This is a city with almost no urban past, and one that seems to believe that every day is going to be sunnier and more profitable than the next.
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Posted on January 8th, 2010 in AK Authors!
Richard Estes and Ron Glick interviewed Lucien van der Walt, co-author of Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism, on their show “Speaking In Tongues,” KDVS, 90.3 FM, University Of California, Davis. The interview took place on September 25, 2009.
The transcript (which I’ve edited slightly for clarity) is below. If you’d like an audio recording of the interview, go here or here. For a higher quality recording of the entire show, go here.
And thanks to Richard and Ron, who have interviewed several AK authors and collective members on their show.
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RICHARD ESTES: Our first guest today is LUCIEN VAN DER WALT. He is based at the University of Witwatersrand…rand….srand…excuse me, Witwatersrand. Is that right?
LUCIEN VAN DER WALT: Witwatersrand.
RICHARD ESTES: … Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He teaches, you teach, Development, Economic Sociology and Labour Studies. The reason I invited you to be on the air with us today is because several months ago I had the opportunity to encounter your book that you co-authored with Michael Schmidt, who’s a Johannesburg-based investigative journalist, entitled Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism.
RON GLICK: I just want to say that this is the first time that we’ve had a live guest from Africa on this programme, which is very exciting.
RICHARD ESTES: It is a first and, in this instance, it is also, I think, noteworthy… Anarchism is something that I think, in terms of the general public perception and understanding, in comparison to other political values and ideas, is not well understood and not well defined in the public consciousness. So, for that reason, I wanted to have you on the air today because I thought your book was extraordinarily well-timed and provides a context for people to engage the subject and to evaluate their own political values in comparison to it. I enjoyed the book very much for that reason. So, thanks for making some time available—and I also want to note that you are also up back in South Africa and I think it’s 2am, is that right?
LUCIEN VAN DER WALT: Ja, no, it’s around about then.
RICHARD ESTES: So…
LUCIEN VAN DER WALT: But thanks for having me on the show, no problem at all.
[DEFINING ANARCHISM AND SYNDICALISM]
RICHARD ESTES: The first thing I want to ask you, because it’s one of the primary subjects of the book, is sort of a simple question…what is it that you believe to be anarchism, and what, in your view, do you consider to be improperly described as anarchism?
LUCIEN VAN DER WALT: Well, as you know, the whole idea of “anarchism,” the whole word, has gathered a lot of connotations over time which have obscured people’s ability to understand it. I mean, in the public mind in the States I imagine it’s pretty similar to a lot of other English-speaking countries: anarchism is seen as chaos, disorder, and so on. But once you get beyond that, there’s a whole lot of things that get thrown into a bit of a grab-bag called anarchism.
Now when you look closely at anarchism, to understand what its core ideas are, you have to look at its history, you have to look at when it emerges. And when you look at its emergence, you have to go back to the 1860s, you find it emerging in the union movement, the workers’ movement, in the socialist movement.
So to answer your question about what we see as anarchism, and this is the central argument in our book, we would understand anarchism as a movement that aimed, through struggle, to create a free, stateless, socialist society based on cooperation and mutual aid, a movement that sees the motor of history as the struggle of ordinary people, working-class people, just ordinary folks, peasants, small farmers…trying to create that world across borders internationally.
That would be the basics of it—a class struggle-based, socialist movement, libertarian in its aims, libertarian in its message, trying to create a sort of a free cooperative, socialist order.
Now, the thing is, “anarchism,” besides the label of chaos and so on, has been used a lot in the academy—and I think this is one of the problems it faces in its perception as compared to, say, Marxism or liberalism—it has been used in the academy to relate to a whole bunch of quite unrelated doctrines ranging from the ideas of Max Stirner, who was an extreme individualist, all the way through to various fairly abstruse philosophies around individual autonomy and so on. I don’t know…does that answer you?
RICHARD ESTES: It just seems to me, that with Marxism you have Marx. So like…
LUCIEN VAN DER WALT: Right…
RON GLICK: …so like there’s this person you can point to. With totalitarianism: Hanna Arendt, and with anarchism? With fascism, Mussolini, and with anarchism there isn’t…certainly, I don’t know where you exactly point to. You also have in the title of the book “syndicalism.” Maybe you could define that for us as well?
LUCIEN VAN DER WALT: Alright, before I get onto that, let me say that if you were looking for your, say, Marx or Engels of anarchism, I think you’d have to look at Mikhail Bakunin, and you’d have to look at Peter Kropotkin. So Bakunin and Kropotkin would be the two main figures.
These would be the two key figures; the key influences on the movement; the people who really…articulate and express and codify a lot of its doctrine. This is not to say that they invented everything—they never claimed to. They codified a lot of ideas that were out there, expressed them; acted as the sort of mouthpiece of the movement. Those would be the two big guys…the Big Two.
Now, in terms of “syndicalism,” right, syndicalism at a minimum means the idea of a revolutionary trade union movement. The idea of syndicalism was that you could essentially use trade unions, rather than the state, rather than political parties, rather than some small group of guerrillas running around the mountains in berets. Actual unions, run by ordinary people in their workplaces, to bring about this new anarchist society.
So in that sense, syndicalism, the idea of revolutionary trade unionism, is a strategy, a strategy developed within the anarchist movement, a strategy that was there from the start.
But, partly because of the connotations attached to anarchism, partly because there is a bit of a tendency, in a lot of the literature, in a lot of activist milieu, in a lot of the union movement, to see syndicalism as something altogether different to anarchism, we’ve had to single out the words a bit there, “anarchism” and “syndicalism,” but we see syndicalism as part of a broad anarchist tradition.
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Posted on January 6th, 2010 in AK Allies, AK Distribution, Happenings
Kate and I attended the first-ever conference of the North American Anarchist Studies Network (NAASN) in Hartford CT last November (and, yes, it’s taken us this long to write something about it). Kate made the long drive up from Baltimore—with John, who gets my major gratitude for helping person the AK Press table, and being an overall pleasant companion. I spent about 14 hours flying and busing my way from Oakland.
Hartford has changed a lot since my last visit 12 years ago. Back then, it struck me as a sort of hypertrophied version of a New Orleans cemetery, in which the mausoleums were replaced with gigantic insurance companies. This time around, I blearily wheeled my luggage thorough a late-night gauntlet of bars and restaurants and college students. Much livelier…though not necessarily an improvement.
The conference organizers, both the far-flung (Jesse Cohn, Luis Fernandez, and Nathan Jun) and the on-the-ground folks in Hartford making it happen (Deric Shannon and Abbey Willis), did a really good job. And Deric and Abbey put up with all my annoying questions. The event took place in the Charter Oak Cultural Center, Connecticut’s oldest synagogue, which was conveniently right next door to a liquor store. The space was well-suited: cozy but not too cramped.
I was surprised by the fact that I didn’t recognize most of the attendees. Since the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference in Vermont didn’t happen this year, I’d assumed that the NAASN event would be largely a relocated version of RAT. This was definitely not the case, which is nice. It’s always good to be reminded that there are lots of us.
Kate interjects: I agree with Charles on this. I was really expecting the conference to feel very similar to RAT, and to see the usual faces there. And while a lot of our favorite folks that we expect to see every year at RAT were definitely in attendance, the crowd was much more diverse than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise! One thing that helped with that was the fact that, unlike RAT, participants weren’t required to register, and there weren’t a limited amount of slots available for participants. So it ended up being a nice cross between a scholarly conference and an anarchist-bookfair type of event. I was also surprised at how many folks from the Hartford area turned out. Got the chance to meet lots of new folks who are doing interesting work in the area, as well as to meet folks who had traveled from all over the country to attend the event.
As always, there was the weirdness of wanting to go to many panels, while making sure one of us was behind the AK table. Luckily, one of the panel locations was within earshot of our table…but I still missed a lot. Here are a few of the highlights for me:
Barry Pateman gave the opening talk, “Anarchism and Anarchy: A Historical Perspective.” I’m always glad to hear Barry speak, since it usually means a nice mixture of historical info, spot-on analysis, and stand-up comedy. He put a little less comedy into the mix this time, but spoke to a topic dear to my heart. You’d be better off hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth by going here, but my half-assed synopsis would be that he took contemporary anarchists to task for losing sight of who we need to be trying to reach…and therefore how to go about it. In the good old days, anarchists created groups that were open and relevant to non-anarchists, with the intention of bringing more people into the fold. Today, it’s more about navel-gazing and infighting. Okay, Barry was much more nuanced and diplomatic than that. Click the link above and forget I said anything.
Kate interjects: Not living in the Bay Area, I don’t really get the opportunity to hear Barry Pateman speak very often. And this was the first chance I had to really chat with him in any sort of extended way, which was great. John & Barry completely geeked out about John’s new book on the Spokane Free Speech fight and the history of anarchist labor organizing, and we all chatted about kick-ass IWW organizer Agnes Thecla Fair, author of the Sourdough’s Bible, and one of the great figures in the history of hobo organizing, about whom a shockingly little amount is known! Barry was a regular fixture around the AK table throughout the weekend, along with our other favorite anarchist archivist Jerry Kaplan, the man behind the Anarchist Archives Project in Cambridge, and the two of them humored me by posing for the one cell-phone picture I did manage to take during the weekend before my phone completely died!
Next up, for me, was “Challenging Anarchist Perspectives on Environmental Justice.” The premise of this panel was pretty interesting: “To examine the ways in which people of color are centrally affected by climate change; to link environmental movements to struggles against racism, public health, homophobia, colonialism, sexism, among other issues; and discuss the relationship between democratic, decentralized politics and environmental justice.” To be honest, such a litany of issues and oppressions worried me a bit—I couldn’t imagine anything more than a superficial treatment of any of them—but the presenters did a good job. None of them bit off more than they could chew, and each provided some angle from which to view environmental justice that I hadn’t quite appreciated before. Two young folk from Toxic Soil Busters and Youth in Charge gave great overviews of their organizations, which use direct action to remove contamination by lead, other heavy metals, and hydrocarbons from the soil of low income neighborhoods in Worcester, MA. And Stina Soderling gave a really engaging talk about her research into the queer rural movement that grew out of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s: queer communities that provided zones of recovery and empowerment for urban activists, but also contributed to new forms of rural gentrification in Tennessee, Oregon, and Northern California. A solid talk that didn’t shy away from uncomfortable contradictions.
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Posted on January 4th, 2010 in AK Distribution
For the first Distro Top Ten of 2010, I thought it only right to look back at the past year and pull out ten titles that were released in 2009 that made it onto the year’s bestseller list at AK.
It’s worth noting that because we’re just talking about distro right now, this list doesn’t include all the great new AK-published titles that came out in 2009 (you can see our published books sorted by release date here. This list also won’t include our very newest distro titles, even the ones that have made a big splash—because they haven’t been out long enough to make the bestseller list. But as always, you can see all of our newest releases here. And I promise there’s some great stuff there right now—I’ve already got my bets placed for the hot titles of 2010 (I’m looking at you, Vegan Cookies).
So without any further ado, the bestselling new distro titles in 2009 were:
10. Protest Graffiti Mexico: Oaxaca
The latest (and one of the greatest) addition to our selection of full-color books celebrating the street art of movements around the world. From our friends at Mark Batty Publisher, who put out lots of excellent art books, including the also-highly-recommended Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne. This one is a collection of photographs taken from the streets of Oaxaca in 2007.
9. Anarchism for Beginners
You might already be familiar with the “For Beginners” series—the books that use accessible cartoons and text to introduce often-complex theories and histories. You can see other books in the series here.
8. Bumping Back
We always sell this one when we bring it to a tabling event, because it’s kind of a “you-have-to-see-this-to-believe-it” sort of thing. But when you see it, you realize that if you have, you know, a completely innocent curiosity about direct action tactics…this is a really practical thing to read.
7. The Coming Insurrection
Besides being one of our bestsellers, this was also one of the most talked-about releases this year. From the New York Times to Glenn Beck to your local anarchist reading group, pretty much everyone had something to say about it, making it one of the year’s must-reads.
6. Resistance Behind Bars
A welcome complement to the other recent literature on imprisonment and prisoners’ struggles, this one is unique because it focuses specifically on collective organizing and individual resistance in women’s prisons. The author’s extensive speaking tour helped make this one of our bestselling distro items this year.
5. Vegan Brunch
This book is very much what it sounds like, but I can personally vouch for this one—shortly after it came out, I held my annual vegan brunch birthday party and I think everyone who came made something from this book. And it was all delicious. You kind of can’t go wrong.
4. Fart Party Vol. 2
On the heels of the also-excellent first Fart Party collection, this autobiographical comic has really nothing to do with farting or parties, but the title got your attention, right? Anyway, it’s really, really funny. It’s published by the excellent Baltimore indie institution Atomic Books, whose titles we distribute to the book trade—check out the rest of them here.
3. Subverting the Present, Imagining the Future
When this long-anticipated title made its appearance at the beginning of 2009, it was eagerly snapped up by the radical intellectual community. An edited collection exploring the socio-historical construction of capitalism and anticipating future trajectories of worldwide struggles—an excellent, forward-thinking way to start a new decade?
2. Slingshot Organizer 2010
This year’s Slingshots have only been out a few months and already they’re near the top of the list. We’ve still got them in stock, it’s not too late to get yours! Also available as a spiral-bound desk planner.
1. Make Your Place
I gave a copy of this book to my sister as a gift and she said, “I’m a total sucker for books like this.” Apparently she is not the only one. This year’s bestseller from our friends at Microcosm Publishing is a cheap, straightforward guide to human- and earth-healthy DIY household products. We always take a stack of this one to our tabling events, people just can’t seem to get enough of it!
All right folks, that’s your list. You’ll want to catch up on these books now I’m sure, ‘cause the 2010 releases are rolling in already, and you won’t want to get behind!
Posted on January 1st, 2010 in AK Allies, AK Authors!, Happenings
Hi folks! As AK’s resident publicist, it’s always a pleasure to work with authors who are excited about getting out on the road and promoting their work … and I’m happy to say that it’s looking like it’s going to be a jam-packed Spring & Summer with AK authors taking to the streets and travelling across the continent to share their new books with YOU. So keep an eye out for AK authors coming to your town, and if you’re interested in inviting an AK author to come and speak at your infoshop, bookstore, community center, university, bookfair or house party, drop me a line at publicity@akpress.org, and I’ll do my best to help you set it up!
In the meantime, check out the first two events for Matt Hern’s brand-spankin’-new Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future, which launches this week, on January 5, in Vancouver, and hits the United States on January 15 at the incomparable Bluestockings Books in New York City. Matt will be back on tour later in the Spring, so keep your eyes out for appearances in other cities in March, April, and May.
AND be sure to check out the dates and locations (and special guests) for the 4500-mile Mythmakers & Lawbreakers Spring 2010 Tour, which kicks off this Sunday in New Orleans, and heads across the Southwest, up the California Coast, and throughout the Pacific Northwest this January and February. And help us promote the events! You can find downloadable flyers & posters for each of the stops on Margaret Killjoy’s website: http://www.birdsbeforethestorm.net/mmlb/
If you want to suggest a stop for the Mythmakers & Lawbreakers tour along the way, just let us know, we’re happy to add additional dates & locations as time allows. And if you’re in the NYC area and are interested in hosting a talk by Matt Hern the week of January 15, get in contact!
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Common Ground in a Liquid City:
Tuesday, January 5, 8PM: Book launch party at Café Deux Soleil in Vancouver!
In the Vancouver area? Come on out and celebrate the launch of Matt Hern’s new urban studies book, Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future, available now from AK Press! A little music, a little drinking, a little yapping, and lots of fun! Don’t miss it. (2096 Commercial Drive, at 5th Ave. in Vancouver.)
Friday, January 15, 7PM: Matt Hern at Bluestockings Books in NYC!
Don’t miss Matt Hern’s first US appearance to promote his amazing new book, Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future, at our favorite New York City bookstore! (172 Allen Street in New York City.)
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Mythmakers and Lawbreakers:
Sunday, January 3, 7PM: Mythmakers & Lawbreakers Spring 2010 Tour launches at Iron Rail Books in New Orleans
Join editor Margaret Killjoy for an arguably entertaining evening of strange coincidences between the world of anarchist politics and the world of fiction, and help kick off the 4500 mile Mythmakers & Lawbreakers tour across the Southwest, up the California Coast, and through the Pacific Northwest this Spring! (511 Marigny Street in New Orleans.)
Tuesday, January 5, 7:30PM: Mythmakers & Lawbreakers on tour at Sedition Books in Houston
A brief and arguably entertaining evening with Margaret Killjoy, editor of Mythmakers & Lawbreakers. Discuss the role of storytelling in the anarchist movement! Learn about novelist assassins, post-colonial african squatters, writers who fought in revolutions and went on to write childrens’ stories! Find out what Tolkien, Camus, Orwell, and Kafka have to say about anarchism! (901 Richmond Avenue in Houston.)
Wednesday, January 6, 8PM: Mythmakers & Lawbreakers on tour at Monkeywrench Books in Austin
The Mythmakers & Lawbreakers tour continues tonight at the amazing Monkeywrench Books in Austin! Join editor Margaret Killjoy for an arguably entertaining evening of strange coincidences between the world of anarchist politics and the world of fiction! Find out what Tolkien, Camus, Orwell, and Kafka have to say about anarchism! (110 E North Loop Blvd. in Austin.)
Thursday, January 7, 7PM: Mythmakers & Lawbreakers on tour at the Dry River Radical Resource Center in Tuscon
More Mythmakers & Lawbreakers at the Dry River Radical Resource Center in Tuscon! Discuss the role of storytelling in the anarchist movement! Learn about novelist assassins, post-colonial african squatters, writers who fought in revolutions and went on to write childrens’ stories! Find out what Tolkien, Camus, Orwell, and Kafka have to say about anarchism! (740 North Main Avenue in Tuscon.)
Sunday, January 11, 7PM: Margaret Killjoy & Carissa van den Berk Clark at Book Soup in West Hollywood
Mythmakers & Lawbreakers goes to Hollywood! West Hollywood, that is. If you’re in the LA area, head on out to Book Soup for an evening of readings from AK’s new Mythmakers & Lawbreakers collection. Editor Margaret Killjoy discusses the role of fiction in the anarchist movement, and details the anarchist leanings of some of history’s most well-known novelists. And Mythmakers contributor Carissa van den Berk Clark reads from her work. (8818 West Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.)
Thursday, January 14, 7PM: Margaret Killjoy & Carissa van den Berk Clark at Modern Times Bookstore in San Francisco
The Mythmakers & Lawbreakers tour makes it to the Bay! Come on out to Modern Times for a brief and arguably entertaining evening discussion of the role of storytelling in the anarchist movement. Hear what Tolkien, Camus, Orwell, and Kafka have to say about anarchism! Learn about novelist assassins, post-colonial african squatters, writers who fought in revolutions and went on to write childrens’ stories! Don’t miss it! (888 Valencia Street in San Francisco.)
Monday, January 18, 7:30PM: Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Killjoy at Powell’s Books in Portland
This is the one we’ve been waiting for – the event that spawned the entire Mythmakers & Lawbreakers Spring 2010 Tour: the incomparable Ursula K. Le Guin reads with editor Margaret Killjoy at Powell’s Books in Portland. What else can we say? Usrula K. Le Guin! Amazing! (1005 West Burnside in Portland.)
Monday, January 21, 7PM: Margaret Killjoy and Artnoose of Ker-Bloom! At Red & Black Café in Portland
More Mythmakers & Lawbreakers in Portland! Check out editor Margaret Killjoy’s presentation at one of our favorite Portland spaces: the Red & Black Café! Plus, readings by zinester and letterpress-virtuoso Artnoose of Ker-Bloom! (400 SE 12th Avenue in Portland.)
Friday, January 29, 7PM: Mythmakers & Lawbreakers on tour at Left Bank Books in Seattle
The Mythmakers & Lawbreakers tour continues tonight at the amazing and long-standing Left Bank Books in Seattle! Join editor Margaret Killjoy for an arguably entertaining evening of strange coincidences between the world of anarchist politics and the world of fiction! Find out what Tolkien, Camus, Orwell, and Kafka have to say about anarchism! (92 Pike Street in Seattle.)
Monday, February 1, 6PM: Mythmakers & Lawbreakers on tour at Last Word Books in Olympia
Last stop (for now) on the Mythmakers & Lawbreakers Spring 2010 Tour! If you’re in the Olympia area, head out to Last Word Books for an arguably entertaining evening with Margaret Killjoy, editor of Mythmakers & Lawbreakers. (211 E 4th Avenue in Olympia.)
Posted on December 30th, 2009 in AK Allies, Anarchist Publishers, Happenings
Announcing the 4th Annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair
April 17, 2010
11am-7pm
Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, Manhattan
New York City, a center of anarchist life, culture, struggle, and ideas for 150 years, will host its 4th annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair, a one-day exposition of books, zines, pamphlets, art, film/video, and other cultural and very political productions of the anarchist scene worldwide, on April 17, 2010, at Judson Memorial Church in Manhattan. In addition there will be two days of panels, presentations, workshops, and skillshares on April 17 and 18 to provide further opportunities to learn more and share your own experience and creativity.
The goal of the book fair is to enable people to connect with one another as well as to provide broader access to the rich and varied field of anarchist ideas and practices. Now is the perfect time to be exploring those ideas and practices and bringing them into play in our communities and the world.
We are calling for all anarchist publishers, zinesters, film/videographers, artists and all members of the worldwide anarchist community. Come meet local anarchists and others from all over the globe looking to connect with other anarchists. Whether you are an old anarchist with deep ties and knowledge or anarcho-curious and looking to find out more about anarchy, the book fair is for you. The 4th Annual Anarchist Book Fair is a place where the ideas, activism, ethics, creativity and history of the contemporary anarchist movement come together in an exciting weekend of community and collaboration.
To contact the NYC Anarchist Book Fair organizing collective to volunteer, make a donation, or get more information, email us at info[at]anarchistbookfair[dot]net.
Apply for a table or propose a presentation, panel, workshop, or skillshare! Diversity is important to us: we are committed to promoting voices typically underrepresented at mainstream and activist conferences alike, whether for reasons of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, income or ability.
The Book Fair has adopted a policy of zero-tolerance for racist, sexist, queer-phobic, and other disrespectful behavior that works against collective liberation for all communities.
Food will be available ($), plus childcare (free). Judson Memorial Church is a wheelchair accessible, smoke-free environment.
Posted on December 28th, 2009 in AK Allies, Anarchist Publishers
Like all good avant-garde projects, Minor Compositions, the new theory-focused publishing project that grew out of the UK-based portion of the Autonomedia collective, just kind of appeared one day along with its debut release, Precarious Rhapsody, an unexpectedly fascinating series of reflections by the too-long-ignored (in the English-speaking world) Italian autonomist thinker and media activist Franco Berardi, better-known as Bifo. This was something of a cause for celebration in my household: the need for more of Bifo’s work to appear in English has been a topic of discussion around my house for a while, and Bifo was actually one one of the authors on my “priority list” of possible future projects that I created when I was first applying for the job at AK Press many months ago. And, it was doubly exciting to find out that I knew some of the folks behind this new and wonderful publishing initiative, dedicated to making more avant-garde approaches to everyday practice available for English-speaking readers, and that I could pump them for information on the project, the current books in production, and what they’ve got planned for the future.
Read on, and be sure to check out the Minor Compositions website. And, if you’re on the east coast, I strongly encourage you to check out one of the events that UK-based author Stevphen Shukaitis is doing for his new Minor Compositions book, Imaginal Machines. He’ll be at Red Emma’s in Baltimore on January 6, at the Wooden Shoe in Philly on January 7, and at Bluestockings in New York on January 8.
AK Press: Tell me a little bit about your new project, Minor Compositions—how did it come into being, and why?
Minor Compositions: Minor Compositions is a research – theorizing – publishing project that is located, at the moment, within the London metropolitan basin of collective intelligence. Its main aim is to bring together, develop, and mutate forms of autonomist thought and practice, avant-garde aesthetics, and an everyday approach to politics. To take up a useful distinction made by Alan Toner, this is to see not from a position of ‘producer consciousness’ (“we’re a publisher, we make books”) but rather from a position of protagonist consciousness (“we make books because it is part of participating in social movement and struggle”). So the production of a text is not something that is thought in isolation but how it connects and develops moments of thinking collectively. This draws a good deal of inspiration from the autonomist notion of militant research and workers’ inquiry, expanding it beyond inquiry into particular bounded workplaces into a more general investigation of cultural labor, social reproduction, and the relationship between antagonistic energies and attempts to govern them.
As for how and why it came into being, that is a bit like asking why the chicken crossed the road. It was there, which is to say that we saw some particular questions that could be usefully explored through such an approach. In the past ten years, or even longer (forty or fifty years) there has been increased interest in radical politics as cultural politics. Here one can see that the aspects of the anti-globalization movement that were focused on most were its cultural politics, the theatricality or the playfulness of demonstrations. Similarly, and very much connected to this, there has been a rise of interest in political art, or “activist art” within the museum and gallery world. It is problematic that this interest in art and politics often neglects questions of political economy. Cultural politics becomes substituted for all forms of politics. But to raise the specter of political economy is not a call to return to some sort of reductive Marxism that sees cultural struggles as adjuncts to the “real struggles” around labor. And it’s through the autonomist notion of class composition, looking at the relation between the building of social movement potential to radically transform the world and the continual effort to turn these energies into new modes of capitalist production and governance, that this question can be opened and re-thought in a different, and hopefully more useful manner.
AK: And it’s an imprint of Autonomedia, is that right? Or a separate project?
MC: Spinoza tells us there is only one substance, namely god or nature. From this we can logically conclude that Autonomedia and Minor Compositions are indeed part of a unified fabric of being, along with puppy dogs, your mother’s pool cue, and the entirety of the 1986 Mets. That, however, does not adequately describe the particular relation between different modes of becoming involved. The evaluation of compositional modes is one of history and time, which of course do not exist. It is as when Rimbaud says that “I is an other”: Minor Compositions is both a part of Autonomedia and a becoming-other compositional mixture of Autonomedia that is not totally of it, that is the other to the self that is Autonomedia.
AK: Wasn’t that just a bunch of gobbledlygook? What do you mean that by that? How does it practically work?
MC: Perhaps. How does it work? Simply, by breaking down, like all forms of desiring machines. But that’s probably not what you mean. So let’s say more practically that within the realm of autonomous media production there are zones of autonomy within the larger framework of imaginal production. These are points and processes of conjunction where Autonomedia is less a centralized location, but rather where different forces collaborate in ways that would not be possible without that framework. And if you look over the history of what Autonomedia has published you will see these kinds of collaborations and joint projects taking place under the proper name “umbrella” of Autonomedia, from joint projects during the 90s with Black & Red, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, and the Info.Interactivist project (coordinated with Interactivist and ABC No Rio). More recent joint projects include the collaborations that led to the DATA Browser series, the Shut Them Down! book with the Dissent! Network, and the Proud to Be Flesh anthology that compiles the best of Mute Magazine. This is part of the shift from publisher as producer to publisher as assemblage, as one node in a larger process of composition.
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