A zine made by the beautiful souls of the Hambacher Forst.
The Hambacher Forst is an autonomous, occupied forest in Western Germany, where the community is fighting against the biggest open cast coal mine in Europe.
To know more head over to their blog: https://hambacherforst.org/blog/
“Something is flowering in the forest, fields and hedgerows, of the bocage of Notre-Dame-des-Landes. Nestled in a landscape that remains under threat by the building of a new airport, an experimental zone is proliferating, it’s called – La zad.
Since the victorious resistance to the 2012 wave of evictions, the zad has become a rallying cry, inspiring a multitude of other nodes of disobedience. The French government has announced that the riot police might return to the territory and the process of compulsory purchases has begun again. This text is an echo of this political adventure and passionately calls for us all to defend the zad.
La Mauvaise Troupe is an ever mutating collective that formed during the editing of the book Constellations: Revolutionary trajectories of the young 21st century, published by Eclat, in 2014. This spring the collective will publish their second work, on the similar and kindred stories of the zad of Notre-Dame-des-Landes in North Western France and the No-TAV resistance to the high speed train project in the Valley de Susa, norther Italy.”
Edited by l’éclat
www.lyber-eclat.net
https://constellations.boum.org
A zine about the ongoing Campaign to Protect Pont Valley, fighting against a new coal mine in County Durham, UK.
“You must always have a secret plan. Everything depends on this: it is the only question. So as not be conquered by the conquered territory in which you lead your life, so as not to feel the horrible weight of inertia wrecking your will and bending you to the ground, so as not to spend a single night more wondering what there is to do or how to connect with your neighbours and countrymen, you must always make secret plans without respite. Plan for adventure, plan for pleasure, plan for pandemonium, as you wish; but plan, lay plans constantly.
And when you come to, on the steps of the presidential palace, in the green grass beside the highway, in your cell’s gloomy solitude, your secret plan finished or failed, ask your comrades, ask your cellmates, ask the wind, the waves, the stars, the sea, ask everything that ponders, everything that wanders, everything that sings, everything that stings – ask them what time it is; and your comrades, your cellmates, the wind, the waves, the stars, the sea all will answer: ‘It is time for a new secret plan. So as not to be the martyred slave of routine, plan adventure, plan pleasure, plan pandemonium, as you wish; but plan, plan secretly and without respite.'”
Edited by CrimethInc.
“Art and Revolution investigates practices emerging in neighbouring zones where art and revolution overlap for a limited time, in more or less well developed forms. Yet even when their rapprochement fails, traces of the overlap can still be recognised. They will be analysed here through various practices, from Courbet to Russian Futurism and Constructivism, from the Viennese Actionists and the Situationists International to the PublixTheatreCaravan in Genoa.
Often activist practices are not included in the narratives and archives of political history and art theory, or only acknowledged when purged of their radical aspects. In order to break through these mechanisms of exclusion or recodification, an as yet missing theorisation of activist art practices has to develop with new concept-clusters connecting contexts in ways not previously acknowledged.
Gerald Raunig has written an alternative history of the “long twentieth century” that resists flat notions of linear progress current in the objectivistic historiography. Instead it chronicles the attempts that were made repeatedly to burst out of this constructed continuum. It will encourage a new generation of artists and thinkers to work towards the explosive nexus of art and activism.”
Edited by Semiotext(e) Active Agents, distributed by The MIT Press
“While ecology has received little systematic attention within art history, its visibility and significance has grown in relation to the threats of climate change and environmental destruction. By engaging artists’ widespread aesthetic and political engagement with environmental conditions and processes around the globe – and looking at cutting-edge theoretical, political, and cultural developments in the Global South and North – Decolonizing Nature offers a significant, original contribution to the intersecting fields of art history, ecology, visual culture, geography, and environmental politics.
Art historian T. J. Demos, author of Return to the Postcolony: Specters of Colonialism in Contemporary Art (2013), considers the creative proposals of artists and activists for ways of life that bring together ecological sustainability, climate justice, and radical democracy, at a time when such creative proposals are urgently needed.”
Edited by Sternberg Press
“Knit, sew, and craft your way to self-empowerment!
Are you a Nasty Woman ready to smash the patriarchy wth a needle and thread? Proudly proclaim your feminism with your very own DIY Bleeding Heart T-shirt? Or stage a protest, wearing knitted Pussyhats?
Be part of the revolution by reclaiming the “domestic” arts of knitting, sewing, and more – to channel your feminist rage. With pictures, step-by-step instructions, patterns, and tips for crafters of all skill levels from beginner to advanced, Crafting the Resistance is the book for women’s rights activists on a DIY path to self-determination.
Put your homemaking and protesting skills to the test with girl-powered, easy-to-make, kick-ass projects such as:
Take politics into your own hands, literally, and craft your message out into the world, Crafting the Resistance is the ultimate book tor DIY activists, empowered protestors, and any woman – or man – who is part of the resistance.”
Published by Skyhorse Publishing
“There exists a series of contemporary artists who continually defy the traditional role of the artist/author, including Art & Language, Guerrilla Girls, Bob and Roberta Smith, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and LuckyPDF.
In Death of the Artist, Nicola McCartney explores their work and uses previously unpublished interviews to provoke a vital and nuanced discussion about contemporary artistic authorship. How do emerging artists navigate intellectual property or work collectively and share the recognition? How might a pseudonym aid ‘artivism’? Most strikingly, she demonstrates how an alterative identity can challenge the art market and is symptomatic of greater cultural and political rebellion.
As such, this book exposes the art world’s financially incentivised infrastructures, but also examines how they might be reshaped from within. In an age of cuts to arts funding and forced self-promotion, this offers an important analysis of the pressing need for the artistic community to construct new ways to reinvent itself and incite fresh responses to its work.”
Published by I.B.Tauris
“The collision of activism and contemporary art, from the Seattle protests to Occupy and beyond.
What is the relation of art to the practice of radical politics today? Strike Art explores this question through the historical lens of Occupy, an event that had artists at its core. Precarious, indebted, and radicalised, artists redirected their creativity from servicing the artworld into an expanded field of organising in order to construct of a new – if internally fraught – political imaginary set off against the common enemy of the 1%. In the process, they called the bluff of a contemporary art system torn between ideals of radical critique, on the one hand, and an increasing proximity to Wall Street on the other – oftentimes directly targeting major art institutions themselves as sites of action.
Tracking the work of groups including MTL, Not An Alternative, the Illuminator, the Rolling Jubilee, and G.U.L.F., Strike Art shows how Occupy ushered in a new era of artistically-oriented direct action that continues to ramify far beyond the initial act of occupation itself into ongoing struggles surrounding labour, dept, and climate justice, concluding with a consideration of overlaps between such work and the aesthetic practices of the Black Lives Matters movement.
Art after Occupy, McKee suggests, contains great potentials of imagination and action for a renewed left project that are still only beginning to ripen, at once shaking up and taking flight from the art systems as we know it.”
Published by Verso Books
“This is the 14th edition of the Squatters Handbook, dated October 2016. Much has changed since the last one and we are still finding our way around soe of the issues, and we’ve tried to do things a bit differently. Your feedback and experience is very welcome to help produce future editions.
This edition is dedicated to the memory of Daniel Gauntlett, who died on the 25th February 2013 of hypothermia outside an empty building, having been spoken to by police about squatting. How many others have died on the streets when they could be using an otherwise empty property?
Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS) is an unpaid collective who have been running a daily advice service for squatters and other homeless people for over 40 years. Donations and volunteers always welcome.
This handbook is anti-copyright: it may only be reprinted in whole or part, credited to ASS, by non-profit organisations. Others must ask.
Much of the information is particular to England and Wales, and is biased toward London – and is based largely on our collective experience, so we are always grateful for feedback/criticism on this handbook or our advice.”
Published by Advisory Service for Squatters, Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX