This week at Interference Archive:
|
|
|
Holiday Openhouse 2018
Saturday, December 15, 2018, 12-5pm
Celebrate our second annual holiday open house on 7th Street! Stop by, sip on hot cocoa, bring your kids for holiday craft activities, and browse our last-minute-market of radical gifts from our friends at Justseeds Artists Cooperative, Radix, Common Notions, the Our Comics, Ourselves crew and more. Check our website for more info.
|
|
|
Radical Psychology at Alternate U and Beyond
Wednesday, December 12, 6pm
Radical psychology and the politics of mental illness were an important part of social movements in the 1970s and 1980s, and central issues in free education experiments, including Alternate U. In 1970, Keith Brooks ran a course on psychology in the context of the global liberation struggle and the questions of “what is its role and whose side is it on?” Phil Brown ran a course challenging what he called the “Myth of Mental Illness.”
We are thrilled to host a talk with Keith Brooks and Phil Brown, who will share their experiences in the critical psychology movement that was a part of the revolutionary environment at Alternate U. Phil and Keith helped set up the organization Psychologists for a Democratic Society, which published a newspaper under the same name. They will introduce the work of this offshoot from the Students for a Democratic Society.
Read more information on our website.
|
|
|
How Public is Public Space? A Field Recording Workshop and Discussion
Thursday, December 13, 6 – 8:30pm
Join us for a friendly talk, potluck and a workshop introduction to the topic of field recording and the different ways of perceiving and understanding the freedom of public space and its wider context. Over a potluck dinner, we will start with a short introduction about various ways of understanding the term “public space," and discuss different ways of “perceiving” with a focus on conscious listening and methods of field recording. Bring any snacks or homemade specialities and share them with the others! The second half of the event will be devoted to exploring urban sounds, field recording and sound hunting. If there is enough time, we will create a sound collage or an improvised composition. If you have a recorder and headphones, please bring them with you.
The talk and the workshop will be lead by Šárka Zahálková, visual artist and curator from the Czech Republic. Please rsvp to sarka@160cm.me.
|
|
|
Guided tour of Free Education!
Saturday, December 15, 5:30pm
Join us for a guided tour of the Free Education! The Free University of New York, Alternate U, and Learning Liberation exhibition. Sue Simensky Bietila and Jakob Jakobsen will lead a walk through of the project, discussing histories of the Free University, Alternate U, the Rat newspapers, Newsreel Collective, and more, all while focusing on these questions: What is a university? What does the university have that we want? What does the university have that we don’t want? How would a free university feel if we could build one from scratch? Read more details on our website.
|
|
New on the Interference Archive blog:
|
|
|
What’s Art Got to Do with It? Performativity & the SOAW
In Fall 2018, Kenyon College’s Gund Gallery featured materials from Interference Archive that included pamphlets and posters detailing protest, performance, and group solidarity events produced by the organization the School of the Americas Watch (SOAW). SOAW activists Dévora González and María Luisa Rosal visited campus and led a discussion with a “Transnational Social Movements” Sociology class. Read student reflections on this experience on our blog.
|
|
Also coming up at the Archive:
|
|
Social Justice Book Club: The Twentieth Century by Howard Zinn
Tuesday, December 18, 7 PM – 9 PM
Join us for a meeting before the holidays! For our December book club, we’re reading The Twentieth Century by Howard Zinn. Highlighting not just the usual terms of presidential administrations and congressional activities, this book provides a “bottom-to-top” perspective, giving voice to our nation’s minorities and letting the stories of such groups as African Americans, women, Native Americans, and the laborers of all nationalities be told in their own words. RSVP by email or on facebook.
|
|
|
New from Audio Interference:
|
|
|
Audio Interference 58: Radical Access
“Our lending policy is: as many books as you want, for as long as you want. We want people to take the time to live with the books as long as they need to, to figure out how they fit into the larger picture of how they live.” — Dawn Finley, FLOW
In this episode, we ask the questions: What does it mean to be a radical, community library? What are the goals, responsibilities, and impacts of such an organization? We do so through conversations with Laura Moulton of Streetbooks, Melissa Marturano of Books Through Bars, Dawn Finley of FLOW, and Julia of the ABC No Rio Zine Library. Listen on our website or through your podcast platform of choice.
|
|
Stop by to check out our current exhibition:
|
|
|
Free Education! The Free University of New York, Alternate U., and Learning Liberation
October 11, 2018 – January 27, 2019
Opening reception: October 11, 2018, 6-9pm
Curated by Jakob Jakobsen and Interference Archive
Rooted in an examination of the history of the Free University of New York (FUNY), a 1960s experiment in radical education, this exhibition combines original archival documents from FUNY as well as from related projects, including Alternate U. and the Freedom Schools movement, to explore what it means to have a space for community at the intersection of learning, art and politics.
In our current moment, when the price of education amounts to crippling student debt and underemployment is a reality for even the most qualified post-secondary graduates, Free Education! aims to generate conversation about what it looks like to reimagine possibilities for education.
This exhibition includes an audio component featuring dialogue based on the transcripts of interviews with former participants of the Free University of New York and Alternate U recorded in 2017 and 2018. Interviewees include Susan Sherman, David McReynolds, Stanley Aronowitz, AB Spellman, Keith Brooks, Norman Fruchter, Robert Machover, Miriam Frank, Sue Simensky and Joe Berke. We are grateful to them for their generosity in sharing of their life stories. Additional material in the exhibition is made available through Susan Sherman, Keith Brooks, Perry Brass, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, and PETT archive. The exhibit curators hope that this exhibition will recognize and honor the legacy of David McReynolds, war resister and Free University lecturer, 1930 – 2018.
Read more information on our website.
|
|
|
|
|
|
