Strategies for Public Occupation is an exhibition of ideas that will include seven days of discussions and an Occupy Market. Storefront will host an opening reception on December 16, 2011 from 7 PM to 9 PM.
On October 7, 2011, in response to the Occupy Wall Street movement, Storefront launched a Call for Ideas entitled “Strategies for Public Occupation” which invited submissions from architects, artists and citizens at large to offer their ideas for enabling acts of communication and action between the civil society and the structures of economic and political power. Gathering expertise from the various acts of civil occupation throughout the world during the last months and constrained to one image and one text of maximum 200 words, submissions ranged from the technical to the oneiric. With a prize equivalent to a New World Order , Storefront received more than 100 submissions.
The exhibition presents the submissions delivered to the Call for Ideas and the 7-day marathon of talks, workshops and events brings together a creative force of experts, artists, architects and citizens at large to discuss the current state of affairs in relation to the Occupy movement around the world. The exhibition displays proposals for spatial occupations for public demonstrations and actions in cities throughout the world, and the events aim to identify the limitations and possibilities of tools of production and rethink new ways of cohabitation. All projects submitted will be available for browsing, consolation and distribution as part of the exhibition and through Storefront’s website and archive.
Workshops as part of the exhibition, Strategies for Public Occupation will be led by members of the art, architecture and design community, by lawyers and experts in different fields including engineering and social sciences and members of the community interested in offering different degrees of expertise. While Storefront has invited several experts to participate in the discussions, in synchrony with the Occupy movement, Storefront welcomes anyone willing to participate in the discussions in an active manner and interested persons should contact Storefront by sending an e-mail with the subject “participation” and brief description of their interest and expertise to info@storefrontnews.org. Themes for discussion include the following:
December 16. Opening. 7pm. Manifesto Series 08. Occupy
Exhibition opening with the presentation of 10 manifestos towards Strategies for Public Occupation.
December 17. Urban Action. 12pm-6pm
Six hours of presentations and performances engaging with historical material and current practices in relation to urban interventions that defy established modes of engagement.
December 18. Food for thought. Paella Series 3.0 Alternatives/ 12pm-6pm
Taking food as a space for sharing and community building the Paella Series 03 will be an open event performance at Storefront where people will be able to converse and discuss ideas in a state of distraction enabled by food consumption and sharing.
December 19. Representation: Laws & Maps. 12pm-6pm
To understand the possibility of action one needs to be able to delimit the margins of the possible. Laws and maps are two of the most relevant documents that guide and constrain the possibilities of action. This session will unveil and produce new laws that allow citizens to empower actions beyond inherited parameters.
December 20: Mediums: Images, Newspapers, Blogs,... 12pm-6pm
From projections to posters to protester signs, different mediums and design strategies have been used as mediums and as messages to communicate different strategies of protest. This workshop will allow the public to develop visual material, from video projections to posters that will be included within the exhibition and on display throughout the day.
December 21: Architecture. 12pm-6pm
From the camps and structures created in the various cities’ occupy sites to the very architectures on Wall Street that symbolically embody the existing societal
structures that have inspired the movements, architecture is an enabling and constitutive force. This day will be dedicated to discuss what is the role of architecture and urban design in the envisioning a world order that differs from existing canonical forms of inhabitation.
December 22: Occupy Presents.12pm-6pm
As the last day of the exhibition, Storefront will house a series of real scale prototypes that function as strategies for urban occupation. From shelters, to posters, to chairs for urbanity, to occupy holiday postcards, to do it yourself manuals, visitors to the gallery will be able to take these presented objects as presents.