Dinner at Zagreus. Best €36 I’ve ever spent. Every bite was so delightful. Zagreus is an art gallery owned by a chef. Every exhibit inspires a meal, collaboratively co-designed with the artist. This time, the show was by a group of students in product design. The table, napkin, lighting, and servingware for each course were designed by different groups and Chef Ulrich Krauss invented fabulous flavors for each aesthetic experience. The serviceware was so compelling […read the rest]
1. Why Street Protest
• a fundamental right and contribution to democracy is to express our dissent
• collective manifestation of dissent creates news, encourages others, threatens elites
• the way to win (reforms) is to raise the costs of the current way of doing things until it becomes in the interests of the elites to do it our way
• threat/promise to take over
Lecture to the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 5 February 2015.
Historical evidence insists that oppression on its own does not produce social movement reaction. In places with little culture of resistance, there will be little social movement reaction to social problems, or occasional outbursts may not be sustained. San Francisco has had, regularly and recently over the last decades, a series of effective and sustained street manifestations, so there are people, organizations, networks, systems, etc. to make the next ones bigger and more robust.
If Disneyland had a farm (and they probably do} it would be The Grounds. It’s farm aesthetic as money machine. And swarming with spenders sucked in by the latest gimmick, an urban farm. It’s definitely got a lot of landscaping. Mostly flowers. The kale has gone to seed and the vegetable area does not appear to be tended or harvested. Certainly the planting is not organized to maximise on-site food production. There are farm animals. […read the rest]
So what is the cosmology of food sovereignty? Food is a community, not a commodity… But how do we turn this idea into culture? Alberto Melucci explains how it is that we create culture… through creating new spaces, identities, meanings, identities, commitments….
Lecture to “Plants and the Environment” course, University of Sydney, 7 October 2014.
Bibliography with notes about readings mentioned in the lecture. Alternatives need to focus not just on innovating, but on decommodifying and building community.
“Composting and growing carrots is a nice start, but we need to get rid of the growth economy, make the global economic system work to meet needs, and replace capitalism with a different economic system that works for people. Most Green people are stuck at the level of compost heaps, which don’t have a chance of saving us. We don’t want to be a society full of compost heaps heading for disaster. Growing carrots locally is just the first step to changing the economy.”
