profile in discourage

Maybe organizers for Art Basel Miami Beach, or Miami Basel Art Beach, or whatever it's called, got wind of a rumor of occupation:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/artintheair/2011/11/29/occupy-movement-to-take-over-art-basel-miami-beach/#.TtUmgAhtT1w.facebook

Portrait of my brother, who was never conceived.

This is the time of year when New York artists and dealers migrate South to suck at the teats of the one percent. You can't be a revolutionary artist and behave that way. Occupy Art Basel Miami Beach, I say, put up a tent city and call it Powhidaville and sell your Neo-Outsider art at affordable prices to art lovers of the 99% who want to identify themselves with The Movement.

self portrait 11 27 11

November 15, 2011. After early morning eviction by the NYPD, OWS gathered at Duarte Plaza and waited for permission to enter a walled-in area owned by Trinity Church (a few didn't wait and were arrested). After a judge ruled that the eviction violated a court order, we marched back to Zuccotti.

Occupy Colonial Williamsburg
Occupy Wall Street

variations on a theme

What have we come to see here?
What has attracted us, we tourists and onlookers?
A spectacle?
Guerrilla theater on a global stage?




Liberated Zuccotti Park has become more like a street fair.
This "WE OCCUPY" sign is a painting on canvas. I asked if it was for sale and was told No. But one of the men holding it gave me his card and said he has similar paintings that he is selling.



Other items on display were more clearly merchandise. I bought a button and a refrigerator magnet with the Alternative Economy symbol from this couple, but I was really paying them to take their picture. They said they commute some distance. A few weeks ago they might have been selling I Heart NY shirts or 9/11 souvenirs in front of the World Trade Center. Maybe its not official OWS merch, but its an independent business that is as legitimate as anything I've ever done to make a living.




There are also more experimental approaches toward an evolution of a new economy beyond capitalism. Time's Up, the "NYC Direct Action Environmental Organization," rode in with bicycle-powered generators after OWS generators were confiscated by the City.
A store that seems inspired by the San Francisco Diggers. OWS is very much a grandchild of the Diggers, and could be understood as having set up up a free frame of reference that anyone can step through (read Ringolevio by Emmett Grogan, if you haven't already).





The original American counter culture is the indigenous culture of Turtle Island, represented here by the American Indian Movement, which was started in 1968 (Read In The Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiessen, if you haven't already). I asked this gentleman if I could take pictures. I like this slice of bread with OWS written on it. This is where I took a picture of the mandalic AIM logo that was the starting point of a piece I'm making.

If the piece I'm making turns out I want to give it away.

Do you want it?

update

You
create your own religion,
create your own logos, and
write your word of a god, and
imagine you are the image of a god
you imagine you
Are.

Ideograms at Occupy Wall Street on the American Indian Movement table, Liberty Park yesterday.