The Walker Art Center asked a small group of artists for book recommendations in response to the upcoming Trump presidency, here’s a shortlist off the top of my head:

Conflict is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman
Strike Art by Yates McKee
Deep Economy by Bill McKibben
Imagevirus by Gregg Bordowitz
Rebel Cities by David Harvey
Stokely Speaks: from Black Power to Pan-Africanism by Stokely Charmichael (Kwame Ture)
Black Mask & Up Against the Wall Motherfucker: The Incomplete Works of Ron Hahne, Ben Morea, and the Black Mask Group

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

 

The Undercommons Reading Group will be gathering at the shop at 6pm on Saturday, our usual time for the mostpart. As is befitting, we need to talk about Prince, right?

We’ll be reading from Chapter 6, Fantasy in the Hold. Here’s a PDF for you to read if you’d like to join us, or simply as a lens to look through and ponder all things Prince out in the world.

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

Sun, Mar. 6, 2016 ⁄ 4:00–7:00pm

Beyond Repair… We Think we Might be Open Now

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We’ve been open for two months now and we might just be getting the hang of it. So maybe it’s time to host a “grand opening,” right?
Come and see all the titles that have been published in the last two months. Learn about what’s coming up in the near future. What should one expect from such an occasion?
  • We’ll have new work from Fiona Avocado, our first resident within our 9th Ward Publication Residency Program.
  • A new publication from our head librarian at the South Minneapolis Society Library, Lacey Prpic Hedtke, entitled We Believe in Infinite Intelligence, a pocket guide overview of Spiritualism.
  • The first release from Wooden Leg Print & Press and Uncivilized Books co-imprint on utopianism and utopian histories.
  • The grand re-opening of the South Minneapolis Society Library. Get your library card today! Check out books!
  • $2 off your beer at Eastlake Brewery with a purchase a book, $1 off with a purchase of a booklet.
If you haven’t been down to Beyond Repair, here’s your chance to come and say hello, learn about what our hopes for the project are, and imagine what we can build together with your involvement and support.
So far…

  • We’ve hosted Emory Douglas and will be making a book out of our conversation with sales going to create programming and projects addressing the role and conduct of the 3rd precinct within the neighborhood.

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Sean and Sign

 

  • The Undercommons Reading Group has begun to meet each Saturday evening around Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s book The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study.

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  • We’ve devised a “Rent Check” editions project with new artists making work based on our actual rent check each month as a means to sustain Beyond Repair and preserve its autonomy. We released the first Rent Check with an edition by Josh MacPhee in February.

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  • Three groups have begun to emerge (public defenders, food access advocates, and health professionals) all engaging the question, in one form or another, “What does a healthy neighborhood look like?”

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Hope to see you there!

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

Sat, Feb. 13, 2016 ⁄ 6:00–8:00pm

Undercommons Reading Group

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“In this series of essays Fred Moten and Stefano Harney draw on the theory and practice of the black radical tradition as it supports, inspires, and extends contemporary social and political thought and aesthetic critique. Today the general wealth of social life finds itself confronted by mutations in the mechanisms of control: the proliferation of capitalist logistics, governance by credit, and the management of pedagogy. Working from and within the social poesis of life in the undercommons Moten and Harney develop and expand an array of concepts: study, debt, surround, planning, and the shipped. On the fugitive path of an historical and global blackness, the essays in this volume unsettle and invite the reader to the self-organised ensembles of social life that are launched every day and every night amid the general antagonism of the undercommons.”

Can we ethically release ourselves from a social moment that we find reprehensible? What about those we leave behind? Politically, socially, ethically can an individual be in two places at once? How do we live within contradiction and feel empowered, not hypocritical?

The Undercommons Reading Groups meets each Saturday evening from 6 – 8, usually followed with some beers and tacos at Eastlake Craft Brewing.

Free “bootlegged” paperback copies are available at Beyond Repair. For those yet to attend, a PDF is available here.

All levels and interests of inquiry welcome, from the theoretical to the deeply practical and local.

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

I’m thinking about the links between our discussion tonight concerning The Undercommons and my feelings and experiences with the world of “Great Black Music,” the tradition, culture, and pedagogy of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, and its orbit.

What occurs when you move away, not in opposition, but through your own accord? Not a counter to, but “the new thing?”

Real “new things” aren’t linear progressions. While nothing is new, ever, we can achieve “something else.” They are built, mixed together, a composite of the rubble around them. Importantly, some people see rubble where buildings still stand.

So, with the words of Harney / Moten in mind, after sharing a drink with Chaun and Nate after they stopped over at the house, after I put the kids to bed, it seems only fitting to play this cut from Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, as the chorus keeps ringing in my head:

“Got to get myself away from here…

Got to get myself away from here…

Got to get myself away from here…

I gotta to make it right away!”

 

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

Sat, Jan. 30, 2016 ⁄ 6:00–8:00pm

Undercommons Reading Group

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Nate Young: “Hey, Sam, this book is amazing. We should all read it together. I can’t think of anything else lately.”

Sam Gould: “Awesome. How about Saturday?”

THE UNDERCOMMONS READING GROUP

We’ll be reading Stefano Harney and Fred Moten’s The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study at Beyond Repair. We’ll talk, consider how the text applies to present American realities both across the nation, as well as here in MPLS. We’ll take what we can, and see where it leads.

We’ve printed and bound a few hardcopies to begin with. Come early to get your own – FOR FREE. We’re hoping to read the first section before Sat. 30th of January. If you can’t stop over at Beyond Repair to get a copy, here’s a pdf to begin your reading.

· Resident Weirdo· ∞