In these projects, radio is a prosthetic technology that transmits the physical world into the space of electronic communications and materializes the vast space of electromagnetic resources into something material and physically apprehensible. In so doing, it forces a confrontation with and contestation of the rules that govern and control the use of both spaces, positioning radio for creative interventions in manifold public spaces – not only those we inhabit with our bodies, as much of the best public art does, but also those we inhabit with our passions, our excesses, our energies, and our speech.

The new minister of culture, education and sports, Jose Ignacio Wert has stated “We will have to do more with less. There will be less culture of the subvention… One of our first priorities will be to develop the patronage law” has quoted by the newspaper El Mundo.

So it appears that if culture is to continue to proser in Spain it will largely be through private sponsorship. The incoming rightist party PP will in general seek to privatize, cut social spending and allow the markets to prosper… Once again, Friedman’s formula for a neoliberal economy will be the solution to Spain’s economic problems. Following the collapse of the Lehman Brothers, irresponsibility of banks and the recent economic collapse, I simply can not understand this. I can understand Spaniards being frustrated by the previous prime minister and the Socialist party’s inability to make economic reform, but to elect a strongly neoliberal party in its place?

Who is the vandal - the bank or those effected by predatory bank loans?

During my current stay in Madrid, I am two blocks from a branch of “la Caixa” – “currently the leading savings bank in Spain and the third largest financial entity in the country” – according to their website. Over the last couple weeks, new stickers have appeared on the bank’s window facade. Old stickers announce a June 19th demonstration and states “The plazas and the streets are ours… VIOLENCE IS TO CHARGE 600 EUROS”. New stickers declare “LET IT BE KNOWN, THIS BANK LIES AND STEALS AND THROWS PEOPLE FROM THEIR HOMES” and links to “Plataforma Afectados por La Hipoteca Mdrid” a blog for those effected by Madrid mortgages. There’s another sticker not pictured that presents four CEOs with nicknames and their salaries. Whereas the bank ads on the window state “Tranquility… that is what I ask of my pension plan…”

Meanwhile, “la Caixa” funds the magnificent CaixaForum Madrid the architecturally amazing cultural and social center that reflects the bank’s social cause. It’s entirely free to visit and features the vertical garden below on the facade of an apartment building across from its entrance.

CaixaForum Madrid, Vertical Garden - the social work of the large bank

The complexities of the capitalist economy… does this beautiful and “free” cultural center make up for the injustice felt by many thousands who are experiencing economic hardship?

What will happen to edgy cultural centers such as El Matadero that is currently publicly funded, when private money is its only lifeline?

Currently the feature exhibitions at CaixaForum are “Delacroix (1798-1863) and “The Persistence of Geometry” featuring a long list of well established artists such as Bruce Nauman, Donald Judd, Dan Graham, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Mario Merz, Robert Smithson… Whereas El Ranchito, the latest program at Matadero Madrid focuses on work by young artists with a social agenda. Would CaixaForum ever feature the art of a young large collective Todo por la praxis? Or the very difficult work of Sally and Gabriela Gutiérrez Dewar who have worked with squatters to realize their work at El Ranchito? Or will art work presented at Spanish cultural centers be reduced to safely historicized pieces that exist in the collections of the bank and its board members?

On December 8th, I made a withdrawal from a Capital One ATM in NYC where I live. That evening, I boarded a plane to Madrid, Spain with my family. We arrived in the morning and needed Euros, so I went to an airport ATM in the Madrid airport and withdrew a 100 euros that added up to a $133 dollars. We went to Madrid due to work and immediately started working. I did not check my Capital One account for three days due to work.

On the morning of December 12th, I tried to withdraw money from a bank ATM. My Capital One card told me that I had withdrawn over the limit for the day. Later that day, when I had a computer available, I checked my Capital One account. There was fraudulent activity on my account.

On the same day that I withdrew a 100 euros in Madrid that was December 9th, someone in NYC withdrew $500 from my Capital One saving account three times from two different ATMs – 993 2ND Avenue, New York, NY and 10 East 34th Street, New York, NY. They also withdrew from my Capital One checking account $303 on December 9th at 993 2nd Avenue. Capital One did absolutely nothing, although separately I withdrew $133 from an ATM in Madrid, Spain.

On December 12th, when I checked my account, more withdrawals were in process. Two withdrawals at $500, two withdrawals at $403 and one withdrawal at $503 all from NYC. I called Capital One, and spoke with someone to stop these withdrawals and was told that nothing could be done because they were in process and I could not file a complaint about them until they were processed. Meanwhile my account went into the red.

I’ve dealt with several banks through my life. And most banks have some security in place to stop withdrawals at the limit, particularly when withdrawals are being drawn via debit card from two different parts of the world. Meanwhile Capital One allowed $4,112 to be withdrawn on December 9th and on December 12th. During all this time I am in Spain. After talking with a representative at Capital One, I’m told that I must sign an affidavit to have the money from the fraudulent activity put into my accounts. I can not sign the affidavit because they can not fax it internationally or email it to me.

The following week, a paycheck was direct deposited into my savings account. I needed to pay my mortgage, so I moved money into my checking account so that I could pay my mortgage. Unfortunately nearly all the money that I moved went to balancing the negative amount in my checking account due to the fraudulent activity that Capital One did not protect me from. And then on top of that they took money for overdraft – $35 three times! So now, I can’t sign the affidavit, I can’t pay my mortgage, I can’t pay any bills and my credit is going to hell because Capital One sucks!!!

The goal of the project is to introduce mobile carts to food vendors in Madrid where they will place food that will otherwise be discarded as trash. Due to the high level of unemployment in Spain, dumpster diving is not uncommon. The desire is to present a system that will facilitate the reclamation of discarded food.

Here in NYC, Brooke and I have been researching food waste from supermarkets and in general the systems in place to salvage food. Questions we’ve been asking include: What goes to organization such as City Harvest? What stores participate in food redistribution? What becomes landfill leading to methane and greenhouse gas? So we decided to consult an expert. Joel Berg has devoted much of his career to eradicating hunger in the United States. We asked him if food reclamation at the supermarket level is a worthwhile endeavor. Below is the initial sequence from our interview. Shortly I will post more edits.

untitled slime moulds by Dan Baker is a beautiful animation of mold surviving

Although I have mixed feelings about my work in the show, projected in the back room and documented below, I was flattered to be part of a thoughtful and compelling exhibition that thematically stemmed from Félix Guatarri’s “Three Ecologies”. The beginning of the video “El Rito Apasionado” is available online.

Rear gallery with "El Rito Apasionado" projected onto rear wall.

Miguel Soares, Place in Time from migso on Vimeo.

And below is a textual contribution by the Chilean artist Ignacio Nieto.

Text contribution by Ignacio Nieto

I live with a three-year-old boy named Iggy in a household that does not have a television. Iggy has never seen a movie, and yet he recently demanded to be Lightning McQueen for Halloween. Over the past year, he referred to Lightning McQueen and the characters from Disney’s “Cars” merely as “Halloween Cars”. He did not know the names of the individual characters or that they were from a movie. Iggy only knew that he had seen many young children dressed up as “Halloween Cars” last Halloween when he was two. And since then he has observed toys, billboards, posters, books, magazines, lunch boxes, caps, t-shirts, backpacks, folders, bags, stickers, balloons, banners, flags presenting the image of Lightening McQueen or some other character from “Cars”. And then he visited his cousins in Connecticut, two boys, ages three and five that live with a 36-inch television that presents hundreds of cable channels. They regularly log extended periods of time in front of this television. Since that visit, he knows the name Lightning McQueen and would like to know the names of other characters, particularly the tow truck. He has developed a small obsession with “Cars”, a movie he has never seen. From the moment of conception onward, we are all subject to the phantasmagoria of commodity capitalism. It swirls all around us, captivates our imaginations, seduces our senses and consumes years of our lives. At times it can be stimulating and good, but for the most part it is noise, bad noise, not the type of noise that takes you on a voyage, rather the type of noise that conjures ambivalence.

Currently, my partner and I are learning about schools for our son. Iggy is two years from kindergarten, however New York City is over saturated with children, so a parent must inform oneself as early as possible. There are not enough schools to properly serve kids and it is getting worse every year. I have recently learned a very important term regarding schooling – “entry point”. There are primary entry points to school – these are the years of a child’s life when there are the most seats available to gain entry into a school. A primary entry point into public schools is Pre-K – age 4. According to one friend younger siblings of kids already attending a given school largely take that entry point. So the next large entry point, because a class or two are added is kindergarten at which point in the public school system Iggy is entitled to a seat in his school district. Of course the problem then becomes overcrowded classrooms and poor learning environments, not to mention the goal to keep moving the kids along through examination and exam training.

Besides the general public school system, there are charter schools and private schools. Both charters and private schools proclaim small classes, individual attention and alternative methods to various degrees. Private schools near my home range from $25k-$30k per year for pre-k through elementary school. Charter schools are publicly financed but independently run and free to experiment in classrooms. I believe that charter schools prosper through the financial and personal intervention of parents. Generally, I do not believe that a low-income parent has the means to financially or personally intervene in a child’s school. I may be mistaken, but I tend to consider charter schools as the privatization of the public school system.

To a large extent I agree with Guattari’s “Three Ecologies”. Remarks against Integrated World Capitalism (IWC) resonate with me. I agree that

(Confronting IWC) will not come about through centralized reform, through laws, decrees and bureaucratic programs, but rather though the promotion of innovatory practices, the expansion of alternative experiences centered around a respect for singularity, and through the continuous production of an autonomizing subjectivity that can articulate itself appropriately in relation to the rest of society.

However, I am left wondering how bourgeois must we become to afford our son a good education. An education that will help provide the weapons to defend himself against the phantasmagoria of commodity capitalism through critical thinking and a nuanced perception of our society.

Occupy Wall Street, October 5th 2011, Labor March. Iggy protesting on my shoulders. Photographed by Valerie Tevere

Dev Harlan – “Parmenides I”, 2011 from Dev Harlan on Vimeo.

JPMorgan Chase recently donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police Foundation. The gift was the largest in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police Department to strengthen security in the Big Apple. The money will pay for 1,000 new patrol car laptops, as well as security monitoring software in the NYPD’s main data center.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly sent CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon a note expressing “profound gratitude” for the company’s donation.
“These officers put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe,” Dimon said. “We’re incredibly proud to help them build this program and let them know how much we value their hard work.”