Thursday, 25 March, 7pm
Red & Black Cafe – 400 SE 12th avenue (at Oak)
www.redandblackcafe.com <http://www.redandblackcafe.com/>

This is Forever: An Exploration of Contemporary Autonomist Politics
An evening with Autonomedia, Minor Compositions and the Team Colors Collective.

Join us for an evening with two autonomist authors and organizers from Portland and London in exploring contemporary politics, the continued imposition of work, current struggles in the University and elsewhere, militant and co-research, and in celebrating the release of their recent books.  In the U.S. and across the planet struggles against enclosures, the dismantling of the University, for public and community space, against “the endless imposition of work”, and against a form of life that is increasingly precarious – are currently taking place.  By “reading” these and neighboring struggles we seek to create a world in which many worlds fit. A discussion on these issues and other topics will follow short talks.

“This is Forever” is a discussion series based in Bluestockings Books (NYC) and currently expanding to other cities around the United States.

Event presenters:
Stevphen Shukaitis | Autonomedia / Minor Compositions. Shukaitis is the author of the recently book Imaginal Machines: Autonomy and Self-Organization in the Revolutions of Everyday Life (Minor Compositions, 2009), an editor at Autonomedia and lecturer at the University of Essex. He is the editor (with Erika Biddle and David Graeber) of Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization (AK Press, 2007). His research focuses on the emergence of collective imagination in social movements and the changing compositions of cultural and artistic labor.  www.autonomedia.org & www.minorcompositions.info.

Kevin Van Meter | Team Colors Collective. As member of the militant research collective, Van Meter has been involved in editing the collectives forthcoming collection Uses of a Whirlwind: Movement, Movements, and Contemporary Radical Currents in the United States (AK Press, 2010), co-authoring Radical Community Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible (Pamphlet, 2010), and has participated in radical community organizing initiatives for more then a decade. www.warmachines.info.

Copies of Imaginal Machines and Radical Community Organizing to Make a Revolution Possible will be available at the event.

As Stevphen writes, “the task is to explore the construction of imaginal machines, comprising the socially and historically embedded manifestations of the radical imagination. Imagination as a composite of our capacities to affect and be affected by the world, to develop movements toward new forms of autonomous sociality and collective self-determination.”

This event also celebrates the recent militant publishing venture of Minor Compositions, a new project dedicated to inquiry into radical and movement histories, autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and revolutions of everyday life, as forms of research militancy useful to present organizing.  More info can be found on thier website – http://www.minorcompositions.info/

The seminar will take place at 16 Beaver: Thursday schedule will be from 5pm  - 8pm.  Friday will be from 12:00pm to 10pm. Saturday, and Sunday will go from 11:00am to 10pm. A sliding scale fee of $25-50 is requested to help defray costs associated with bringing Bifo to NYC, as well as covering food for the 4 days.

Updates and readings are available at the 16 Beaver website here and other queries can be directed to subject [AT] 16beavergroup [DOT] org.