Nov 24 - Deborah's tutorial - D&F team.

New Social Media and the G20

This group began by having us line up as detainees in an re-enactmactment of what happened during the G20 arrests. We were not allowed to communicate with each other and we were advised as to what we had been charged with. For food we were given a cracker and a drink, quietly we returned back to our seats. It evoked the intended reaction of uneasiness.
The group talks about how we are inundated with information and naturally we get confused and find it difficult to be critical about what information we are getting. Connecting with ourselves in order to better connect with others was a point that was made by the group. So, we participated in the bowing ritual as written out in a post below.
Many websites and groups were mentioned with regard to social justice issues and who has access. Please refer to the post below with numerous links to fantastic websites.

Community Solidarity Network

Taking it Global

SmartMeme

Vidoes to inspire:

G20

TED Talk - Ben Cameron

Also:

DIY Augmented Reality Exhibition

Red Libre Red Visible

Clay Shirky TED Talk

Peter Gabriel TED Talk

*Tech difficulties resulted in some photos being lost.  Our apologies! Teodora is missing from photos above. Sorry Teo!

Nov. 24 Bowing ritual from Deborah's tutorial D & F team

“The art of meditation is deeply rooted in ancient spiritual paths, yet it is equally relevant and transforming for people today…the central message of meditation is not bound by religion, culture or time.” - Christina Feldman…


“We bow in discipline through our spiral of Five Directions to seal attention from the inner and outer worlds thus integrating awareness as intention, breathing in feeling, feet to head, one body moving but still at centre:

o We turn to the East, awakening to rising sun by feeling strength within my whole body, accepting today as my gift from all those living before me.

We bow to the East!

o We turn to the South, seeing not walls but touching the intense roots of self as vibrant energy, recognizing life as the spark igniting the fire within.

We bow to the South!

o We turn to the West, gazing on setting sun: daily promise of our certain future death which marks the final pouring of all our actions, breath and energy into those lives coming after us. We bow to the West!

o We turn to the North, sensing our world beyond words both within and without time, under stars, sun, moon, dark matter spiralling overhead. My flaming spirit refuses to give up on anyone (including me) and faces challenge at any time.

We bow to the North!

o We separate down the Centre circling into our symmetrical whole, seeing the mirror of our attention balancing in each other’s eyes, while breathing life and our best energies into our companions to encourage us together toward exercising our best efforts as a team.

o I dare you to awaken your whole self and to challenge me to do so now. I bow to my Others at the Centre from my centre!



My body is light! I am light! You are light! She is light! He is light! We are light! I’m alive, we’re alive! We can change the world!

We chart our path to happiness with this light compass, training ourselves to face life as it is in all its forms with open heart, calm breath, clear mind, awake spirit, and alive body igniting the fire within. Let us move now to create our best destiny in real peace. May our healing deeds illuminate the lives of all others and end suffering to create awakening as true peace! Calm, ready and sharing light, let us exit laughing.

“In silence lies the ability to listen; to listen to ourselves, to others and to the One. Listening is a lost art. Without it we cannot communicate, we cannot relate to each other and so we cannot live life meaningfully. We need to learn to listen. Sitting in silence allows us to listen to ourselves and to understand. This silence can heal. The worries, the pain can be healed when we listen. Spiritual medicine is ever-present in the soul. Whenever we need it, to whatever extent we need it, we can find it within.” - Innerspace

November 24 - New Social Media and the G20: The Revolution Online - Maggie's Tutorial

The lecture opened with a samba squad YouTube video, a prime example of one of the many ways in which social media can be used to spread a message. The lecture continued with a brief look at some of the main themes brought up in the readings and YouTube videos for the week. We explored the use of new social media in building community and social movements (Shirky) and considered the difference between alternative media and autonomous media (Uzelman).

Alternative media attempts to change mainstream media content. An example would be independent broadcasters.

Autonomous media tries to create more democratic forms of communication media. An example would be the creation of an open forum.

New media is a different tool which can be used to challenge power relations which focus on the professional expert and exclude the everyday person from contributing. This challenge can be at a local, provincial, national or even global scale.

Breaking into smaller groups we looked up social media coverage of the G20. Each group had one of three social media tools, Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.

A panel comprised of Farah, Tim and Hassan, all organizers in different capacities of G20 protest facilitation, and documentation addressed some of the finer points of different social media.

Leading up to G20 social media was used to build new relationship, and make new connections, even as Toronto police were using media to create fear, telling people to stay out of Toronto and to frame the potential protests as police versus protestors. Toronto Mobilization, one of the organizations involved in the protests attempted to reframe the potential protests as the G20 versus the people and build hype around the event with the use of social media.

The draw backs of the type of reframing that was done was that it lacked a singular message which means very few people responded to it. The use of social media helped to raise awareness of the movement involving people superficially but failing to inspire action in many. Social media like twitter and Facebook are powerful because they allow almost anyone to have a voice to communicate with a broad public the risk in this is the spread of misinformation and in the case of the G20 the spread of paranoia. The panellists identified the use of social media leading up to, during, and following the G20 as only the tip of the iceberg.

In Maggie’s tutorial the presenting group brought fruits and vegetables for the snack, red and green peppers, broccoli, grapes, carrots and cucumbers, and asked each of us to use toothpicks to create a veggie protestor complete with an issue we feel strongly about on a paper sign.

Meanwhile the group wrote quotes from a variety of media sources on the board and asked us to identify the ones we thought came from mainstream media, alternative media and autonomous media.

As a group we identified problems with mainstream media as well as alternative and autonomous media. Some of the questions which came up were:

Mainstream media often lacks context. Does YouTube give context?

Does a synthesis of different media types offer better context?
Social media too offers a biased perspective of issues. Can any media ever be unbiased if all people have inherent biases?

Following our discussion of social media we broke up into our peer reviewing triads and went over the feedback and review of the final paper drafts.

November 17th - Deborah's Tutorial

With no design and facilitating group this week Deborah had the group participate in an interesting activity. We were split into groups, three each, and told to have a silent conversation using only a piece of paper and a marker. There was also one interpreter set to each group to attempt to disect and translate this silent conversation. The topic up for discussion surrounded the lecture themes and more specifically our relationship to animals and the dynamics and confinments birthed by this relationship. Salmon was the main topic. The ReAction Paper Questions were intended to stimulate and focus the conversation.

Connecting/Callaborating with the earth and Festivals for Eco Art and Environmental Justice

Wednesday's lecture was dedicated to the environmental pioneer Rachel Carson.

The opening ritual was the singing of a song composed from the words of Rachel Carson's historical redefining book, SILENT SPRING.

Deb was accompanied by four classmates in leading the singing with the class joining in.

Before Deb began addressing the topics on the agenda, Genevive reminded the class about the upcoming Eco Art Festival. To find out more about participating, click on the eco art link below.

                                                                                

                                          Here are some pictures of the Eco Art Festival.

                                              www.yorku.ca/ecoart/About_the_Festival.ht

Deb then began the lecture.

She spoke about reduction and regeneration, nature as resource and community verses nature as self organizing and independent living entities and used these pictures to highlight the issues.

As these pictures shows, we are all connected to this earth that we call home. For this planet to keep on sustaining us, we have to reduce our polluting of it, for regeneration to keep on happening.

The way to survival  is to see ourselves in a communal relationships with nature and thus help to affect and effect change. 

The key concepts of the lecture were then pointed out.

Throughtout the course we are told about the power of dominant narratives (hegemony) and the stories in the lecture today is about finding and exploring alternative ways to tell the stories that have not yet been told. 

                               

As Deb continues to point out, we have to find new stories to counteract the old ones that marginalizes, divides and leave us feeling powerless.

As is known, the weekly readings are discussed in tutorials but here is a picture of the Salmon Tales banners with the creators standing beside their work.

It was now time to meet our panalist and hear their stories. Here are the question guidelines from which they were to base their presentations.

The first presention was by Sabrina Malach, a graduate of York U. She spoke about the Pollinator Festival in Toronto, of which she is the founder. Her festival highlights the critical issues facing the bee's population and considering the important role bees play in helping plants to grow, this seems to be an overlooked issue of great importance. 

Sabrina spoke about getting her start from working on a farm with honey bees and then discovering all the different types of bees that existed. For an activist to be efficient there has to be cash flow to offset the demands of the job. Sabinna considers loosing out on grants that would help her impliment stratigies from her ideas, as a low point in trying to create projects. However being awarded the pollinator advocate award for Canada this year is a high point and allowed her to fuel the fire to keep on doing inspiring work.

One of the many creations made by our very own classmate Charmaine

beeattitudes.igmagogon.org/wordpress/?tag=sabrina-malach

                                                                 

The next presenter was Melanie Skene who was speaking about her festival in Hamilton called Solus Community Earth Vison Festival. Melanie who is also a graduate of York U focuses on changing people perception of garbage and challenging the elitist notion of what is art.  It is all about people coming togather to celebrate and create spectacle. Melanie's vision is for people to move and dance, to find ways to keep in touch with the locals and to celebrate the local context of life.

Here are some pictures of the parade.

For Melanie, when planning something like a street performance or parade, it has got to be taken in consideration that you will not be able to control everything that is going to happen. However the joy of engaging people, whether it  is those who volunteer or the ordinary citizen at the the festival, is the real reward. The very notion that people are intersted in knowing about what is happening and also wanting to participate is exactly the motivation she needs to keep her festival going.

www.manyhandsart.org/index.php?...article...solus-community-earth...festival...solus-festival.

The final presenter was Camille Turner who spoke about Socially Engaged Art. Camille who is currently a student of York U, has been engaged in using performance art and technology to challenge hegomonic structures both in canada and  internationally. She is the face behind the socially constructed Miss Canadiana, the girl next door, depending on which side of the fence your house is on :) 

Here are some pictures of Camille in her various incarnations.

For Camille, the great promise of what this country can be, will never be achieved if the horistorical turths are not acknowledged. History as recorded from a Canadian prospect needs to be explored so that every person can truly undserstand, when they make the declaration of being a proud Canadian what that really means. She also took us on an historical journey from the meaning of the word Toronto, to the vibrant black settlement that once existed around the College and Agusta neighbourhood of which all that remains is a placque marking a spot.

In closing she reminded us of hegemony again, of whose history is celebrated and whose is negated. Also if venturing into the field of performance art,  knowing your subject explicitly and throughly  is key.  

http://www.misscanadiana.ca/cc/

citizenshift.org/miss-canadiana-comes-halifax

End Of Lecture

Tutorial

This week since there was no presentations Kim had the class dicuss the readings. The class was broken up into groups of threes and each group had to choose one question, discuss it and then write answers to the questions. The replies were picked up by Kim with any added questions aboout the essay. The class was then adjourned for another week.



November 10th Deborah's tutorial - design and facilitation team

A thoughtful presentation in our tutorial courtesy of Stephanie, John, Sarah and Michael on reclaiming public space.  It was a rich with many elements.  The group opened with a video about the public space intervention called Free Dance Lessons that took place on Toronto streets and in subway stations.  The group then provided us with a ritual in which we could reclaim public space that advertisers have taken from us.  We were provided with the McDonalds golden arches logo and also a wall of course kits covers that we were able to graffiti.

We all had a hand in reclaiming these adverisments and re representing them

Some student comments were recorded while they were engaged in the process...

"I'm into it"

"Overwhelming, I don't know where to start.  We rarely have this opportunity to make things our own and I don't know what to do when I do have the opportunity."

"I love it, I love it.  I feel  like a rebel, I feel free."

"Swell!"

"I'm happy and hungry...this is so fun. It's such a good idea."

"This is soooo fun and engaging.  It's really nice to be expressive and artistic in the middle of a day of lectures."

"Ba da ba ba baaaa...I'm lovin' it (laughing)"

Delicious food was purchased by the group when they went to Evergreen Brick Works farmers market.  This is a "large-scale example of reclaiming space." Click link below for much more detail.

Evergreen Brick Works

(pumpkin pie credit goes to Samay.) :-)

The concluding activity was called The Walls.  One wall in the class was labeled 'agree' and the opposite wall labeled 'disagree'.  The following 3 statements were read and we were to situated ourselves either at one end or the other, or somewhere in between according to how much we agreed or disagreed. 

·         I think that what happens in public spaces should be regulated by the municipal government.

·         I think anyone should be able to plant vegetables or fruit in public space.

·         I think graffiti should only happen in designated areas.

To visually see where other stood on these issues in relationship to our own views was thought provoking. Discussion ensued.