darlings,

i miss you. i wish you were here. i went to a really unlawful panel discussion today at SKOL. (That’s where An Atlas was just up.) the panels are part of a six day workshop organized by gina badger, adrienne mak and amy novak — true unlawful darlings each. they’re thinking about borders, varieties of borders–cracks, gaps, interfaces– and something they call “third space” created at borders.

their “third space” was kind of vague. from what i gathered, it would be property of the Konunga Rikena Elgaland-Vargaland, which, you know, in 1992, annexed:

i – All border frontier areas between all countries on earth, and all areas (up to a width of 10 nautical miles) existing outside all countries’ territorial waters. We designate these territories our physical territory.

ii – Mental and perceptive territories such as: the Hypnagogue State (civil), the Escapistic Territory (civil), and the Virtual Room (digital)

we didn’t figure out what the third space is or may be in the panel today, or even spend all that much time discussing it. what we ended up talking about was THEFT. (how unlawful!) todays panelists were noemi, michelle lacombe (who doesn’t have a website), and ben from incubate.

noemi spoke of her public intervention work, vulnerability, surprise. there was a lovely project (but not very unlawful) with strangers kissing on the street and (a bit more unlawful) a video where she was spying on cops playing football. ben talked about how incubate redirects resources from universities and the non-profit industrial complex towards their projects. he described incubate as getting beyond the limitations of an oppositional or subversive position. they very much were getting out of an oppositional position, but that seems precisely what subversion is, no?

it was michelle who really put theft on the table. she calls her work “petty theft;” some people gave her flack that she called it petty, but i thought it was amazing that she called it theft at all, since theft is usually an accusation, not a proclamation. (one proclaims that they are liberating, appropriating, “giving”, using, reclaiming–not stealing. one is accused of stealing.) what does she steal? clothes? lipstick? no, she steals notes. from the garbage. she studies people’s handwriting and writes notes to herself, from them in their handwriting.

identity theft.

tomorrow i’m going to leave some notes in the garbage. i hope she writes herself a letter from me someday.

see you next week! do we have any shows to suggest?

love,
lex