We're having a crack at taking over a stage on the new BBC 3 programme upstaged. We're focusing on recruiting 2 million people to be more friendly to each other on journeys and generally around the place, but we'll also be getting up to some good psychogeography guerrilla fun. We'd be delighted to here your ideas and even more delighted if you would sign into the Upstaged website, become our fan, vote for our video and get us unto the show!
http://upstaged.external.bbc.co.uk/We're+going+to+change+Britain.
If you're a geographer and have something to bring to the stage do let us know at guerrillageography@gmail.com. We need geographers to go out and do some urban exploration, attempt to be friendly to the public and speak to us about why it is that some places in the country are just so much more friendly than others....
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
LONDON TORTURE
PART OF THE SPACE EXPLORATION DAY
As Sibley has emphasized, ‘outsiders’ cannot be understood in isolation: the interactions between the ‘mainstream’ society and outsiders and the spaces into which each is allowed are important because they are important representations of how we see our selves - in this respect at least the construction of the ‘terrorist’ is no different from the ‘poor’, the ‘homeless’. An identity politics perspective on ‘The War on Terrorism’, therefore, seeks to theorize iconic (as opposed to ‘lived’) Terrorism by basing it not only on the experiences of injustice associated with the identity of those excluded as ‘terrorists’, but on the insight Terrorism gives us into the performed identities of the ‘Just’.
Since the attack on the World Trade Centre, the expansion of a range of highly masculinized terms such as ‘terrorist sympathizers’ and ‘enablers’ has allowed the exclusionary terminology of an Unending War on Terrorism to encroach rapidly on hitherto acceptable forms of civic participation and public behaviour in at least nominally public and democratic spaces, physical and cyber. The immanent, not to say Manichaean properties of a voracious other, Terrorism, have been instrumentalized to urge the necessity for forms of sexualized, priapic behaviour deemed pre-9/11 to be unacceptable (extraordinary rendition (sexual abduction), torture (forced penetration)), raising a number of interesting questions about the public and the private, the acceptable and the unacceptable. As Said put it:
“Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex an interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings.” (Said, 1993: 7)
The current forms of behaviour that are defined as Terrorism are geo-spatial behaviours sanctified in the past as an important part of the national mythology of at least some of the G8 countries and their geo-political allies, leaving one to ask: Is the ‘problem’ of Terrorism less that it is in some way deviant, but that it is mainstream behaviour carried out in deviant geo-political space? Does the deviant nature of this ‘other’ behaviour also intensify performances of sexualised masculinity which allow the private to subordinate the public? Is torture an act in which the deviant terrorist is forced into a submissive, feminized role and malestream liberal democracy can hold up a mirror in which to admire its masculinity?
With these and other interesting questions in mind, Guerilla Geographers will be seeking to invert the norm by performing waterboarding in a number of iconic public spaces in London on March 1st in Russell Sq at 1pm, thus (hopefully) challenging accepted public/private divides, asking the public to comment on and think about the ‘acceptable’ and pushing at the barriers of the legally acceptable versus the privately unaccountable.
NB For those who are unaware of what waterboarding involves, please watch the 10-minute video-clip at http://current.com/pods/controversy/PD04399 of someone being (voluntarily) waterboarded.
Contacts: Jon Cloke and Daniel Raven-Ellison,Co-administrators,
Guerilla Geography
guerrillageography@googlemail.com
As Sibley has emphasized, ‘outsiders’ cannot be understood in isolation: the interactions between the ‘mainstream’ society and outsiders and the spaces into which each is allowed are important because they are important representations of how we see our selves - in this respect at least the construction of the ‘terrorist’ is no different from the ‘poor’, the ‘homeless’. An identity politics perspective on ‘The War on Terrorism’, therefore, seeks to theorize iconic (as opposed to ‘lived’) Terrorism by basing it not only on the experiences of injustice associated with the identity of those excluded as ‘terrorists’, but on the insight Terrorism gives us into the performed identities of the ‘Just’.
Since the attack on the World Trade Centre, the expansion of a range of highly masculinized terms such as ‘terrorist sympathizers’ and ‘enablers’ has allowed the exclusionary terminology of an Unending War on Terrorism to encroach rapidly on hitherto acceptable forms of civic participation and public behaviour in at least nominally public and democratic spaces, physical and cyber. The immanent, not to say Manichaean properties of a voracious other, Terrorism, have been instrumentalized to urge the necessity for forms of sexualized, priapic behaviour deemed pre-9/11 to be unacceptable (extraordinary rendition (sexual abduction), torture (forced penetration)), raising a number of interesting questions about the public and the private, the acceptable and the unacceptable. As Said put it:
“Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex an interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings.” (Said, 1993: 7)
The current forms of behaviour that are defined as Terrorism are geo-spatial behaviours sanctified in the past as an important part of the national mythology of at least some of the G8 countries and their geo-political allies, leaving one to ask: Is the ‘problem’ of Terrorism less that it is in some way deviant, but that it is mainstream behaviour carried out in deviant geo-political space? Does the deviant nature of this ‘other’ behaviour also intensify performances of sexualised masculinity which allow the private to subordinate the public? Is torture an act in which the deviant terrorist is forced into a submissive, feminized role and malestream liberal democracy can hold up a mirror in which to admire its masculinity?
With these and other interesting questions in mind, Guerilla Geographers will be seeking to invert the norm by performing waterboarding in a number of iconic public spaces in London on March 1st in Russell Sq at 1pm, thus (hopefully) challenging accepted public/private divides, asking the public to comment on and think about the ‘acceptable’ and pushing at the barriers of the legally acceptable versus the privately unaccountable.
NB For those who are unaware of what waterboarding involves, please watch the 10-minute video-clip at http://current.com/pods/controversy/PD04399 of someone being (voluntarily) waterboarded.
Contacts: Jon Cloke and Daniel Raven-Ellison,Co-administrators,
Guerilla Geography
guerrillageography@googlemail.com
Saturday, February 9, 2008
LONDON 01.03.08
SPACE EXPLORERS
Taking place on the 1st of March the LONDON Guerrilla Geography event is all about getting people to think differently about space. For a moment in time we're to make walkers in London Space Explorers by making situations in which people are forced to think about their geographies in new ways.
This is an exciting move for Guerrilla Geography and one which we want to open up to all Geographers. As with the Birmingham event, we want to for the public into thinking geographically... as an individual moves through London they might be followed by a roaming (dud) CCTV camera on Oxford Street before being asked to map their naughty memories in Covent Garden. What they meet or are asked to do in other places... we don't know just yet and that is what we'd like to recruit geographers for.
If you have a creative idea for getting people to see their world(s) in new way(s) we'd love to hear from you and then if you wanted... come along on the day to take part in this important event that is pushing out the fringes of geography and making people realise that it is not 'boring'.
Do you have any ideas to get people questioning their space(s)?
Taking place on the 1st of March the LONDON Guerrilla Geography event is all about getting people to think differently about space. For a moment in time we're to make walkers in London Space Explorers by making situations in which people are forced to think about their geographies in new ways.
This is an exciting move for Guerrilla Geography and one which we want to open up to all Geographers. As with the Birmingham event, we want to for the public into thinking geographically... as an individual moves through London they might be followed by a roaming (dud) CCTV camera on Oxford Street before being asked to map their naughty memories in Covent Garden. What they meet or are asked to do in other places... we don't know just yet and that is what we'd like to recruit geographers for.
If you have a creative idea for getting people to see their world(s) in new way(s) we'd love to hear from you and then if you wanted... come along on the day to take part in this important event that is pushing out the fringes of geography and making people realise that it is not 'boring'.
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