alt.SPACE meeting (Saturday, June 30): finalize July events outline

• Who's available to meet at Basekamp on Saturday?
• Who's available to for a phone call on Saturday?
• Who's not available at all on Saturday? For these people, if you haven't posted your thoughts about the overall structure of the events outline, then let's talk to one another today or tonight by phone: LINK TO WORKGROUP PHONE NUMBERS

• This will be the last Philadelphia workgroup meeting to finalize the outline of events for July's program.
• Arrive at a schedule, and send out our own a poster with that schedule to our mailings lists, press, etc. (normally we would promote more in advance, but this will be a more spontaneous project, and will last for an entire month, so we should probably put up posters, get a 1-day turnaround postcard printed, and plaster Philadelphia's schools, bars, cafes, telephone poles, etc, with info about the events).

Please add other goals for this meeting if you've got 'em!

Hi everyone,

Here are some of the main points from Saturday's meeting, as taken from Christine's notes (she's on vacation and unable to post these herself).

Some background:

• it's important to focus communications on the forum since people are sort of all over the place

• summary of alt.SPACE project:

a network of artist research groups
focus of events is to be aligned with these groups
notions of "alternative space": alternative uses or ideas of space
London is also using the theme "The Radical and the Revolutionary"

• event ideas:

we can dedicate to the 24 hour conference, July 28-29
using underground space (concourse)
train ride
setting up a meeting in a non-meeting place

The specific events we discussed doing were the following:

• underground soccer game (in the concourse)
• "business class" train meeting while traveling through north philly, during which we make diagrams mimicking sports plays (you know, with x's and o's and arrows) that can then be applied to the soccer game
• "lobby-ing": meeting and fountain bathing (this might just mean sitting around the fountain or something else tamer than actual bathing -- to be determined) in a hotel lobby (probably the ben franklin)
• office chairs -- critical mass rolling down the street --> this has been scratched off the list because we did not get the chairs
• 24 hour conference -- talking with mouth full and other forms of bad etiquette

We also decided that it is important to provide a conceptual framework for these events, especially because of the festival's emphasis on art and research. Thus, we should find some readings that fit the themes of each event and suggest them to each other. These can be in the form of texts, specific writers, blurbs, articles, films, books, t.v. references, etc. These don't have to be particularly long or dense, but something interesting to look at, think about, and discuss in tandem with the events. Some preliminary suggestions:

• Georges Bataille -- wrote a lot about sports (football [i.e. soccer] in particular)
• theories of personal space
• theories of hospitality and hosting vs. guest
• etiquette
• optimism
• diagramming
• sport
• the act of spectatorship
• theories of participation
• participatory consumption

It would be really really great if everyone could get a list of of suggested "readings" together as soon as possible and send this list to the group (if it's easiest, you can send it to me and I can then forward it to everyone). I can also help find something you might have in mind.

Finally, here are the strongly suggested dates for the events:

• July 7: Lobbying
• July 14: Training (train ride)
• July 21: Playing (soccer game)
• July 28: 24 Hour Press Conference

Note: These are all Saturdays. If a bunch of us think that for some reason another day of the week would be better for any of these, the dates can change (and, of course, it will probably always be the case that not everyone can attend every single event). We have to figure this out right away, though, so let us know.

That's the gist of things. Please post any feedback, thanks.