“thy life is a flitting state, a tent for a night”
by zunguzungu
When the police bulldozed Occupy Cal’s tents in the hours just before dawn, it sucked. When the library’s books were reclaimed from the dumpsters, students made this:
But it still sucked. There’s something beautiful about that image — and it was a good way to represent in space the feeling that a lot of us were having — but books are meant to be read, and it was hard looking down at the ground all day. And then, an hour before the GA, we all saw this in the sky, courtesy of the School of Architecture:
zunguzungu 
I was just chatting with some friends at UCSC about the trope of the tent. We liked that something that is usually used as a symbol of impermanence and therefore insignificance or even cause for oppression (such as the ancient Jews wandering through the desert in tents, and contemporary nomadic groups like the Bedouin who are greatly oppressed today) has been appropriated to show resistance, commitment, and permanent struggle. It doesn’t even matter if you’re in the tent for practical purposes, as these floating tents, yesterday’s tent inside of Bank of America, and others show. I feel like I could just say the word “tent” to someone and either cause a cheer of solidarity or a police beatdown…
Up!
Saw the photos elsewhere before I got here; of course it -would- be the architecture students, wouldn’t it?-the images are straight out of Archigram’s Instant City project, charged with reformist fervour and given contemporary meaning. Hats off to the people who made it happen.
[…] evening in response to the Thursday morning raid on their encampment in Sproul. Read more at zunguzungu. GA_googleAddAttr("AdOpt", "1"); GA_googleAddAttr("Origin", "other"); […]
[…] Occupy Cal got creative in its circumvention of a campus ban on pitching tents, by floating the tents above Sproul Plaza (photo via Zunguzhungu): […]
I love it!
This Thanksgiving, use real pie to show how much of the economic pie goes to the 1% with this handy Occupie tool.
http://www.tinyurl.com/occupiecrust
such a simple symbol but it got me. and i love the idea of “knowledge tents” – like a snail’s shell full of ideas
I love the floating tents. Beautiful.
All us bloggers who are wisnihg they were closer should meet up virtually.Lots of us have gotten to know Bloggers from your side of the world from past sscs’s. It would be fun meeting together.
beautiful and inspiring!!!!!
[…] And the truth of the matter is that occupation will not eliminate the crime and social rifts that are innate to a population made radically unequal, indebted, and divided against resentful abstractions of itself. A series of tents is not going to end downtown blight, quell gun violence, or end the targeted criminalization and deportation of “extranjeros.” As any women knows, sexual harassment will not end when they leave the walls of the camp and the disenfranchised will not turn in their weapons simply because shelters are constructed, democratic assemblies manifested. A long history of violent appropriation has left us with many concrete legacies, legacies that cannot be simply displaced by portioning out the agency of “violence” between the police and the anarchists, the city and the mob. Figures like Angela Davis and Malcolm X know what it is like to fight over such rhetorical and physical boundaries. What can happen within these enduring human communities is a direct confrontation of these contradictions, which our voided publics have been displacing to well-policed marginal neighborhoods, prisons, and under-funded schools. Occupation is a legitimation of a different kind of human power, one that can address and absorb the roots of these forms of violence. I was part of a march in which quite literally an aggressive man was encircled by fellow protestors chanting “peaceful protest” after he pushed someone to the ground. He was not expelled, but shown what care looks like. I have never seen so much expected from such a transient community. A tent for the night. […]
I really love the flying tents! so good. And I thought you might like the way Occupy Melbourne is playing with tents… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKMwigI3mdM&feature=player_embedded
[…] is a flitting state, a tent for the night” eyewitness account at Occupy Cal by Aaron Bady aka zunguzungu “The Arts of Occupation” interesting and incisive article relating Occupy to Situationist […]
[…] state, a tent for the night” eyewitness account of architecture student actions at Occupy Cal on zunguzungu OWS as a new art form in “The Deal with Occupy Museums” by Paddy Johnson/Art Fag City “The […]
[…] life is a flitting state, a tent for the night”: architecture student actions at Occupy Cal on zunguzungu — OWS as a new art form in “The Deal with Occupy Museums” by Paddy Johnson/Art Fag City […]
I promise to not slap women’s bums’ .-If less piroft were to be made from medicine, less money would be invested in it, and we would see less development. Again, not one-sided.-Freedom of speech is already granted through the internet; it has to be protected, yes, but you can’t hold disdain for corporations expressing their own freedom of speech through the media they own.And so on.If you are promoting facts’, then please, for goodness’ sake, trim this list down to be only those points that we can all agree on. Otherwise, this is just idealist science fiction for whoever gets to decide what goes on the list. 1 0
Play inrvfmatioe for me, Mr. internet writer.
Thanks for that! It’s just the answer I needed.
Your articles are for when it absolutely, positively, needs to be understood overnight.