World Social Forum SF event

To: Retort
From: KW
 
[A reminder from Kathy about two WSF-related events this weekend. IB]

On the occasion of the 2008 World Social Forum (WSF), the Global Commons Foundation announces two public events in San Francisco: 
 
The World Social Forum: Past Achievements, Present Dilemmas, and Future Hopes
A community forum with Immanuel Wallerstein and Bay Area activists
Saturday, January 26, the Theater of New College of California, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m.
777 Valencia Street, San Francisco
 
and
 
The Emergency Biennale in Chechnya/ World Tour / Stop 10: San Francisco
Opening reception, Friday, January 25th, 6 – 9 p.m.
PLAySPACE Gallery, California College of the Arts, 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco

 The World Social Forum: Past Achievements, Present Dilemmas, and Future Hopes is a community forum on the WSF, global coalition movements, and local activisms. The event will begin with a keynote address by leading world-systems and anti-systemic movements scholar Immanuel Wallerstein on the World Social Forum in historical perspective, and will be followed by a dozen respondents from the Bay Area representing a range of social justice movements who can speak strongly to the question of local and transnational challenges and possibilities for organizing global coalition networks. Respondents include Walter Turner, Global Exchange: tammy ko Robinson, San Francisco Art Institute; Annie Fukushima, Women for Genuine Security; Andrej Grubacic, Global Balkans and Zmagazine; Ramón Grosfoguel, UC-Berkeley; Iain Boal, Retort Collective; Evelyne Jouanno, Emergency Biennale of Chechnya; Marina Sitrin, New College of California; and Martha Wallner, Media Alliance and Center for Media Justice. Following the respondents the conversation will open up to the whole room.  In addition to being a discussion on the role of the WSF and alter-globalization movements, this gathering will serve as a first encounter among individuals interested in forming a Bay Area Social Forum.  

The World Social Forum (WSF) is an open meeting place where social movements, networks, NGOs and other civil society organizations opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, to formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action. Since the first world encounter in 2001, it has taken the form of a permanent world process seeking and building alternatives to neo-liberal policies. World Social Forums have taken place at the end of January at different sites throughout the world each year for the past seven years, always coinciding with the World Economic Forum in Davos, against which it stands as a protest and an alternative. In 2008, the World Social Forum will consist of decentralized meetings around the world. Millions of people all over the world will march, speak, celebrate, and dialogue in a week of mobilization and a Global Day of Action on January 26th that will testify that the other possible world is already underway and being built all over the globe.

The Emergency Biennale in Chechnya was conceived and organized by independent Paris and San Francisco-based curator Evelyne Jouanno as an echo to the 1st Moscow Biennial and as a reaction to the destruction of a people and culture. Drawing attention to the plight of Chechnya and more broadly to human and social emergencies in the context of “ambivalent globalization” while also questioning the phenomenon and proliferation of international Biennials, the Emergency Biennale in Chechnya opened on February 23rd, 2005 in different clandestine locations in the city of Grozny, and simultaneously in Paris, at the Palais de Tokyo. More than sixty international artists, established and emerging, provided one artwork and its duplicate - created to fit into suitcases – which have been shipped to Chechnya and to different cities in the world for mirror exhibitions. After Paris, the touring part of the exhibit moved on to Brussels, Bolzano, Milan, Riga, Tallinn, Vancouver, Puebla, Istanbul, and now to San Francisco.  In each location new artists are invited, conferences organized, and additional suitcases readied to be sent to Chechnya, where the artworks will join their twins and the collection will become the foundation for a museum. 

Artists: Adel Abdessemed, A Constructed World, Dennis Adams, Hüseyin Alptekin, Maria-Thereza Alves, Francis Alÿs, Aija Apse, Maja Bajevic, Ruth Barabash, Rebecca Belmore, Lindsay Benedict, Dalida Maria Benfield, Aija Bley, Sylvie Blocher, Blue Noses, Mark Boswell & Anton Kozlov, Marc Boucherot, Véronique Boudier, Hernain Bravo, Kristians Brekte, Mathieu Briand, Hank Bull, Santiago Caicedo, Cao Fei, Banu Cennetoğlu, Raimond Chaves, Chen Shaoxiong, Paolo Chiasera, Magali Claude, José Luis Cortés S., Sergio De La Torre, Jimmie Durham, Al Fadhil, Seamus Farrell, Daniel Faust, Carlos Franklin, Fu Jie, Adriana García Galán, Ghazel, Roya Ghiasy, Kaspars Goba, Babak Golkar, Mārtiņš Grauds, Yves Grenet, Gu Dexin, Andris Grinbergs, Daniel Guzmán, Jens Haaning, Han Myung-Ok, Antonia Hirsch, IN[  ]EX, Alfredo Jaar, Uldis Jancis, Edgars Jurjāns, Elīna Kalniņa, Rose Khor, Kolkoz, Koo Jeong-A, Roman Korovin, Linards Kulless & Una Meiberga, Neeme Külm, Gabriel Kuri, Surasi Kusolwong, Tony Labat, Marco Laimre, Sally Lee, Raimonds Līcītis, HH Lim, Armin Linke, Ken Lum, Juan Pablo Macias, Marko Mäetamm, Ives Maes, Gilda Mantilla, Metapong, Julio César Morales, Maurizio Nannucci, Oda Projesi, Ahmet Öğüt, Jüri Ojaver, Lucy Orta, Damián Ortega, Gionata Gesi Ozmo, Adrian Paci, Alexandre Périgot, Emmanuelle Rapin, David Renaud, Thorbjorn Reuter Christiansen, Römer & Römer, Julian Rosefeldt, Gatis Rozenfelds, Mo Salemy, Jayce Salloum, Krišs Salmanis, Juan Esteban Sandoval, Santomatteo, Sarkis, Zineb Sedira, Shen Yuan, Nedko Solakov, Allan de Souza, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Bert Theis, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Steven Tong, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Enzo Umbaca, Urban Subjects, Anton Vidokle, Cesare Viel, Luca Vitone, Wang Du, Florence Wang, Hans Winkler, Jenifer Wofford, Sislej Xhafa, Yan Lei, Yang Fudong, Yang Jie Chang, Zheng Guogu, Zhu Jia, Aiva Zurina. / With the special participation of Alighiero Boetti (Francis Alÿs project)

Artists invited on the occasion of the 10th stop in San Francisco: Lindsay Benedict, Dalida Maria Benfield, Sergio De La Torre, Rose Khor, Tony Labat, Julio César Morales, Allan de Souza, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Jenifer Wofford. 
The show at Playspace runs January 26 through February 9.  Gallery hours are: Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday from noon-3.

Emergency Biennale of Chechnya/ World Tour/ Stop 10: San Francisco was made possible by the support of The Global Commons Foundation, CCA Playspace gallery and Wattis Institute, haudenschildGarage and Walter & McBean Galleries of San Francisco Art Institute. This will be the first presentation of the exhibit in the United States.

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The Global Commons Foundation (GCF) is a non-profit organization that creates platforms for dialogue and action on urgent contemporary social, cultural, environmental, and geo-political issues, particularly relating to and from the perspectives of the Global South.  Its administrative base is in San Francisco and its membership and activities are transnational.
 

          For more information:             

http://www.wsf2008.net
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br 
http://www.emergency-biennale.org
http://www.globalcommonsfoundation.org 

For directions to New College of California and CCA:

http://www.newcollege.edu/openhouse/
http://www.cca.edu/about/directions.php