Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Everybody’s Got A Right To Live: Tiananmen Square and Summer, i carry your heart with me




Scenes from the streets of New York/

"Everybody’s Got A Right To Live: The Poor People’s Campaign 1968 & Now

Exhibition dates: April 18 - June 23, 2019" an exhibition at Interference Archive




Summer surprises and  invites.
Running away to the beach.
Meeting friends at a temporary autonomous zone.
By the bridge.
Greeting friends.
Summer.
Bopping  around town.
Swimming.
Reading.
Running around  half the night.
Till we sleep.
Just like I always do in the summer.
It was  the same thing, summer 1989.
We were inspired by the democracy activists. 
Gorbachev visited.
So did Bush.

I was 19 when I watched it all:




We’d read about the survivors.
And wonder what  happened to the others.
They were the same age, some younger, many older. Now many are gone. Many were slaughtered. Imagine the lives they would have led. I know it changed me to watch them. It changed me. It woke me up. Ahhh the lives they would have lived...

I think about them all day long.
i carry your heart with me

Writing, reading, trying to make sense of it all.
They were there.
Then  they were gone.
i carry your heart with me

And then it was over. 

 “I love that word. Forever. I love that forever doesn't exist, but we have a word for it anyway, and use it all the time. It's beautiful and doomed.”
― 
Viv Albertine, Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys

Viv’s book is the book of the summer. 

But there are so many

Radical  Hope.
Here  Jonathan Lear wonders:

What  happens when we  feel  like we might go extinct?
Or  if our world is moving in  that  direction?
Of it we can’t keep weight.
If its  all moving faster than we can.
If we  get lost
Or they do. 
If forces larger than ourselves intervene.
If political forces and governments ignore or neglect.
Some organize.
Others rebel.
Sometimes  a movement needs a Dionysus.
Sometimes it needs an Apollo,
Counsels Andrew in the park.

 I think  about my life since  then, wondering if I’ve lived up to it,
Wondering about other lives,
About Viv Albertine’s quest.
Children growing up in a  screwed up world.
Hopes.
Ever present anxieties.
Trying breathe it through.

 “hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head’ –Viv quotes Sally Kempton in  one o f the epigrams in 
― 
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys.: her memoir.

Viv is the voice of my summer. 
She reminds me to laugh. 
But its also more than a laugh. 
“Every decision you make in life sends you off down a path that could turn out to be a wrong one. A couple of careless decisions somewhere along the line, that’s all it takes to waste years – but then you can’t creep along being so cautious that you don’t have adventures. It’s difficult to get the balance right” 
― 
Viv Albertine, To Throw Away Unopened

i carry your heart with me

I read her every night,
In  between coming and going,
Meeting friends.
Going to prop parties.
Graduations, 
Trying to figure the right next step.
Writing as much as I can. 
i carry your heart with me

“I like to think god smiles at some of  her  beautiful sunsets” Atticus.
I’m sure she also cries.
And I think of the news from June 4, 1989.
Strange to think  of you now. 

Still:

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]

writes

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Everybody’s Got A Right To Live: The Poor People’s Campaign 1968 & Now

Exhibition dates: April 18 - June 23, 2019 

June 1
Prop Party
Described as Martin Luther King Jr.’s “last great dream,” the Poor People’s Campaign (PPC) of 1968 was an ambitious movement to make poverty in the world’s richest nation visible and to demand justice for poor Americans. The PPC struggled to define itself as a multi-axis movement while it faced political suppression from the state, ultimately derailing its reform goals and leading some to consider it a failure; however, its spirit and intention has carried on into the present day within a growing resurgence campaign seeking to call attention to the unmet demands of ‘68. 

This exhibition provides a look at some of the visual culture of the original PPC, including photographs of marches and rallies, press coverage, and a contemporary public response to a mural in Resurrection City called the ‘hunger wall,’ in addition to showcasing the efforts of the new PPC and a portfolio of Justseeds posters created in solidarity with their actions.












































































































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