“How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness,
and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.”
Toni Morrison, Paradise
Greetings, hoomans!
It’s been eons of vacuum-sealed, dehydrated catstronaut food and longing stares into the miceless immensity of the universe since my last report.
Today I am honored to inform you that our Mothership will land on Amsterdam on November 26th for the 6th Envisioning Free Space 2022 Conference. Along with the amazing crews from SODAA, Guerrilla Media Collective and Space of Urgency that have already embarked upon our DisCO Journey, we invite you to join us for a day of collective imagining, co-design, and meta-narrative disruption.
You can get your tickets here.
Words cannot express how elated I feel about finally having a four-paw landing on terra firma. Space is cool, but I miss the hooman adoration, not to mention those wiggly earthly treats.
Upon landing, we’ll guide the Radical Dreamers (excuse me, but after travelling the galaxies I find the word “attendees” so passé) through a Journey into Sound. Sound is time, sound is the DAO, sound is now and forever. Imagine and re-imagine what a future economy looks like. Beyond algorithms and technological constructs. With people and communities at the center. And me, under the table.
In this workshop we’ll jump back and forward through time and space, which honestly, messes up my nap routine and has an undesirable effect on the functioning of my bowels, but I guess those are occupational hazards when it comes to imagining future economies, huh? (it’s not a rhetorical question and I am still waiting for an answer).
Anyway, continue reading to find the official announcement my hoomans drafted for the event. Fasten your seatbelts, open your hooman minds and enjoy the trip:
DisCOs: Alternative Economies vs. The Algorithm
DisCOthon Pt 1: Transmission from the Future
(15:00-16:00)
We’ve received a transmission from a better future, but we need your help to decode it!
It’s the year 2019: Ethno-supremacists stage a coup in post-apocalyptic Neo-Tokyo while the LAPD deploys Blade Runners as enforcers of state violence to curb their respective human populations’ emerging genetic diversity.
It’s the year 2025:Cooperation Jackson successfully annexes Jackson, Mississippi from the United States and establishes non-familial kinship ties with the anarchist enclave of Hervás, Spain.
It’s the year 2022: With the DisCOnauts as guides, LunarPunk rebels interpret a scrambled message from the year 2029, opening a portal to possible futures through a collective co-design practice. Revolution brewers will walk away from this workshop energetically aligned for a festival day packed with collaboration, with the knowledge that a better future is possible. They will also experience a brainstorming technique that can be used in their own co-design practice.
DisCOthon Pt 2: Word Up from the Mothership
(16:15-17:15)
Word up from the Mothership, DisCOnauts are ready to download a new lexicon straight into the collective consciousness!
It’s the year 2055: Space of Urgency hosts its first extraterrestrial conference from the far-orbit Interdependent Satellite System.
It’s the year 2011:The Arab Spring sparks the 15-M Movements, which sparks Occupy. “The Protester” is named as TIME’s person of the year.
It’s the year 2029:DisCO breaks the Epilogue to the End of History with Distributed Cooperative Economics making capitalism obsolete.
It’s the year 2022:DisCOnauts from the DisCO Mothership, Guerrilla Media Collective, SODAA, and Space of Urgency share their lived experiences and techniques of distributed cooperative organization. Radical dreamers will learn about concrete principles and techniques to apply in their own cooperative endeavors and hear from presenters first hand experiences the results that come from their use.
DisCOthon Pt 3: Into the DisCOverse
(17:30-19:30)
It’s the year 2222:An interplanetary solidarity economy coalition launches the first coop in the Andromeda Galaxy.
It’s the year 1936:Economia Solidaria is first used by anarchist revolutionaries in Spain.
It’s the year 2022: Equipped with the group’s collective vision of the future and the shared real-world experiences of folks living and (co)working by DisCO values, DisCO jammers engage in lightning rounds of visionary co-design focused on both creating and connecting cooperative organizations.
But who’s in the Mothership?
DisCO.coop is a living, evolving framework to reignite the power of the commons in each of us. It begins with a reckoning, a re-defining of mental, spiritual and physical spaces to re-situate our relationships to each other and the earth, to choose how we want to spend our productive energy and creativity, and, building on these acts, finally create radically different notions of value in order to restore equity and power in an atmosphere of deliberate accountability.
Guerrilla Media Collective is the OG DisCO Lab. Created in 2013 amidst the echoes of the Occupy and 15-M Movements, GMC has been creating a trans-linguistic commons of revolutionary thought and practice, pioneering feminist economic, P2P/Commons based cooperative governance and value accounting that’s at the root of DisCO.
SODAA is a music and arts venue funded and operated by its community according to DisCO principles. Sodaa is applying new modes of cooperation to physical spaces combining online and IRL participation.
Space of Urgency is an international platform and emergent DisCO that develops strategic approaches to support self-organized communities in establishing and retaining independent spaces for non-dominant culture.
YOU are invited to root down and get it on with a future economy that is post-capitalist, feminist, decolonial and punk as fuck. Come join us at the DisCOthon!
Envisioning Free Space 2022
This November 2022, the Berlin-based Envisioning Free Space Conference (also known as Freit(T)räume) arrives in Amsterdam.
The conference creates a space for interdisciplinary collaboration to drive policy change. We are gathering to explore how to build a city whose citizens have the opportunity to shape the environment in which they live – by creating a space for experimentation and manifesting the discoveries that take place into actionable legislation.
From dusk till dawn, 24-hours at De School we will host workshops and panel discussions punctuated by nightly explorations of sound, visuals and performance by a rich and interwoven network of voices: urban change makers, political agents, spatial pioneers, scientists, artists, musicians and you. The conference program is organized around topics of DanceofUrgency and SpaceofUrgency, which have been developed internationally in the last 7 years. Together we’ll manifest a vision of the future: a city for all, where night culture is culturally valued and embedded in urban policy and cultural free spaces are self-sufficient and thriving.
Oh, there you are!
*stops the futile scratching of a metal panel in the Mothership bridge deck*. I should have known it was you, it’s been nearly 6 hours. Well, it’d be lovely to see you there. I just hope the moist Amsterdam weather doesn’t make my fur all frizzy. I have an image to uphold, you know.
Love,the DisCO CAT and the DisCOnauts