[artinfo] Paths through Utopia

[John Jordan]

Dear fellow travellers through utopia

We are beginning to research a new project and were wondering whether 
you could help. Basically we would like to make a nomadic socially 
engaged art project that involves a  tour of Europe  visiting a range 
of  creative alternatives to  capitalist  ways of everyday living 
(with the view of maybe creating a map/ installation/ book / film / 
whatever form will be most exciting... not sure yet)  We want to 
visit  lots of different examples of all sizes, nature, spirit (not 
just communal living experiments but  also micro models 
of  economics, education, love, Power, food, information,  transportation etc).

We feel that too often European anticapitalists' visions "what we are 
FOR"  come from  far away - the occupied factories of Argentina, 
Autonomous municipalities of Chiapas, The Brazilian landless 
movement  etc... and rarely do we talk about models on our own 
doorstep, less exotic but maybe just as inspiring .. We feel that  by 
focusing on these geographically and somewhat culturally distant 
models we have maybe ignored many of the more local ones. We would 
like the project to make  some of the  inspiring  European 
experiments more visible to both ourselves and a wider public..

This is where you come in.... We know that you have either lived in , 
visited, written about or passed through in some way some of these 
alternative experiments in everyday life in Europe . They might be 
intentional communities, radical education schemes, wild agricultural 
projects, inventive transport ideas , fabulous free spaces of some 
sort. We would love to  know what are the models of another way of 
living that made your heart beat  because they allowed you to glimpse 
another world and to know that it was possible to slip out of the 
"comfortable" clutches of capitalism forever?

If you could share your top 5 ? or 3 ? or how ever many you have with 
us it would be absolutely brilliant... It'd allow us to make sure 
that we don't stupidly pass by a great thing just because we did not 
know about it....

Thanks ever so much in advance

yours
JJ and ISA xx

-- 



  ----------------OUR BOOK IS OUT-----------------------

  WE ARE EVERYWHERE: THE IRRESISTIBLE RISE OF GLOBAL ANTICAPITALISM

  edited by : Notes from Nowhere
  published by VERSO and available in most bookshops and online

  "This is the first book to truly capture and embody the exuberant creativity
  and radical intellect of the protest movements" Naomi Klein

  "an authentic document of revolution" The Times

  www.weareeverywhere.org