Where did all the counterfeit Gucci sellers go? Where ever the panoticon can’t see, that’s where. Down the alleys and back behind the main streets. Passing by Chinatown NYC a couple of months back I saw this mobile observance tower, it’s hard to tell if anyone is really in there with the dark windows. It works magic in the area but doesn’t really stop the counterfeit dealers and buyers. I still see them doing business all the time to either Europeans on a tight American vacation or Americans  from outside of New York looking to look good on the cheap. It’s the cult of vision that has common folks like us breaking the law. What’s wrong with a little corporate image blood letting anyhow? The only thing they are losing is the control over who wears their brand.

TONIGHT 6-8pm, the last night to catch the Otto DIX show for FREE at the Neue Galerie, as part of First Fridays Free (normally $15/$10 students)… Otherwise it’s an amazing show of drawings, paintings, etching, by this prolific German artist caught between 2 world wars…

Neue Galerie : Otto Dix

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ALSO TONIGHT, 7:30ish: Books Through Bars film Screening:
“A Dog Day Afternoon”  at FreeBird Books @ sunset ~7:30?
123 Columbia St., between Kane and Degraw.

Freebird Book is an awesome little independent books store that host many readings and art exhibitions. Books Through Bars is a prisoner reading encouragement program designed to provide reading material for prisoners. From their blog I gather BTB is now temporarily at FB while their original location in ABC no Rio is under construction. If you like to donate a book, these are the top requested/needed books (PAPER BACK PLEASE):

* African-American history, especially 20th century
* Native American history
* Latin American history
* Radical politics
* Social sciences and psychology
* Dictionaries, thesauruses, and Spanish-English dictionaries
* Learning world languages
* How-to (drawing, chess, sign language…)
* Mayan and Aztec history
* Memoirs and fiction by people of color
* Mythology
* Poetry anthologies

Freebird Books
Book Through Bars (NYC)

So artist (vidders), jailbreakers, and unlockers, sat on the same side of the court yesterday backed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as The Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress push back the harm done by Digital Millennium Copyright Act/Digital Rights Management, in three areas:

• Jailbreaking is alright! Jailbreaking is slang for hacking your iphone  so it can work on any service *you* choose and allow *you* to decide what apps *you* want on *your* phone (read my lips Apple, it’s MY phone!) The ruling states  that jailbreaking is a way of making a phone interoperable and that it isn’t a violation of copyright laws, plus copyright laws should not get in the way of an interoperable world -That’s right!

•  Vidders, aka Amateur Video Remix artist, can now freely remix, rework, and appropriate to make what they want and show it how they want it- as long as it’s noncommercial. So go on, remix that Lady Gaga crap til your heart aches and my eyes bleed, just don’t try to sell it!

• Unlockers can continue to unlock. This is good for recycling programs. The ruling is no fool in recognizing that locking is simply a way to try to get people to stick to a network- not copyright infringement. Unlcking will allow people to choose what ever plan they like. What are telcoms afraid of, competition???

More details and links on LowEndMac, the place to get the skinny on mac products:

EFF Wins New Legal Protections for Video Artists, Cell Phone Jailbreakers, and Unlockers

Friday we thought of going out to see what the nightlife was like. We headed out a little before midnight and hit several spots, none of which we stayed at longer than 10 minutes, mostly because they were somewhat empty or the music was wrong. In a couple of street pubs I heard The Kings of Leon, and the like. One interesting place was a club on the roof the National Theater of Bucharest called La Motoare in Laptaria Enache. The entrance to the club was through a side elevator, and you exit through an adjact staircase full of graffiti. Maning the elevator was a woman doing cross-stich, I thought we would have to tip her but I didn’t see any tin with coins. Once on the roof there are picnic tables set out all over. Along the edge of the building were wooden walls and nooks with bean bags set in them- so technically you can’t see down into the city with these wooden walls. I guess it’s safer this way, the drunk kids don’t aren’t tempted to jump onto the city streets below. The place was really relaxing and the night air at that hight was cool and breezy. I’m not sure what exactly my friends were looking for but we left before checking what they had on tap. By the way, beers run for about 1.5USD to 3.50USD.. Lower prices for the local beer like  Ursus, Timisoreana, Ciuc, and for higher for imported beers like Leffe, which is by the way sold almost everywhere here.

Here’s a little historical youtube video about the history of Timisoreana Beer from the Romanian of Timisoara:

Week 1

I expected to spend the first week getting accustomed to the city: getting orientated, exploring the food, finding out where to get certain amenities, finding out how to get from point A to B, and final securing a place to stay and possibly work on a project for WFB. But so far I’ve only been relaxing, I was extremely exhausted from my last week in New York, packing up my work and putting it all in storage (which by the way I managed to fill up an entire unit with all the work I did in my two years at Brooklyn College’s MFA program).

In any case I hope to get more organized this weekend as I will have a somewhat stable place to stay for at least 2 weeks. I think this weekend our plan is to get a kind of get some sort preliminary press release together to send out soon. A few friends are helping out with mailing to local people. I believe Ama will have to sort the information on the video show and possibly with some long distance help from Hsiao, and I’ll be more concerned with deciding what to produce for the space. The original idea was to produce a book and possibly a video in the space. We should also be concerned about the planning each of our days as time can pass without notice. In betweens all his we hope to go to Istanbul for a few days, perhaps next weekend.

In a few minutes I will be participating in an Urban Foraging tour in Brooklyn. The tour will be given by Ava Chin and “Wild Man” Steve brill, two well know foragers in NYC area. The event grew using The Public School (NYC)

My interest in urban foraging began while working on art project on plants and plant knowledge… Ava is here…more later!

Books through Bars is an organization that helps to fill prisoner request for books. There are splinters of this core idea throughout the US. I actually thought they were connected to the Books Through Bars branch in Philadelphia… But it turns out the Books Through Bars organization here in New York is only related through concept and nothing else. I meet some of the people from the NY group, some of who were also connected with the Prisoner Reading Encouragement Program and I plan to eventually learn more into how they function.

In case anyone is thinking about donating to a local books for prisoners program, it’s good to know what is on top of the request list. Photos of my used book selections that I felt met most of the requirements are beneath this list:

* African-American history, especially 20th century
* Native American history
* Latin American history
* Radical politics
* Social sciences and psychology
* Dictionaries, thesauruses, and Spanish-English dictionaries
* Learning world languages
* How-to (drawing, chess, sign language…)
* Mayan and Aztec history
* Memoirs and fiction by people of color
* Mythology
* Poetry anthologies

Red Power: The American Indian’ Fight for Freedom by Alvin M. Josephy, Jr. Published by McGraw-Hill Paperback. This is an earlier addition published in 1971. There is a newer expanded addition.

So apparently Collaborative Strategies were big in Antwerp around the 16th & 17th centuries… I saw this painting “Battle of Amazons” a collaborative painting by Jan Bruegel and P.P. Rubens at the Rubenhuis, in downtown Antwerp.

Earlier this morning I came across another Bruegel collaboration, a painting of the 9 muses meeting with Minerva, the Roman Goddess of War. This painting, which I didn’t get then name of, was housed in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen.