We will not submit to municipal by-law P-6

With this public declaration, we assert our opposition to by-law P-6: we will continue to demonstrate without negotiating our demo routes with police, and we will systematically challenge all tickets that arise from this by-law.

The past year has been marked by an escalation of police repression against political protesters in Montreal. As our political movements take to the streets in larger numbers, with more frequency and militancy, we are attacked more brutally and arbitrarily than ever, with batons, pepper spray, tear gas, sound grenades, and rubber bullets. Our friends are mass arrested, humiliated, kettled, and in many cases badly injured.

For thousands of undocumented immigrants across the country, cities such as Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are sweatshops. Immigrants and refugees work the most precarious and dangerous jobs. The Canadian economy cannot survive without this super-exploited work force, made particularly vulnerable by their lack of permanent status and the threat of deportation.

In order for their labour to provide this windfall for Canadian capital, non-status migrants are forcibly kept in a state of heightened vulnerability, deprived of access to essential services and basic social and economic rights. This apartheid system is maintained both through laws and regulations and through fear of discovery and deportation.

Everybody should have access to healthcare, education, social housing, food banks, unemployment benefits and any other social welfare regardless of immigration status. Labour norms and human rights should apply equally to all.

At a time when money and corporations can cross borders more easily than ever, these very borders are taking on an ever more deadly character for billions of people around the world. Solidarity City is the name given to the vision that resists this reality, that aims to transform our communities from sites of racist exploitation to places of mutual aid and support.

The Artivistic collective will be selling copies of FUSE magazine issues 36-1 (Promiscuous Infrastructures ou la lutte pour l'invention de possibles) and 36-2 (Palestine-Palestine), both guest-edited or co-guest-edited by Artivistic members, at a special rate of $5.00, at the following event:

MASSES & MEDIA 2013
Wednesday, March 13, 8:30pm
Société des arts technologiques (SAT)
1201 Saint-Laurent Bld.
FB event 

A festive and performance-filled evening bringing together a wide array of actors in autonomous, community and activist media in Quebec, around the theme of "Culture Jamming." Throughout the evening, media interventions exemplifying the idea of culture jamming will be presented on stage, as well as through screenings, exhibitions, creation and music.

Book launch
Le Merle Vol. 1 / No. 2
Librairie Formats — located at 2 Sainte-Catherine East,
Friday January 25th 2013, 5pm - 8pm.

Please join us for the launch of:
Le Merle, Books of words and deeds. Autumn 2012 Vol. 1 / No. 2

Le Merle is a semi-annual publication that works at the intersection of art and political engagement, offering a mode of exchange and consistency for radical thought in Montréal and beyond.

This edition of Le Merle has been edited by Heather Davis. It includes the following contributions: Re : Proposal by Artivistic, On Indirect Action: Twitter, Protest and Presence by Kristy Robertson, Spokes Bent, rim cracked, 22 May 2012, Montréal by Cecillia Chen, For the Blackbird par RERC (Radical Education Collective), Beyond Any Measure: Surface and limit in Aernout Mik's Osmosis and Excess by Christoph Brunner and an extract of Decision Points by Michael Nardone.

We invite you to come and celebrate, in the fashion of the shotgun wedding, this fabulous and talented group of writers, thinkers, makers.

FUSE issue 36-1 Launch
14 December 2012, 5:30 PM - 10:00 PM (authors' panel around 6:30 PM)
Centre des arts actuels Skol
372, rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest, espace 314
w/ musical selections by Boncha Immigrantz
FB event here

The Artivistic collective, FUSE Magazine and Centre des arts actuels Skol, invite you to the launch of FUSE issue 36-1, "Promiscuous Infrastructures ou la lutte pour l’invention de possibles." This first bilingual issue, guest edited by Artivistic, emerges out of the collective's engagement with the Québécois student strike and social uprising of the past spring and summer, in relation to its ongoing project on “promiscuous infrastructures.” Rather than synthesize what happened or tell people what they already know, we approached the issue as an occasion to be self-reflexive and critical and to continue the struggle, investigating the (aesthetic) form of the strike, the capitalist history of universities, and contextualising the local anti-austerity struggle with those of allies abroad, and across time.

In August 2011, Artivistic interviewed Chicago-based friend and ally Daniel Tucker on the topic of infrastructures. This interview was useful in the conceptualization of Promiscuous Infrastructures (Phase 2) during the Fall 2011 & Winter 2012.

There is an intentionality behind setting up an infrastructure that exceeds merely making a project. The intention is to make something which exceeds the limits of your own needs, capacities and desires and fulfills some perceived or known need. As society rapidly changes the needs people and communities have will change as well and it is quite possible that the institutions and infrastructures of previous eras will either need to be retooled or scrapped all together for something new and more appropriate. Typically people look to business and government to provide the necessary infrastructures in which daily life can operate and thrive. It is up to people critically engaged in culture to perceive those needs and changes too.

Read the full interview on Daniel Tucker's blog.

For months now, you have not ceased to show courage, solidarity, resilience, combativeness and creativity through educational and political actions, opposing unjust tuition hikes imposed by the government with the largest and longest student strike in the history of Quebec. You are doing it not only in resistance to the tuition increase, but to clearly oppose the logic of neoliberalism and austerity which has infiltrated all spheres of society.

Finissage!
Saturday 14 April, 18h-
The Awesomest Foundation: revealing of the "winning proposal"
+ Boncha Immigrantz feat. Bass in Public Places
+ Prints for sale + Photo shoot
@ Skol (372 Ste-Catherine W., suite 314)

Our stance is not so much "what is to be done?" but "something is already being done." And we not so much want to show it (off) but to actually come to value it better, to become more confident collectively. We believe that the fundamental predicament of our times is fear. It makes us defensive, it insidiously brings about isolation. In 1969, it was right after the initiation of the first Black Panther's Free Breakfast for School Children Program that J. Edgar Hoover (FBI director) stated that the Panthers posed "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country." This exemplifies the power of alternative infrastructures and brings us back to today's (global) criminalisation of dissent. As we know, valuing is not an individual act, it is a collective one. We see this project as a kind of "work interruption": to interrupt the current flow of things, of business-as-usual (not for an anonymous "system" but for ourselves, as artists, activists, academics); to perhaps go back to some of our footnotes (left behind because we were too busy going forward); to take the time to think and to nourish each other, to be present, in order to live differently. By making stuff together, we can get to know each other better, to value our ideas better, to build affinity.

March 26, 2012, Montreal -- This week, Quebec students escalate their tactics, building on almost one month of a general strike, and last Thursday's massive demonstration against the Charest government tuition hikes.

The ongoing strike and Thursday's historic demonstration are a starting point, not an end, as many student organizers have pointed out. The upcoming week of disruptive actions is especially important.

We are writing to support the Coalition Large de l'Association pour une Solidarité Syndicale Étudiante (CLASSE) who have called for a week of economic disruption to pressure the Charest government to cancel the tuition hikes. We agree that it's not just through symbolic protests and actions -- which are important to build solidarity and support -- that the Charest government will capitulate. Rather, they will respond to the sustained and tangible disruption of the Quebec economy.

As part of PI2, on Saturday March 31 and Sunday April 1, from noon to 5pm, at Skol, Artivistic member Julie Châteauvert proposes a performance entitled Think We Must/Con-Vocation (description below in French only).

Think We Must/Con-Vocation

En 1938, dans son essai épistolaire Trois Guinées, Virginia Woolf lance: THINK WE MUST! Interdites de tous lieux de pouvoir, réfléchissons néanmoins, soeurs, avant de joindre la procession des hommes cultivés!