Get together with Gabriel Pombo da Silva – Ex-prisoner

mutual[P]eRverse engineering of prison buildings
Consequences on the human being we call prisoner
What does it mean to be a ex-prisoner

Friday, 07th of April, 19h @ Joes Garage

Tonight, we welcome Gabriel Pomba da Silva in Joes Garage and dedicate the evening for being together finally. We start the evening with food around 19h, the talk starts at 20h – we will celebrate.

Gabriel is a still non-compliant anarchist ex-prisoner. After 33 years, thereof nine years in a high security prison in Aachen, he became free in June 2016, even though the Spanish state would like to deprive his liberty again, until 2032.

Gabriel rose up in a poor neighborhood in Vigo, Galicia. His non-conformity, posture, achievements and writings in the cell did and do motivate many people inside and outside the prison walls. Solidarity actions for his release has been conducted in Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Chile, Mexico and Argentina.

Last year, his case gained attention again. He was supposed to be released on the 17th of May but was further hold in custody at the prison C. P. la Moraleja, in Dueñas. On the 9th of June, he finally left prison.

Tonight, Gabriel is going to talk about his history and experience being in detention for 33 years – in prisons in different countries, under different life regimes, in isolation – the impact on the human being inside the walls and outside, when being free again – and the solidarity with ex-prisoners.

A little more Infos:

Letter from anarchist comrade Gabriel Pombo da Silva, outside the prison walls at last (Spain)

Audio de Gabriel Pombo Da Silva (in spanish)

– Prison was created for the poor [pdf]

Volkseten Vegazulu – Benefit for the (recently set free) anarchist prisoner Gabriel Pombo da Silva

Thursday November 10th 2016, Benefit for Gabriel, Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

Until June this year, Gabriel was a non-compliant anarchist prisoner in Spain. After 32 years, thereof nine years in a high security prison in Aachen, he became free in June for the time being, even though the Spanish state would like to deprive his liberty again, until 2032.

Gabriel grew up in a poor neighborhood in Vigo, Galicia. His posture, achievements and writings do motivate many people inside and outside the prison walls. Solidarity actions for his release has been conducted in Spain, Germany, Italy, Greece, Chile, Mexico and Argentina.

In summer this year, his case gained attention again. He was supposed to be released on the 17th of May but was further being hold in custody at the prison C. P. la Moraleja, in Dueñas. On the 9th of June, he was finally set free. Gabriel is currently free, but may face further prosecution by the state. […Lees verder]

February 2016 at Joe’s Garage

joes.poster.february.2016.a3

Flyer [as pdf], Poster [as png]

Benefit for recently established Prisoners Union in german prisons – Volkseten Vegazulu

Monday July 06th 2015, Prisoners Union Benefit. Volkseten Vegazulu, 7pm.

This benefit is dedicated to the young Prisoners Union in german prisons. The following interview gives a brief insight into the union.


Union behind bars
experiences from one year of union work – four questions to Oliver Rast (GG/BO)

Who or what is the Prisoners Union? What does it represent and what are its goals?

Last year in May we established ourselves as self-organized union initiative of prisoners at JVA Tegel. Day by day prisoners gather at the workbench and are confronted with highly precarious work situations: low-wage, piecework rush and no pension scheme, which amounts to an express ticket into poverty in old-age after being released. At that point we concentrate on two key demands: social insurance contribution for imprisoned employees and the inclusion of working prisoners in the general statutory minimal wage. By means of those steps we are aiming for full union freedom behind bars. Notions of solidarity, autonomy, emancipation and social reform shall not remain unknown words within the prison population any longer – we know that these are challenging demands.
[…Lees verder]

April 2015 at Joe’s Garage

joes.poster.april.2015.indexed.ready

Movie Night: Life in Loops – A Megacities RMX (2006)

Sunday December 21st 2014,  Life in Loops – A Megacities RMX. Directed by Timo Novotny, 2006, 80 minutes, with English subtitles. Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm.

“Radioglaz and the Global City

Glawogger captured the grinding routine of everyday labor and escapism of people on the outskirts of the metropolises New York, Mexico City, Moscow. and Mumbai in his awarded documentary essay Megacities. By finding a film language that not only reflects Zygmunts Bauman’s (1997: 328) assumption of globalization’s force to stratify the world population in globalized wealthy and localized poor, but that also offers an idiosyncratic insight beyond the description of urban peripheries as slums, the filmmaker came close to the poetics of his (aesthetic but not political) role model Dziga Vertov.

However, it was not until 2006 that the Austrian video artist Timo Novotny reviewed the original footage of Megacities in order to rearrange it in the spirit of Dziga Vertov’s radioglaz (3), a film concept and montage policy that counts on the “complex interaction of sound with image’ (Vertov in Hicks 2007: 77). sometimes even favoring the sound as the overriding rhythmizing element over the image. Whereas Megacities tells twelve geographically interspersed but serf-contained stories of survival, Life in Loops breaks them open and uses the audiovisual fragments to paint only five portraits of clandestine ways of living and working in global cities against the backdrop of a filmic contemplation on urban topographies. That way, Life in Loops traces, like Megacities, the conditio humana in relation to glocal subalterntiy, though making use of Vertov’s radioglaz in a more radical way.
[…Lees verder]

Multimedia – Housing struggles and resistance against forced evictions

During our “Rent Rebels” benefit cooking last Monday we were screening a couple of short film to give some context to the “Rent Rebels – against the sale out of the city” documentary screening and discussion about necessary housing struggles in Berlin and Amsterdam that is taking place on the 21th and 22nd of November. Take a look below to watch the five short movies we screened in Joe’s if you missed the evening and come along on the 21th or 22nd of November, tell your friends and comrades and participate in the open discussion with housing activists from Berlin. […Lees verder]

Movie night: Ekümenopolis – city without limits (Turkey, 2011)

Sunday October 12th 2014, Ekümenopolis – city without limits. Directed by Imre Azem 2011, 93 minutes, in Turkish with English subtitles. Door opens at 8pm, film begins at 9pm.

Eukemonopolis is documentation about neo liberal city development in Istanbul and the aspiration of its political leaders of turning it into a global city, one of those cities like London, Tokyo, Amsterdam or São Paulo, that shape globalisation and form the network of global cities where the service, banking and real estate businesses accumulate, where mega events takes place and a hegemonial hipster culture is cultivated. While the global alpha, beta and gamma cities posses the intellectual knowledge, tools and power the global division of labour is further extended, with the majority of factory production being outsourced to those parts of the world where people earn a shit for their 60 hours working week, have no labour rights whatsoever and endanger their health and well being by working in super precarious conditions, let alone the environmental destruction that this system of global division of labour provokes. Eukomonopolis shows quite in detail what the negative effects of repressive neo liberal urban development in Istanbul mean to local citizens and to the city’s natural environment while it also explains concepts like the global city (which was developed by Saskia Sassen) so that we can look at our own living environment and have more tools at hand to better understand what happens around us and affects us. We can develop strategies and actions to be solidare with the exploited people worldwide and get active locally in order to develop and realise our own strategies in contrast to that what is opposed on us by the state and its institutions, urban planners and the capitalistic system.

As further background  we want to provide a text about urban development in the city which is part of more a comprehensive report about squatting in the Istanbul and a collection of reports about radical grassroots neighborhood and factory organisation provided by the the solidarity campaign for left neighborhoods in Istanbul, translated from german to english. Even though the documentary does not relate those particular stories, those texts may shed some light on local resistance against the urban development that takes place in the city.

[…Lees verder]