SF Mime Troupe

From Whitney:


Yesterday, Sept. 24, the Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra raised a rebellious ruckus and marched down Pacific Avenue (permits? We don't need no stinking permits!) to announce the performance of the San Francisco Mime Troupe in San Lo Park.

It was a BLAST! As we marched, people joined us from the sidewalks and we handed them trash to play. We had a lot of fun doing variations of marching like twirls and scattering. Grant Wilson, from Art and Revolution, acted as our drum major and marched ahead of us - he is always so much fun. At one point, a bike cop asked if we could make way for traffic and we complied. When we got to the park, we played 3 songs.

The SF Mime Troupe put on a really great show called "Making a Killing" - political satire at it's best. They have look-a-likes for Dick Cheney and Condi Rice... doing evil deeds in the name of charity and "a feel good story". The Mime Troupe was especially good this year.

The City of Santa Cruz Values Your Opinion

I love when our leaders solicit us for our opinions! It helps ensure that they are fully informed when they completely ignore them as they make decisions that effect us. However, who doesn't like a survey? I filled it out anywho.

The City of Santa Cruz Arts Commission invites you to participate in a community-wide survey, and to spread the word to your audience.

You can help determine what the ARTS will be like in Santa Cruz, 5 or 10 years from now.

The City Council has approved the development of an Arts Master Plan, in recognition of the contributions the arts make to our city's quality of life and economic vitality.

The Arts Commission has just released this Arts Master Plan Community Survey to ensure that the proposed plan reflects community opinions.

We invite you to complete this survey and share it with others.

Check out the survey, fill it out if you have the stomach for it. I'm skeptical, of course, but all those "Other, Please Specify" questions do bring up some thoughts for me:

Art is a process of discovery. It is a window into the magic and mysterious world of the creativity of the human mind. It helps open us up to possibilities and allow us access to other perspectives. It connects us with others, and for those engaged in making it, the cathartic process of making art can be life-changing.

Santa Cruz has has changed my life in a lot of ways, but nothing has been as influential and mind altering than the art experiences I've had here.

However, it is a depressing state of affairs that in the last 20 years I've been here, I've seen the number, quality, and variety of independent artists here decline.

I hope this survey indicates that Santa Cruz is taking the problems of artists seriously, but until I see otherwise, I wonder if it isn't perceived as merely a marketing problem.

This problem isn't about better marketing of the arts. One cannot market what one does not have. Simply put, Santa Cruz is currently NOT an arts destination. Rather than art hospitable, Santa Cruz is art hostile.

High rents, aggressive laws thwarting street performance, aggressive noise ordinances, limits on where one can stand, sit, and perform, decreasing numbers of independent artists, and increasing numbers of high-end art boutiques will be the death of art in this town.

Constructive suggestions? Just to start. What would be helpful would be informational kiosks where anyone could post art-related information. What would be helpful would be loosening the stranglehold on downtown aesthetics to include murals, street art, stencil, guerrilla performance, and public sculpture. What would be helpful would be rent-control for artists or low-end galleries. What would be helpful would be a rollback of all of the repressive laws that make life downtown uncomfortable for anyone except those shoppers with fat wallets.

I'm hoping the city begins to view art as a creative tool to solving other problems as well. For instance, the city clearly believes there is a serious homeless problem, and solutions are currently limited to pushing them to the fringes. While there are 160 beds for the 1500 to 2000 homeless in town, are there any programs offering art skills and practice to the poor and homeless people in town? Is there support for art and artists' tool co-ops for poor artists who do not have the wherewithal to own their own tools and facilities?

The survey is asking some of the right questions. Consider that innovation comes from small efforts. Small-size performance spaces and outdoor spaces. Rehearsal spaces, community gardens with small stages, places to paint, places to play music, quiet places to write, places to practice. Places tucked away and places in plain view. Art has to be woven and integrated with life to make it relevant and important. Closing Pacific Avenue to cars from one end to the other would be a great start.

Support people doing things themselves, support self-organization, such as art co-ops , community performance groups, and writer's groups. well-funded venues are less important than connections between people and collaborative efforts.

Anything the city can do to support the arts and artists is great. I'd love to live in a town awash in art and artists. However, what we don't need is more centralized art administration, unified marketing efforts, art districts, and official festivals and art events. The words "official," "public," and "qualified" are always the death of art.

Rather than the city "fostering," "providing," "offering," and "organizing," how about the city do what it can to support artists self-organizing, providing for themselves, and fostering their own collaborations. How about the city start by not standing smack in the way of art.

Welcome to Santa Cruz Art Conspiracy

Sarah, who I met in Boston, an artist with old found stuff right up my alley, told me that if you don't document art, any newcomer in town is not going to know that Santa Cruz has a vibrant art community that exists largely outside of the gallery grind.

Document, she said, and the artists in town, new and old, will have a sense of momentum -- a sense, that in spite of the lack of art galleries, art buyers, art patrons, art grants, art money, that this town has a lively habit of blurring the boundary between art and life.

To that end, we worked to create the SC Art Conspiracy. An attempt to document some of the non-institutional creative efforts of artists in Santa Cruz. We want your contributions and your documentation of your creative endeavors in and around Santa Cruz.

But beyond documentation, this is about community and connection. The Art Conspiracy is really about connecting with other artists, to share a beer or a creative idea, or ask questions about process, or reach out from a North Coast studio to make new friends and alliances.

An anecdote: What is Art? -- a little performance space on N. Pacific -- has been long gone now for almost a decade, yet the connections made there still cause ripples to this day that fuel amazing projects in this town.

Will the SC Art Conspiracy feature public guerilla art? Certainly. Public performance? Absolutely. Creative groups operating outside of the realm of commerce? Yeah, sure. Street art? Street music? Yes and yes. How about city-sponsored events. Nope. Or announcements for gallery shows? Nope. Awesome bands playing at Moe's Alley? Not that either.

This is less about "making it" as an artist, and all about this elusive something that I'm having a difficult time describing. A bit of underdogism, perhaps, a sense of struggling together, of changing the world through art, of making the world a fabulous, beautiful, mysterious, and surprising place.

Want to be part of the conspiracy? Do you do performance? Conceptual art? Non-commercial music? Want to join a discussion focusing on the process of making art and building community? We'd like to hear from you. Email us at scart-at-riseup.net

Announce Art Happenings

The Santa Cruz Art Conspiracy email list (SCART) is an email forum for announcing non-institutional art events, meetings and projects, ideas and news. It is a low-volume, moderated list sharing information about local Santa Cruz art topics only.

Need to announce an art happening? Is it local to Santa Cruz? Is it non-institutional? Non-commercial? We prefer to focus on the cathartic process of creating art, collaboration and community, conceptional art and performance.

Send an announcement to our moderated announcement list: scart@lists.riseup.net

Fourth of July Celebrated with Anti-War/Anti-Capitalist Street Theatre

It's often been said that free speech is like a muscle - If you don't exercise it, it withers. With that in mind, 7 local activists of no particular affiliation (rumor has it though they are members of SAW) armed with bandanas, card board signs, and a corporate American flag cast what Hakim Bey once dubbed a "Temporary Autonomous Zone" on the corner of Pacific and Soquel.

For approximately an hour (just in time for the lunchtime rush), 6 folks made a circle around another holding an American flag and faced outward holding single word signs that periodically switched.

Though many of the single-word signs alluded to the multiple wars being waged by the American Empire ("Oil", "Torture", "Cheney", "Blackwater"), others were more directed towards the dominant culture at large. Words such as "For Sale", "Corporate Control", "Consume", and "Materialism" mixed in with "Paris Hilton" and "TV Reality," the result being a full spectrum of reactions.

Some folks (tourists to the core) took pictures, others stopped and gawked, still others offered "thank yous", "right on" and "you're just being negative", and at least one old man accused them of "hiding behind masks."

As one participant put it (and I'm paraphrasing here) "it was interesting to see the different reactions depending on which words we held up - "Peace" or "Bush Regime" got a lot of positive looks while "corporate control" and "denial" had folks frowning.

As the clock struck one, the TAZ closed with the singing of the Wobblies "IU 630" into the Pacific Garden Mall. Signs came down and we walked away. Happy fourth.

Music in Public Draws the Heat

Trash Orchestra Booted from the River Street Garage
(Courtesy of Santa Cruz' ridiculous 15-Minute Parking Lot Panic Law)

No doubt, being civic-minded and committed to fighting oppressive laws, you already know about the 15-Minute Parking Lot Panic law. (If not, see indybay.org here, and the text of this ridiculous law here.) Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra (and a saxophone player on the 2nd floor) were kicked out of the River Street garage (one of our favorite empty practice locations) and threatened with trespassing tickets by a zealous and nervous young officer.

Naturally, the law was created not to oppress privileged middle-class folk like ourselves, but to push the poor and the homeless further to the fringes (hopefully right off the edge where they might helpfully just disappear). But the city feels occasionally obligated to enforce their silly laws more or less uniformly lest they be accused of selective enforcement and have their laws struck down by the courts.

Next time you ask yourself, what the fuck is wrong with this town? Consider how much responsibility you bear every time you sit quietly by when someone make the choice of security over liberty (usually for our alleged benefit).

Twice now the petty-authoritarian rent-a-cop at the City Hall has tried to roust us during practice at the City Hall Courtyard. We've largely ignored him and suggested that he go ahead and make good on his escalating and apoplectic threats to call the cops. Last week he called down two more rent-a-cops, a park ranger, a bike cop, and a patrol car. Being able to do little about the public inconveniently using public space, they stood around and did their best to look intimidating. It didn't work. We left when we were done playing.

It did make us think though about the shabby gentlemen who sleep on the lawn at City Hall on sunny days and the fucking rent-a-cop who comes around regularly and intimidates them until they leave. Guessing they don't have the same sense of indignation and entitlement and knowledge of the law that we have.

Brazen Squaredancers Take the Streets

The Brazen Squaredance Association and Free Skool Santa Cruz host this sporadic Santa Cruz event, in which scores of squaredancers take over public space, moving to increasingly brazen locations, eventually taking over the streets, literally. A kind of movable feast of old-timey dancing. Fliers and posters circulated around town promised rollicking live music, dancing in the streets, and reclaiming public space.

This time well-loved caller Mavis McGaugh stepped up to call and Karen (of Amy and Karen) played with a rollicking old-time band including musicians from Blackbird Raum and Curse Is Cast. Mavis provided squaredance instruction before each dance.

Dancers gathered at 5:30 on a Friday evening at the top of the River Street parking garage (violating the absurd 15-minute parking lot trespassing law). As a stop-gap between the arrival of the caller and all the musicians, the author stepped up to run the many new dancers through some of the basic squaredance and contra dance calls and moves. Alamand left your neighbor, do-si-do your partner, all join hands and circle up left.

Mavis arrived and charmed us through two or three dances on top of the parking structure all lit in golden sunset light. Then we moved the dance to our old Brazen standby Cooper and Pacific. There a Santa Cruz cop stepped into the middle of a reel and we hooted and hollered and danced around him thinking for sure, seeing all the fun, he just wanted to join in.

Turns out, no, the police had gotten complaints from O'Neil's Surf Shop who couldn't stand to see people dancing outside for free when they should be inside the store buying overpriced surfwear. After the cop explained this, we offered a rousing chorus of boos to the killjoys inside the store. We turned one of the sets 90 degrees to avoid the 15 feet no-go zone in front of merchant doorways (another repressive Santa Cruz law) and continued the dance.

After a few dances, we moved to our next increasingly brazen location at Lincoln and Cedar. We walked through the dance in the (soon to be doomed) Farmer's Market parking lot. Then when the band and the dancers were ready, we moved to the middle of Lincoln Street and began dancing. At first drivers were confused, then frustrated, then resigned all in quick succession, like stages of automobile-bound grief. After that, dancers formed a de facto street barricade.

A patrol car showed up and a uniformed officer shouted that we had to get out of the street. The musicians on the sidewalk kept playing and the dancers kept dancing. Our cop-tamer went over to serve his role as police liaison only to realize that the uniformed man was merely a security guard feeling some sort of duty to keep his city's streets free of cavorting, frolicking dancers. After that, the rent-a-cop's protests were largely ignored. However, he continued to block all approaches to the intersection with his car while he made frantic calls on his radio. Dancers thanked him afterward for providing an effective roadblock.

Several waltzes later back in the parking lot, we called it an amazing evening.