It’s straight out of a Don Delillo novel: A few hours after television producers set up a replica of Occupy Wall Street for the filming of a new episode of Law and Order Special Victims Unit, the real Occupy Wall Street announced plans to occupy the fake one. At 11:30 p.m. the call to occupy the set went out on Twitter. It’s located at nearby Foley Square and includes a replica of the OWS kitchen and library as well as numerous tarps and tents. “They’ve delivered us this perfectly wrapped Christmas present with a bow on top: They rebuilt our camp,” OWS organizer Jake De Groot told me shortly before the announcement went out. “How could we not go and take it?”
Amazing. This is a nice sequel to “#Occupy as Live Action Role-playing” (my take or barthel’s when it was republished).
ekstasis:
Joanne McNeil at Rhizome opened her post about #OWS with this: “On a quiet night, Zuccotti Park feels more like a LARP than a demonstration. Everyone deep in character with a specific task…” We have knowledge, but nothing to do with it; skills, but never opportunities to use them; time, energy and no way to put them to productive use. Our surplus is a virtual one, so we put it to virtual use.
…[and then some other things]
There’s maybe something about privilege exposed by this description, too, which speaks to criticism of occupy’s non-representation of certain groups. I don’t know what to say about it here, except that it’s really awesome when one post encapsulates several separate strains that I follow on tumblr that didn’t seem like they talk to each other much even when they ought to.
