For the last 7 years No↔Space, managed by Not An Alternative, has functioned as a base for art and activism in NYC. A few months ago, a staggering rent increase (240%) forced us out of our Williamsburg home. But that didn’t slow us down: we’ve happily found a new space in Greenpoint, and in the midst of the Occupy Wall Street movement we’re busier than we’ve ever been!
It's true we suffered a blow in losing our home base, we're starting over with a raw space, building it out from scratch. But we couldn’t be more excited about this new chapter. We’ve launched a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to help fund the new No↔Space, and our next year of events and projects.
Thanks to the support of our amazing community, we've just reached our goal of $10,000 this week! But why stop there? Now we're aiming to raise another $5,000 to cover upcoming projects related to Occupy Wall Street. And we have 2 days left to do it!
The $10,000 ensures that we can cover the costs of the move, the build-out, and core space-related expenses for a year. But anything we raise above that amount will go directly to new projects.
Occupy Wall Street has captured the public imagination like nothing in recent memory. This is the opportunity we have been waiting for: a chance to transform the existing social political landscape and build a mass movement for economic justice. For years Not An Alternative has collaborated with activists, artists, and community groups to produce aesthetics that function tactically and symbolically, and actions that serve to frame a message in a compelling and visual way.
We've got some mischief up our sleeves: interventions on privately owned public spaces, projects relating to eviction defense and home re-occupations, collaborations community groups like Picture The Homeless, Organizing for Occupation, and Take Back the Land and with artists and designers like John Hawke, DSGN AGNC, The Yes Lab, and others, and national level coordination and interventions with other #occupy cities.
While $5000 won't get us all the way there, it will allow us to roll out some of the ideas we've been cooking up immediately. Can you help make it happen?
Please watch our Kickstarter video, donate what you can, and spread the word!
When we opened the space years ago (then called The Change You Want To See Gallery) we imagined a laboratory and a factory: on one side a space for theory, presentation and discussion, and on the other a space for production where we could turn ideas into action.
Over the years we’ve hosted hundreds of artist talks, film screenings, panel discussions, workshops, and festivals. And we’ve produced dozens of actions, installations and interventions, from within art institutions like London’s Tate Modern and Mexico City’s Museo Del Arte Moderno, and in the public sphere, staging actions like a homeless building occupation in East Harlem and architecting a tent city take-over of a vacant bank-owned lot.
Now we find ourselves in the midst of a crisis and an opportunity: an economic meltdown of unprecedented proportions and the beginning of a new global movement. It’s against this backdrop that we situate our upcoming year of programming.
We have a big year ahead of us and a shiny new space to fill with experiments and explorations. As always, our work is made possible through the support of our audiences, and we’re proud to run on lean no-nonsense budgets, which means that donations of any size can make a big impact.
Thanks to the generosity of our community we've reached our goal of $10,000. Now we're setting out sights higher: an additional $5000 will allow us to implement some of the creative activist projects we've been incubating, to leverage this historic moment and help build a mass movement. Can you help us blow our goals out of the water and take our work to the next level? Please watch the video and give today, then share it on Facebook and Twitter!
Thanks for your support,
xoxo
Not An Alternative