Red 76 presents
The Spartacus School of Passing Time
Featuring:
- Jesse Gray
- Laiwan
- Alexander Doughtry
The Spartacus School of Passing Time
For over 35 years, Spartacus Books has offered itself to Vancouver as an evolving nexus of radical, progressive, and creative expression. Not just a bookstore, it is a community center which has drawn hundreds of volunteers to offer their labor and love to keep its doors open and ideals in action. With so many individuals passing through its dusty threshold, not to mention its collective membership, it would be difficult to map just what effect the store’s existence has had on the city of Vancouver that exists today. Yet its continued existence offers us a chance to see a continueum of dreams, struggles, revolutions and tragedies by looking into the varied past of Spartacus and its members.
Red 76 proposes the creation of an ephemeral institution of learning, The Spartacus School of Passing Time. An evolving “curriculum” – co-created by Red 76 and selected former collective members – will be installed within the Gallery Space / Washroom of the current Spartacus Books, located at 684 E Hastings St. It will comprise of a variety of learning tools including a reading list, archival documents and images, a public lecture or discussion, and a one-of-a-kind Reader to be permanently made available for study in the store.
The first semester will begin May 2009. This new learning center will be developed by a membership who’s participation spans the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and the turn of the century. Its curriculum will change over the course of several months. Enrollment is free, participation voluntary, and the doors are open to all during regular store hours.
Spartacus – http://www.spartacusbooks.org/
684 E Hastings, Heatley Block, DTES/Strathcona, Vancouver, BC, Coast Salish Territory
Phone: 604.688.6138
Hours: Monday to Friday: 10 to 8:30 / Saturday: 11 to 7 / Sunday: 12 to 7
The Spartacus School of Passing Time is supported by a grant from InCUBATE (The Institute for Community Understanding Between Art and The Everyday).
About Red 76
Begun in January of 2000 in Portland, Oregon, Red76 is the moniker for collaboratively based projects conceived, most often, by Sam Gould, and fleshed out by a group of like minded folks usually consisting, but not limited to: Gabriel Saloman, Ola Stahl, Zefrey Throwell, Paige Saez, Mike Wolf, Jen Rhoads, Laura Baldwin, and many others.
Red76 has initiated projects, large and small, that have been realized in North America, and Internationally. The guiding thread between many of these initiatives is the facilitation of discussion, thought and action within public space, the examination of what that space can be, and where that space may reside at any given time.
The wish to charge space and create an atmosphere wherein the public may become highly aware of their immediate surroundings and their day to day activities is an often recurring element within many of the group’s actions.
For the last several years Red 76 has been deeply involved in an initiative called ‘Revolutionary Spirit’, which has produced dozens of projects and publications. In response to the seeming shift in mainstream economic and political consciousness, Red 76 has begun it’s new initiative, ‘the Flying University’. Intended to be an investigation of non-institutional educational models, parallel economies, gray markets, and collective action, the F.U. takes the form of “Schools” all over North America and Internationally which serve to educate, inspire and cultivate collective resources.
Red 76 – http://www.red76.com
Flying University – http://www.red76.com/fu
Revolutionary Spirit – http://www.red76.com/tobegin.html
About Gabriel Saloman
Gabriel Saloman is a San Francisco/Portland/Vancouver based artist and a member of the Spartacus Collective. Saloman works as a writer, curator, graphic artist, lecturer and magickal activist. Since 2003 he has collaborated with Red 76 on such projects as ‘Building Batteries’, ‘The Journal of Radical Shimming’, ‘Second Home’ for the San Jose Biennial, ‘The Battery Republic’ which was part of Creative Time’s ‘Democracy in America’, and most recently ‘Surplus Seminar’ at Columbus College of Art and Design. Together with Sam Gould of Red 76 he is also the creator of the No War U.S.O. initiative, and leads the annual Liberation Seder. Saloman is an experimental musician performing solo as SadeSade, and with Aja Rose as Diadem. He is best known for his work in seminal noise group, Yellow Swans.
Gabriel Saloman – http://diademdiscos.wordpress.com/gms
The Battery Republic – http://www.red76.com/batteryrepublic.html
Second Home – http://welcometosecondhome.org/
No War U.S.O. – http://nowar-uso.org/
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