(from Influencers' accomplice Snafu)

Vote Early, Vote Often
A Weekend of Arts in Action
On the Politics of the Vote: How and What Counts

The Change You Want to See Gallery in Brooklyn, New York
And multiple locations and websites
October 11-12, 2008

Curated by Not An Alternative
http://www.notanalternative.net

Participating artists/groups to date:
Ricardo Miranda, Cat Mazza, Natalie Jeremijenko, Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, Molle Industria

A CALL FOR PROPOSALS
(Please email project proposals to info@notanalternative.net and snafu@notanalternative.net)
Artists and activists are invited to come together for a weekend of arts in action on October 11-12 2008. As the national polls will keep polling the pollable, we aim to shift the focus on the mechanisms that enable the iteration of party politics, and on the subjects who do not count and by their very intervention may change the way of counting.

Thus we invite artists and activists to join forces and present a project that envisions and addresses different ways of perceiving and participating in the democratic process–whether you think voting matters or not.

The projects/actions can be elaborated with any kind of media and take place in any locale. They will be featured on the festival website and related materials.

Vote Early, Vote Often: Background
Legend has it that when the flamboyant and eccentric “Big Bill” Thompson ran for his second mayoral term in Chicago in 1927 he used to exhort his fellow citizens to “vote early and often.”

The expression had an eerie quality to it, especially considering that Al Capone, who apparently had Thompson on his payroll, repeated it as a mantra. On election day, so the story goes, scores of Chicagoans–including the deceased–were given countless opportunities to cast their ballots. Needless to say, Big Bill got his hands on the prize, inaugurating the most corrupt administration the city has ever seen. Untroubled by such illustrious forerunners another infamous boss of Chicago politics, the Democrat Richard Daley used the phrase, once again, in the 1950s and 1960s as he ran one of the most well-oiled and hardiest political machines of all times.

Although “vote early and often” is usually associated with Chicago politics, its roots go back to the pre-Civil War period. In 1854, a group of pro-slavery settlers from Missouri called the Border Ruffians crossed into Kansas territory on election day to “vote early and often” on behalf of Kansas for slavery. It worked.

The history of this country is filled with accounts of dirty little tricks on how to fix an election. As a matter of fact, two centuries later, many of us are still wondering how early and often the manufacturers of electronic voting machines cast their vote over the last decade; and conversely, how late, if ever, minority groups, immigrants and other disenfranchised voters will be given an opportunity to have a say in national politics.

Drawing on these unsettling and unsettled questions, we envision a weekend of arts in action whose main focus will be the silent exclusion of countless numbers of fellow citizens from the official count of national politics. We mean it quite literally, convinced as we are that institutional and political machines work through an often unspoken agreement on how to count, and on what to count.

How to Count
Few months before the 2000 presidential elections a web site surfaced on the internet that offered U.S. citizens the opportunity of selling their vote online to the highest bidder. Vowing to “bring capitalism and democracy closer together” Vote Auction (voteauction.net) offered a rather efficient solution to the old-time question of the outrageous costs of political campaigns, and a pragmatic response to the disappointing feeling of being cheated that assails voters once they see that their goodwill has gone, once again, unrewarded…

Although Vote Auction may appear as a cynical exercise in the common art of mistrusting machine politics, its huge media exposure and the chain of reactions it ignited at the time, tell us that the project hit a raw nerve. Instead of endorsing a candidate or tackling an issue, the project posed a set of challenging questions on the conditions of possibility of party politics:

• What are the forms of symbolic representation in national politics?
• How is consensus obtained?
• Is it possible to intervene on the discursive formations that frame such a politics?
• If so, what are the tools at our disposal, and how can we use them to recast such a
discourse?

What to Count
Once power has decided how to count, what is to be counted becomes relatively easy. This country has a long history of disenfranchising voters on the basis of their gender, race, literacy (i.e. class), or if convicted of a crime.

For instance in post-Civil War Mississippi the vote was taken away for miscegenation, but not for murder (a predominantly white crime). States like Florida, Kentucky and Virginia still revoke felons’ voting rights for the rest of their lives. With 1% of the nation behind bars, the ACLU estimates that about 5 million Americans have permanently lost their right to vote.

We are also aware that exists a movement in this country of millions of undocumented workers who have so far been denied citizens rights, in spite of the fact that they contribute to the national wealth as each one of us, and in spite of their clear desire to participate and be included in the count.

We also feel that there are other living creatures on this planet that are not put in the condition to express their preference -- perhaps only because we do not know or we have forgotten how to listen to them. As we become increasingly aware of the fundamental interdependence of the Plant Kingdom, the Animal Kingdom and human society, we want to learn once again what nature has to say, and how would she cast her ballot.

Arts in Action
In view of this, we are inviting artists and activists to come together for a weekend of arts in action on October 11-12 2008. As the national polls will keep polling the pollable, we aim to shift the focus on the mechanisms that enable the iteration of party politics, and on the subjects who do not count and by their very intervention may change the way of counting.

Thus we invite artists and activists to join forces and present a project that envisions and addresses different ways of perceiving and participating in the democratic process–whether you think voting matters or not.

The projects/actions can be elaborated with any kind of media and take place in any locale. They will be featured on the festival website and related materials.

To respond to this call, please email:

<info@notanalternative.net>
<snafu@notanalternative.net>

Confirmed projects to date:

Votemos

http://www.votemos.us

Stitch For Senate

http://www.stitchforsenate.us

Rev Billy & the Church of Stop Shopping
http://www.revbilly.com

Molle Industria
http://molleindustria.org/en/home

The Environmental Clinic

http://www.environmentalhealthclinic.net

Vote Early and Often, It’s never Too Late!