Contestation
We are those who think about, write about, and are involved with this world. We suffer the fate of writers. We have lived too much of our lives in books. We desire worlds that we know are possible and yet are out of reach. We are observers of this world.
But we are also participants in the contestation of this era. We are not satisfied with simple solutions to the large problems of this world or with its discontents. We live lives, freely chosen, of contestation and The Anvil is a record of that choice.
Transgression
We are boundary crossers. We are travelers across a landscape where we are not invited to anything but shopping and auto-annihilation. We suffer labels and resent them. We work and we are precarious. We play and feel the emptiness of not playing for keeps. We suffer for being bridges and are thankful for this.
This world is one of circumscription. The Anvil is a place to temper tools for digging and cutting our way out.
Engagement
Given the troubles we face it is hard to believe that we still choose engagement, even when checking out could be so much easier. The people in our lives demand nothing less than our attention and every effort to our project: whether simple or large. Therefore we are engaged in many aspects of social life from the politics of the newspaper, the street, and a thousand back rooms, to the theories of other lands and this one, and the devouring of our media rich, digitally disconnected world.
The Anvil is not a review site of detached observers but of people utterly engaged in the tensions of our times with our bodies, our minds, and each other.
Strike the iron of this world while it is hot!
Hi,
I thought you might be interested in this video. It’s about crossing boundaries. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsmrSwaeiHE As you may know The Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has an exhibition of 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds in London’s Tate Modern gallery, and it was his wish that visitors should interact with the seeds. However due to health and safety regulations this has been prevented. This film is not an act of demonstration or aggression, but an exploration of liberating the mind from its captivity.
Yours,
Annalie
Ran across the Anvil in my anarco meanderings. Read Alex Girrion’s, Love You Too Much, it messed with me in a big and wonderful way. Stopped in at the “about” to see “what’s it about” and watched the Seeds video.
thank you.
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Hey. Was wondering. Do you allow any “new” old comrades to sign up and review books? I used to “know” you all at the old board, anti-politics, and they you all came into this project. i’ve followed it for some years, and wonder if you’d rather i create my own project and not try to push myself on you all any longer? Not hearing anything, tho, i have to wonder. (yes, i used to use two other names on anti-politics, and one of you (at least) knew me in person.)
i am an avid reader, and also have spent too much time with books in my life (but how to educate oneself in an introduction to deep than to read the voices of myriad challengers?–not that i need to convince you all!)
Granted, i write unorthodox-ically. But don’t you think some folks out there would LIKE that?
i wanted to review three books, specifically; i was hoping to be able to publish on your site like indymedia allows… All the books are on Indigenous topics. One by G.E. Tinker, another by S.L. Morgensen, and another by Sandy Grande. Which moves me to say, wow, I haven’t read any reviews on this subject at all! Why is that??
I’m a major fiesty kind of writer, and prone to jump into intensities which may be TOO much for you all.
Anyway, here’s to the wish that one of you (?) or more (?) may write me and explain your position. (btw, i also do art, and could illustrate various stuff; tho there’s a concerted effort, it appears, to isolate me –the ‘much too wradick’L’ and my art from crucial spaces, by the ideologically-challenged; i.e. see my cover for the AJODA folks, issue #38)
Call me what you Have To, but i’ve been an anti-authoritarian for more than 25 years, now.
Oops, TYPICAL me, i just now noted your way for us to “submit”! Heh. Okay! But, a’course, i’d STILL like to hear one or more folks’ replies to my post above.
Gracias!