Thu, Sep. 30, 2021 ⁄ 7:00–9:00pm

Film Screening: Break & Enter / Rompiendo Puertas (Newsreel #62)

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Please join us for the first screening within Infra(Structures), a new series of social documentaries screening for free at Confluence Studio’s Autonomous Mobile Media Unit, and organized by filmmakers Brett Story & and Morgan Adamson, and artist and Confluence lead-editor, Sam Gould.
About Break & Enter:
Break and Enter/ Rompiendo Puertas (Newsreel #62)
In 1970, several hundred Puerto Rican and Dominican families reclaimed housing left vacant by the city. They pulled the boards off the doors, cleaned and repaired the buildings and moved in. BREAK AND ENTER documents the activist work of Operation Move-In and the city’s attempts to displaced the families. This film offers a militant vision of gaining community control of housing and allows us to glimpse a different future that imagines residential autonomy beyond the gentrified city.
Series Information:
• All screenings take place outdoors at Confluence Studio’s AMMU (Autonomous Mobile Media Unit) located in the courtyard of 3032 Minnehaha Ave. adjacent to the 3rd Precinct and Moon Palace Books.
• All screenings are free and open to the public.
• Screenings start at 7pm
• It may get a little cold after the sun goes down, so please dress appropriately.
• Seating is limited, so bring a camping chair or blanket, and anything else that makes you comfortable.
About Infra(Structures):
Starting this September, Infra(Structures): A Social Documentary Film Series will be hosting a handful of films and filmmakers whose work creates spaces of interpretation, critique, communing, and hopefully, cooperative creation towards a common good. The program is interested in asking urgent and critical questions about “infrastructure” – the material and social world we have constructed for ourselves, its interconnection, its contradictions, its power, potential, and pitfalls. These works ask: How is space used and organized, what connections are enabled and/or disrupted, where do resources go and who benefits?
Living in a neighborhood experiencing impending radical transformation, we look to filmmakers considering the past and present of how small groups in the midst of big ideas with very real consequences grappled with their relationship to power and infrastructure. The prison industrial complex, housing and public health, conflict and the necessities of the democratic landscape, the films in the series ask us to considering the visible and invisible infrastructures that create the worlds we call home and, through a variety of means and experiments, how we might transform these material and social infrastructures for the benefit of the whole.
Documentary is also an infrastructure – a reflection of the political ecology we live in but also a way of making space – space for gathering, for reflection, for discussion, and for sharing. We offer a series of films which not only allow us to see ourselves, anew, but give a pretext for imagining, together, what kind of infrastructures we need and want to live, thrive, and be free.
Series Organizers: Brett Story, Morgan Adamson, & Sam Gould

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

Sat, Sep. 25, 2021 ⁄ 5:30–8:00pm

An Introduction to: Reconstruction – Area – Memory

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Join us at our cargo-container studio, the AMMU (Autonomous Mobile Media Unit), in the courtyard of 3032 Minnehaha Ave at 5:30pm this Saturday, Sept. 25th for the launch of our newest social tool, R-A-M: Reconstruction-Area – Memory. 

 

R-A-M is a toolkit for recognizing others committed to constructing neighborhoods of care so that people may engage in conversations on street corners or host community forums to rebuild their neighborhoods, in our case, the 9th Ward enclaves of Powderhorn, Central, East Phillips, and Near Bryant. We’re gathering as creative folks, artists, organizers, and local troublemakers to experiment and collaboratively imagine with our neighbors to plan a different future for East Lake Street, one where a multitude of voices and visions lead.

East Lake Street is being rebuilt in ways that will continue to push out our neighbors, local businesses, and the communities we’ve formed here. Political Representatives, Property Developers, and other PIGs (Private Interest Groups) are hoarding the power to decide on what the future of our neighborhoods and city systems will be rather than creating forums and processes for us all to collectively decide through cooperation, care, and creativity. Our formation, Confluence, is an anarchic Community Design Studio for people to come together and redevelop Minneapolis’ 9th Ward from the grassroots. R-A-M, along with the AMMU, and other mechanisms in the works, are simple, open sourced tools for recognition and cooperative creation. They are free and available for all to use as they see fit.

We’re reaching out to invite you to be a co-inventor of tools that amplify our power as the people who give life to East Lake Street and the surrounding neighborhoods so that we might reimagine and rebuild this place we call home.

Please join us at the AMMU (in the courtyard adjacent to the 3rd Precinct at 3032 Minnehaha Ave.) at 5:30pm this Saturday, Sept. 25th. Duaba, Sam, and Vic will give a brief overview of R-A-M, it’s design and use. From there we’ll test out the tool with your help.

Snacks and good cheer on site!

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

An amazing day hosting Marc Fischer for the first pop-up exhibit at the AMMU of two recent publications: Police Scanner and Legal Concealers. On view for at least another month…

Marc, Laura Baldwin, and Sam talked about the publications and the differences between navigating and observing the court system on a daily basis.

After a short break we jumped into a conversation between Sam and Kenneth Bailey of Boston’s Design Studio for Social Intervention…

Sam and Kenny’s conversation could have gone on and on, focusing on the poetics of social life and power, access to tools for grassroots transformation and so much more.

We’re excited to begin to transcribe these conversations and add them to a growing list of dialogues soon to be printed and distributed throughout the neighborhood.

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

Defund the Police? Refund the People!!!

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· Resident Weirdo· ∞

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In the coming weeks we’ll begin a series of on-going conversations and programs in collaboration with Hennipen County Public Defenders and independent criminal defense lawyers regard individuals rights specific to the social landscape that is the 9th Ward of South Minneapolis. Simply put, how are you and your neighbors being screwed with and where at?

While, admittedly, nothing can protect you from a cop on an aggression kick, knowing your rights and how they can protect you when in proximity to the police is an asset of use to us all, especially for our neighbors most targeted by the police here in the Ward.

With this said, in the planning stages of this groups formation, hearing from neighbors about specific events, tendencies, or repeated actions by individual members of the 3rd Precinct is helpful.

Any suggestions for subject matter on programs specifically relating to the neighborhood would be great to know. Please feel free to reach out and let us know what to focus on.

· Resident Weirdo· ∞

· Resident Weirdo· ∞