The Bay Area Public School Begins with Summer School 2012

It's time for summer school! We're not talking about that Mark Harmon movie. It's The Bay Area Public School, very recently established. Collaborative and free. A detailed schedule is online and looks amazing -- each night circles around a different topic. Those included: the body, the city, politics and language, gender, empire, education, and workshops in public space. Speakers and participants include Rob Halpern ("on porn"), Norma Cole, Lucy Raven, Erica Staiti, Matthew Vollgraff, French translator Robert Hurley, social scientist Hanh Cao Yu, and many more; and discussions range from the uses and impacts of civil gang injunctions in Oakland to ancient empires. Plus screenings of films like David Wojarowicz’s Fire In My Belly and Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures. The basics:

Detailed Summer School Schedule 2012
*Each night will consist of

a workshop from 7pm - 8pm
panel discussion from 8pm - 10pm
performance and/or film screening from 10pm - midnight

All events (excepts Sunday’s workshops) take place at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist library, 6501 Telegraph Ave, Oakland CA 94609.

And an example of the details:

August 7, 2012: the CITY

Workshop:

ISAAC ONTIVEROS & KAMAU WALTON of CRITICAL RESISTANCE on the uses and impacts of civil gang injunctions in Oakland. Participants will learn about gang injunctions’ relationship to policing, surveillance, imprisonment, racism, and economic inequity. This workshop will also highlight community efforts to resist and to build self-determination.

Panel, moderated by Jennifer Hoff:

MARK HOGAN on: Do new urban interventions, such as parklets and bike sharing programs, represent greater public participation in the streets, or merely gentrification and increased property values?

ISAAC ONTIVEROS & KAMAU WALTON of CRITICAL RESISTANCE on policing and cities

M/N J PECK on: ‘researching’ the queer city

ALEXANDER SCHURMANN on The Metropolis and the Fulfillment of Nihilism in America: a lumpen perspective

Performance:

ALEX ABRAMOVICH and LUCY RAVEN presenting their film Notes on the General Strike of 1946, commissioned by the Oakland Standard at the Oakland Museum of California

ERIKA STAITI presenting her film created for the occasion, a meditation on the city through lines, shapes, layers, and light.

WENDY TREVINO reading poems inspired by her love of San Francisco and Oakland

Keep yourself posted by following the Bay Area Public School blog here.