Artishok TV presents: personal perspective to Occupy Wall Street

To start stirring up hot topic called Occupy Wall Street, I (Maarin, hello) must say that from the distance (looking from Estonia) it was quite complicated to understand what #OWS is. Suddenly, something was going on in Zuccotti park in New York, but different bits and pieces of information didn't made any all-round view about what was exactly going on. And why? No demands? Somekind of neo-hippies? We-youngsters-want-also-our-60s-turbulence-or-at-least-local-Arab-spring? Another old-school boring and safe protest that waves with some posters and then goes back home again, feeling ones good karma level rising? Official media coverage was fuzzy and inconsistent. Then Tarmo Jüristo, from citizen journalism site called Memokraat, packed his bags and flew over there. His reports (and discussion that followed online) were probably best insight of this newborn movement that reached to wider audience here in Estonia (that wider audience who considered themselves to be interested in such issues).

(Estonians, you can refresh your memories here: http://memokraat.ee/category/aktsioon/ows/)

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When I arrived to NY in February, occupy seemed to be turned into magic word. Every critical round table/discussion/workshop/whatever called itself "Occupy ..." (insert what you are not happy with). Suddenly there was a word to name your disappointments as a citizen - in neoliberal politics-economy, corruption, contemporary class society, 1 trillion student loan dept situation etc. And this magic word did not mean only just listing things, but it was a promise to take action, strong will to do something. Do it yourself, from bottom-up, collectively, soldierly; unite, protest, fight; take the streets, classrooms, squares, any public space, conquer it back! #OWS seemed to be everywhere, it became a password, even hip label - and at the same time it was nowhere, it was fragmented from physicality of intense Zuccotti camp that happened until winter came to NY, into working groups, committees, gallery talks etc.

First week when I arrived here, I participated in an event called "Being the Media: Designing a New Rrradical Media", organized by Paper Tiger TV for their 30th anniversary (PS there is interview with tigers waiting in my computer to get edited, so sooner or later it will reach to Artishok audience!). I ended up in small team with Maximilian Braverman, activist and technical director of NBCUniversal and Andrea Kannes, media student and great stand-up-comedian. After confirming our fruitful time together at the workshop with Facebook friendship, Max became my main news source of #OWS through constant covarage, reports, links etc that kept landing in my newsfeed.

As #OWS kept popping up around me and I still didn`t know what to think of that (here is not the problem lack of information, but overload of it), I figured it would be good to talk to someone from "inside" to try to figure out from personal perspective, what #OWS is, means, occupies, struggles with, celebrates etc. What interested me was how #OWS tackles with issues like becoming privileged protest movement (as Tarmo Jüristo wrote, #OWS is based on consensus - and it takes crazy amount of time to come to consensus - so who has that time to invest?), romantics of protest, protest tourism, Adbusters part in "designing" the movement etc. So it became an hour of conversation with Max, who is very well articulated, open to reflect #OWS from different sides and explain his personal commitment to this movement.

As I had lots of photos from May 1, the MayDay 2012, International Workers Day, that celebrate kind of new public efflorescence of #OWS all over city, I thought merging it all together into nontraditional Artishok TV episode. I truly apologize for sound, it has loud backround music, but imagine sitting with me and Max in coffee shop. There we go: