_d

afb3jix

Issue 1

Novem

ber 2012 £6

54_

34_

What’s gone wrong?Occupy London

4_Felix BaumgartnerThe man faster than the speed of sound

Death GripsNo love for the label

Austerity MeasuresAre all animals equal?

22_

16_ Nomad

46_ Material possessions

56_ Inaudible

68_ Twilebrities

74_ Lance Armstrong

88_ Eyes bigger than your telly

96_ Lovemarks

104_ Wider eye

_d

afb3jix Issu

e 1 Novem

ber 2012 Felix B

aum

gartner | O

ccup

y Lon

do

n | D

eath G

rips | A

usterity M

easures

__dafb3jix Issue 1

Edited and created by Ash Watkins, Dave Morris, James Urmston, Leanne Kitchen, Ross Golding & Sam Weston_

la Muerte de la Tipografía

O C C U P Y

O C C U P YW H A T S G O N E W R O N G ?

Since being removed by police in February, Occupy have opened short-lived camps in Finsbury Square and Shoreditch, east London, but the movement no longer has a physical base.

‘We are calling on people to take the conversation out of St Paul’s and into their homes,’ said Occupy campaigner Ronan McNern.This leads into a lot of speculation about the depth and beliefs that Occupy actually has.

The Occupy protesters made much of Jesus throwing the moneylenders out of the temple – the only occasion Jesus is recorded taking this kind of direct action. The temple in Jerusalem was at that time the powerhouse of the economy, creating wealth for the ruling classes from its markets and financing: Jesus treated the worship of the temple with respect but confronted the corruption of those in power. It’s not St Paul’s but the financial industry that is the

wealth-generating hub of this City, and that is where the attention of the protesters should be focused.

‘There is more need for this movement than ever. The welfare state is being dismantled and our call is still for people to stand up and challenge this injustice and inequality. The tents have gone but we are still here.’ said Occupy campaigner Ronan McNern.

Unfortunately like so many beliefs and views in today’s society these words get taken and put to the extreme to gain media coverage for personal reasons.

The solemnity of St Paul’s Sunday evensong was disrupted

Words: James UrmstonPhotos: David Glwn

_dafb3jix November 2012 2322

when four members of the Occupy London movement, which camped outside the cathedral for months, chained themselves to the base of the pulpit.

While the choir sang, four women dressed in white shouted their own sermon to mark the anniversary of the start of the Occupy camp outside St Paul’s, accusing the cathedral authorities of colliding with banks and failing to help the poor.

Occupy had been invited to read a prayer at the service, but if the gesture was an attempt at reconciliation, it was firmly rejected. After Tanya Paton, of Occupy Faith, had read her prayer, the four women rose from their seats and chained themselves to the

pulpit. ‘In the fight for economic justice Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, but you invited them in and instead evicted us,’ shouted Alison Playford.

The female protesters said they did not plan to leave. City of London police arrived at the cathedral, but staff told them they were happy for the protesters to remain.

The Very Reverend David Ison, dean of St Paul’s, spoke immediately after the women to give his sermon,

‘The poor and needy came to them and they shut the door and got rid of us as soon as possible.’

‘The poor and needy came to them and they shut the door and got rid of us as soon as possible.’

_dafb3jix November 2012 2524

mildly joking that he now had a ‘captive audience’. He told the protesters that they were welcome in the church and he would be happy to speak to them after the service. ‘I hope you will listen to what I have to say,’ he said, before arguing that ‘tribalism’ was not the way to defeat inequality.

‘We need partners, allies whether they are bankers or campers, conservative or liberal, religious or not. God’s invitation to us is to follow Jesus Christ and to change ourselves and the world to one which is inclusive and generous and calls all of our self interests into question whether it’s the interests of the Church of England or Occupy or the City of London.’

Speaking later, he said: ‘I’m just sorry they decided to do this, which makes it hard for members of Occupy Faith, who have been working together.

‘Christians were dragged away from St Paul’s while they were kneeling in prayer,’ said 25-year-old Siobhan

Grimes, one of the protesters. ‘We have been trying to have a meeting since then and this is obviously what you have to do to get one.’Playford said it was time for St Paul’s to get off the fence. ‘The cathedral makes platitudes to Occupy but they colluded with the City of London and missed a perfect opportunity to enact the teachings of Jesus,’ she said. ‘The poor and needy came to them and they shut the door and got rid of us as soon as possible.’

The protest marked a further deterioration in relations between St Paul’s and the Occupy protesters who camped outside.

C h r i s t i a n s were dragged away from

S t P a u l ’ s while they were in

p r a y e r

_dafb3jix November 2012 2726

The temple in Jerusalem was at that time the powerhouse of the city economy, creating enormous wealth for the ruling classes from its markets and financing: Jesus treated the worship of the temple with respect but confronted the corruption of those in power.powerhouse enormous

The temple in Jerusalem was at that time the powerhouse of the city economy, creating enormous wealth for the ruling classes from its markets and financing: Jesus treated the worship of the temple with respect but confronted the corruption of those in power.worship corruption power.power.power.corruptionworship

Monday marks the first anniversary of the occupation – part of a global movement born in the wake of the financial crisis – which involved hundreds of protesters living in the camp while calling for an end to the perceived excesses and injustices of the global financial system.

The women cut themselves free at about 10pm after police entered St Paul’s and warned them they faced arrest, according to an Occupy spokesman.

Raising tensions between the cathedral and protesters resulted in the resignation of the canon chancellor, Giles Fraser, who left his post because he did not want to see ‘violence in the name of the church’, and a chaplain, Fraser Dyer.

St Paul’s, the existence of the camp has been seen too much in terms of a little local difficulty – graffiti, hassle, problems with income and visitor numbers. This is a mistake of perspective that comes about through years of ingrained thinking that the building is the purpose of the cathedral. After a decade-long fundraising campaign to find £42m needed to clean the building, it may be inevitable that the cathedral’s whole administrative infrastructure is bent towards this end. Thus it becomes just too easy to worship Christopher Wren and not the God who spoke of the rich having to give up all their possessions.

‘I’m just sorry they have decided to do this, which makes it hard for members of Occupy Faith, who have been working together with us on something which is respectful, and peaceful.

‘you invited them in and instead evicted us.’

_dafb3jix November 2012 3130

‘in solidarity’ with Russian punk band Pussy Riot

Occupy London tweeted that they were also protesting ‘in solidarity’ with Russian punk band Pussy Riot, who were jailed in for two years after staging an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral.

Two women from punk band Pussy Riot sentenced to jail for an anti-Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral face harsh, Soviet-style prison camps where their lives may be in danger due to a lack of medicine and no hot water amid sub-zero winter temperatures, according to a recently released band member.

Pussy Riot’s protest has attracted global attention because of the two-year jail sentences meted out to its members for what prosecutors called ‘hooliganism motivated by religious hatred’.

‘To me, the Occupy movement is about putting decisions and democracy back into the hands of people without chaos . We need democracy for people, not corporations; we want greater equity; we demand social justice; and we want to recognize and protect our most fundamental needs — clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy, biological diversity and communities that support our children with love and care.’ Says David Suzuki.

‘My generation and the boomers who followed have lived like reckless royalty and thoughtlessly partied like there’s no tomorrow. We forgot the lessons taught to us by our parents and grandparents who came through the Great Depression: live within your means and save some for tomorrow; satisfy your needs and not your wants; help your neighbours; share and don’t be greedy; money doesn’t make you a better or more important person. Well, the party’s

‘I’m just sorry they have decided to do

this, which makes it hard for members of

Occupy Faith, who have been working together

with us on something which is respectful.’w e a k e rover. It’s time to clean up our mess and think about our children and grandchildren.’ Voiced Gillian Lane. ‘The last four months have been hard fought, inspiring and delightfully revolutionary. We brought tents, hunkered down, held our assemblies and lobbed a meme-bomb that continues to explode the world’s imagination. Many of us have never felt so alive. We have fertilized the future with our revolutionary spirit … and a thousand flowers will surely bloom in the coming Spring.’

‘But as winter approaches, an ominous mood could set in … hope thwarted is in danger of turning sour, patience exhausted becoming anger, militant nonviolence losing its allure. It isn’t just the mainstream media that says things could get ugly. What shall we do to keep the magic alive?’

Although the intentions of the storming of St Paul’s were good the lack luster approach has unfortunately made the occupy movement look weaker than ever. This is something that can not happen if they want to be taken seriously in the rest of the world _

_dafb3jix November 20123332

t h a n e v e rO C C U P Y L O N D O N

l i t up a lone in the dark

unemployed journalist ever!’—who has gathered more than 1.4 million followers on Twitter, the 98th most in the world, ranking her, at press time, between Serena Williams and Denise Richards. After joining in March 2009, she tweeted “more than all of the founders combined” that’s what they told her and earned the status of suggested user, which means every new Twitterer is asked if he or she would like to follow her. Like a lot of twilebrities, Michaels uses her significant influence to push her followers toward those she deems cool enough, and looks down on those who don’t follow the rules. ‘She doesn’t engage, or RT’ (translation: re-tweet), she snipes in an e-mail about a rival twilebrity. ‘She has one-sided conversations, and that is completely frowned upon in our world. She’s a self-promoter, and that’s not social media.’

Even Twitter has started to put the brakes on the culture of twilebrity by suspending the accounts of those who Twitter too excessively ,more than 1,000 tweets per day, a punishment commonly known as going to Twitter Jail. Plus, like the company itself, which is valued at $1 billion, despite little revenue and zero profit, not one of these women is making a fortune off Twitter. They’re waiting for corporate sponsorships and all sorts of newfangled Web synergies, but the best that marketers have come up with so far are “sponsored tweets” and corny stunts, like novelist Rick Moody’s ‘microserializing’ an original short story, ‘Some Contemporary Characters,’ through continuous bursts of, you guessed it, 140 characters—a three-day task. Somthing some people would consied pointless as ‘There’s no money in Twitter yet, it’s true,’ Evans says, ‘but that’s O.K. The validation of having so many people listen to you is reward enough _

Whether you consider Twitter a worldwide experiment in extreme narcissism or a nifty tool for real-time reporting—a plane ditches in the Hudson, millions take to the streets in Tehran—it may not yet have dawned on your text-saturated brain that it’s also a path to becoming famous. Not real fame, mind you, or even Internet-celebrity fame, but a special, new category of fame: twilebrity.

For tweeple, e-mail messages are sonnets, Facebook is practically Tolstoy. “Facebook is just way too slow,” says Stefanie Michaels, a twilebrity from Brentwood, California. ‘I can’t deal with that kind of deep engagement.’ It’s a strikingly swift mode of communication. Twitter doesn’t even require real sentences, only a continual patter of excessively declarative and abbreviated palaver. ‘Sometimes,’ says Julia Roy, a New York social strategist turned twilebrity, scrunching her face, ‘when you’re Twittering all the time, you even start to think in 140 characters.’

Twittering all the time—the act of text-messaging the world why wouldn’t you talk to everyone, if you could? Is the essential feat of a twilebrity. And because Twitter uses simple technology, it’s a utilitarian vehicle for ambitious extroverts, without any previous distinction, to become digital superstars. In order to stay in touch with, and keep intact, their legions of ‘followers’ these civilian twilebrities must tweet a lot. Each day, these women speed easily across the Twitformation Superhighway on their iPhones and laptops, leaving droppings in their wake: “getting highlights before class,’ ‘I hrd u had fun!,’ ‘Wah, missing my twittr time!’ They use a lot of ‘hashtags.’

There may be no better example of twilebrity than Michaels, a freelance travel journalist I was the most

Words: James UrmstonPhotos: Charlie Urmston

_dafb3jix November 20127170

‘when you’re Twittering all the time, you even start to think in 140 characters.’

‘when you’re Twittering all the time, you even start to think in 140 characters.’

ALL ANIMALS ShALL Receive MEDICAL CARE

ALL ELDERLY ANIMALS ARE

CARED FOR

NO ANIMAL SHALL PAY

HIGHER TUITION

if willing to wait

will get what they need

s

_d

afb3jix

Issue 1

Novem

ber 2012 £6

54_

34_

What’s gone wrong?Occupy London

4_Felix BaumgartnerThe man faster than the speed of sound

Death GripsNo love for the label

Austerity MeasuresAre all animals equal?

22_

16_ Nomad

46_ Material possessions

56_ Inaudible

68_ Twilebrities

74_ Lance Armstrong

88_ Eyes bigger than your telly

96_ Lovemarks

104_ Wider eye

_d

afb3jix Issu

e 1 Novem

ber 2012 Felix B

aum

gartner | O

ccup

y Lon

do

n | D

eath G

rips | A

usterity M

easures

__dafb3jix Issue 1

Edited and created by Ash Watkins, Dave Morris, James Urmston, Leanne Kitchen, Ross Golding & Sam Weston_

la Muerte de la Tipografía