Tag: Anarcho Queer Agitation Bureau of Nihilistic Tendencies

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AQAB Distro *Closure*

Many sincere thanks to everyone who’s supported the AQAB distro and my work under the banner of Post-Romantic Queerwave. I could never have raised so much money for various fundraisers and mutual aid initiatives without your purchases of my art.

A couple of months ago PayPal put a restriction on the distro’s account, I’ve tried everything I can to get it lifted but PayPal refused all my attempts. Most of the proceeds from the distro had already been distributed as intended, but there was a bit of money in there that I now can’t access. So I’ve been in the process of finalizing proceeds out of my own pocket. I have one more payment to organize and as always, receipts are available on request (unless you’re a cop).

Meanwhile I’ve closed the distro. I started the project with a couple of other people on board but in reality I’ve been doing all the work on my own including covering all the associated costs. I don’t have the capacity to keep doing it. I’m not living in poverty, but my only income is a disability pension and although I’m quite old, I have very little life savings (and no family inheritances!) My mental & physical health is shit and I also have some security concerns about the whole operation.

So for now, I’m focussing on sorting out distributing the last of the proceeds, total $50. I know it’s such a small amount in terms of fundraising, and I feel silly even mentioning it let alone writing a blog post about it, but I need to explain what’s going on with it all. I’ll post an update once it’s distributed and then I’m hoping I’ll have the space to make some new art, and depending how I go with that I might look into other options and platforms for selling my work.

I’ve been mostly offline (in particular off facebook) the last few months, while trying to manage my current health crisis and also be present for loved ones. But I’d love to hear from people so if you’d like to stay connected please email me at prqw@riseup.net !

Love & Rage always,
PRQW

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All Cats Are Beautiful fine art print *FUNDRAISER*

Archival quality giclee print of original watercolour & ink drawing, 20 x 30 cm. All proceeds (after print costs) go towards the Solidarity Fund for imprisoned and persecuted revolutionaries from Greece who need urgent support. Pre-orders are now live: https://aqab.bigcartel.com/product/all-cats-are-beautiful-fine-art-print-pre-order

“From 2010 until today, the Solidarity Fund has been trying to obtain a regular and consistent political, moral and material support for collecting funds, which derives primarily from the conscious participation of each and every one of us, as well as from groups and collectives, that contribute to the continuation of factual solidarity. Continued state repression, however, results in a large number of political prisoners and legal costs, and consequently, in particularly high material needs. At this moment, the Solidarity Fund supports 24 prisoners on a regular monthly basis.
In many cases we also try to cover -as much as our (financial) capabilities allow-the legal expenses and bails of comrades who are persecuted for their political identity, their actions or even for their family or comrade relationship with imprisoned militants. ~ The slogan “no one left alone in the hands of the state” is becoming more crucial and tangible these days than ever. We urge you to defend it once again in practice. Factual solidarity will again be our weapon. UP UNTIL THE DEMOLITION OF THE LAST PRISON NONE OF US IS FREE SOLIDARITY WITH POLITICAL PRISONERS ” Solidarity Fund for imprisoned and persecuted militants, 2020

More info on the Solidarity Fund & to donate directly, here: https://www.firefund.net/imprisonedsoli

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Postcard sets are back in stock at AQAB distro!

100% of proceeds from this print run will be directed to CJ Palmer via Scarlet Alliance (Australian Sex Workers Association). CJ is a trans woman & a sex worker currently being held hostage in Australian immigration detention. The money raised will give CJ access to toiletries, clothing, phone credit and other necessities.

Order here: Anarcho Queer Agitation Bureau (AQAB) of Nihilistic Tendencies, set of 5 postcards

You can also give directly via this link:
Still Not Alone: Support CJ Palmer during her immigration appeal

Art by Post-Romantic Queerwave, with excerpts from Anarchist texts and letters printed on the reverse sides. Including by Aggeliki Spyropoulos, Juan Flores, Conspiracy Cells of Fire, Flower Bomb, CrimethInc & more.

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Queer Insurrection

Queer Insurrection

‘Some will read “queer” as synonymous with “gay and lesbian” or “LGBT”. This reading falls short. While those who would fit within the constructions of “L”, “G”, “B” or “T” could fall within the discursive limits of queer, queer is not a stable area to inhabit. Queer is not merely another identity that can be tacked onto a list of neat social categories, nor the quantitative sum of our identities. Rather, it is the qualitative position of opposition to presentations of stability – an identity that problematizes the manageable limits of identity. Queer is a territory of tension, defined against the dominant narrative of white hetero monogamous patriarchy, but also by an affinity with all who are marginalized, otherized and oppressed. Queer is the abnormal, the strange, the dangerous. Queer involves our sexuality and our gender, but so much more. It is our desire and fantasies and more still. Queer is the cohesion of everything in conflict with the heterosexual capitalist world. Queer is a total rejection of the regime of the Normal.
~
As queers we understand Normalcy. Normal, is the tyranny of our condition; reproduced in all of our relationships. Normalcy is violently reiterated in every minute of every day. We understand this Normalcy as the Totality. The Totality being the interconnection and overlapping of all oppression and misery. The Totality is the state. It is capitalism. It is civilization and empire. The totality is fence post crucifixion. It is rape and murder at the hands of police. It is “Str8 Acting” and “No Fatties or Femmes”. It is Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. It is the brutal lessons taught to those who can’t achieve Normal. It is every way we’ve limited ourselves or learned to hate our bodies. We understand Normalcy all too well.
~
We must become bodies in revolt. We need to delve into and indulge in power. We can learn the strength of our bodies in struggle for space for our desires. In desire we’ll find the power to destroy not only what destroys us, but also those who aspire to turn us into a gay mimicry of that which destroys us. We must be in conflict with regimes of the normal. This means to be at war with everything. If we desire a world without restraint, we must tear this one to the ground. We must live beyond measure and love and desire in ways most devastating. We must come to understand the feeling of social war. We can learn to be a threat, we can become the queerest of insurrections.
~
To be clear: We’ve despaired that we could never be as well-dressed or cultured as the Fab Five. We found nothing in Brokeback Mountain. We’ve spent far too long shuffling through hallways with heads hung low. We don’t give a shit about marriage or the military. But oh we’ve had the hottest sex everywhere in all the ways we aren’t supposed to and the other boys at school definitely can’t know about it.
~
And when I was sixteen a would be bully pushed me and called me a faggot. I hit him in the mouth. The intercourse of my fist and his face was far sexier and more liberating than anything MTV ever offered our generation. With the pre cum of desire on my lips I knew from then on that I was an anarchist. In short, this world has never been enough for us. We say to it, “we want everything, motherfucker, try to stop us!”
let’s get decadent!
filth is our politics!
filth is our life!’

Excerpts from Toward the Queerest Insurrection by the Mary Nardini Gang
Read full text here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/mary-nardini-gang-toward-the-queerest-insurrection

Full colour glossy A5 postcard with the above text printed on the reverse. Available internationally for just a couple of dollars with 100% proceeds going to International Anarchist Defence Fund.
https://aqab.bigcartel.com/product/queer-insurrection-large-postcard

 

 

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Guillotine Dreams

‘Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious. ~Rumi

‘Caring for ourselves doesn’t mean pacifying ourselves. We should be suspicious of any understanding of self-care that identifies wellbeing with placidity or asks us to perform “health” for others. Can we imagine instead a form of care that would equip each of us to establish an intentional relationship to her dark side, enabling us to draw strength from the swirling chaos within? Treating ourselves gently might be an essential part of this, but we must not assume a dichotomy between healing and engaging with the challenges around and inside us. If care is only what happens when we step away from those struggles, we will be forever torn between an unsatisfactory withdrawal from conflict and its flipside, a workaholism that is never enough. Ideally, care would encompass and transcend both struggle and recovery, tearing down the boundaries that partition them.
~
Your human frailty is not a regrettable fault to be treated by proper self-care so you can get your nose back to the grind stone. Sickness, disability, and unproductivity are not anomalies to be weeded out; they are moments that occur in every life, offering a common ground on which we might come together. If we take these challenges seriously and make space to focus on them, they could point the way beyond the logic of capitalism to a way of living in which there is no dichotomy between care and liberation.’

Excerpt from the zine Self as Other; Reflections on Self Care, CrimethInc 2013
Read more here:
https://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/pdfs/self-as-other_for-screen.pdf

Guillotine Dreams Poster available at AQAB distro, so-called australia post only, B2 50 x 70 cm, $20 each.

Postcards available internationally, set of 5 different A6 cards, with the above text printed on the back. A hybrid art/agit-prop/zine, $3 set.

100% proceeds to International Anarchist Defence Fund

https://aqab.bigcartel.com/

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Fundraiser for the International Anarchist Defence Fund

The International Anarchist Defence Fund is a model of providing solidarity based on a similar structure to the International Anti-fascist Defence Fund. With repression of anarchists worldwide increasing, it’s important we organize to support comrades targeted by the state.

A group of anarcho-queers from so-called Australia have put together some beautiful pieces of original art with accompanying texts from various Anarchist essays & letters, printed as full color glossy postcards. The small postcards come as a set of 5, large postcards sold individually, intended as a hybrid art/agit-prop/zine project, for sale internationally for just a few dollars with 100% proceeds donated to A-fund.

Along with a short print run of large posters, for sale within so-called Australia only.

Check out the distro here, and if you’re able to share amongst your networks that’d be lovely!
https://aqab.bigcartel.com

For transparency, view donation receipts here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5hm88rje8ooxahm/AACk4zoxUJawvFmhZL59l_N4a?dl=0

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Squat!

‘In the network of the metropolis the most totalitarian human tendencies are expressed through relationships. Only target: the accumulation of capital from every possible production field, from every “innovative” consummation field. And Exarcheia couldn’t get away from this plan. The capitalist invasion is war. And this war, besides the consciously-politicized subjects, aims at the people that are not considered productive and exploitable, such as migrants without papers, “illegal” street vendors, expropriators and substance users. We, by practically showing our solidarity, take position in this war, choose to stand by every oppressed person and to remind the state that no attack and no eviction will stay unanswered.

At the same time, we try to get to know the migrants in Exarcheia square, and in every square. We want to become one with the wild youth. Lets all together try to engrave our own routes, in our common grounds, creating common codes and cultures of mutual empowerment and solidarity. If we don’t build real relationships with the people that are part of the multi-ethnic proletariat, how can we talk about our collective liberation?

From hanging out together, to squatting buildings together, to making riots together, to expropriating metropolitan’s wealth together, to talking about our problems, to evolving our thoughts and our way of acting. To getting away from any academical and cut off, from our way of living, critics. Lets not become the perpetual apostates of history, but be the people who write it. We weren’t born as the “perfect” anti-authoritarian subjects and we don’t have that kind of demands from anyone. During the struggle, conscience and content are forged.
Riot Core “Mahir Mete Kul*”

*Mahir Mete Kul was a communist student from Turkey who was killed in 24/3/2019, at 22 years old, by trying to escape Erdogan’s establishment using an inflatable/dinghy through Evros. Being part of the “Revolutionary Youth”, he was imprisoned at 20 years old for 10 months, tortured and let out with a ban on leaving the country. He was kicked out of his university and his whole family was targeted. His attempts to live a better life did not succeed. The state and the capital killed Mahir. We do not forget, we do not forgive. Honor to his memory – Support to his family and comrades.’

Read more here: https://mpalothia.net/athens-greece-arson-attack-against-the-ministry-of-culture/