| Ik studeer dus ik kraak? | nn - 17.10.2009 15:49
Seriously, why did you choose this as a title/slogan? You don't see any problem in it's use or implications with regards squatting as an activity being the reserve of a particular group of people at a particular period of time in their life? Nor how this representation may prove problematic and in effect play into the liberal media representationalism that is tactically and strategically a dead end? Limits and a terrain placed from above by the press/governement and not chosen by the squatters movement?
| | Come on | nn2 - 17.10.2009 17:34
That's a gross overreaction. First of all, in the text under the movie it says: "Voor ons; studenten, werknemers, werklozen, Nederlanders, wereldburgers, allen op zoek naar een fatsoenlijke en betaalbare woning, is het vaak een noodzaak om ze in gebruik te nemen." Clearly, squatting is not meant to be only for students, as they say in the short as well. Secondly, the action is well done, the negotiation with the police too, and the new inhabitant of the place is a student. If you like, make your own film about another person who's squatting and call it "I'm a [xx], therefore I squat". Don't start blaming people for things they didn't do.
| | Ik werkwoord dus ik kraak | nn - 19.10.2009 15:19
Your response if anything, reinforces what I've just said. The point is the usefullness or rather counterproductiveness of the title/slogan "Ik studeer dus ik kraak". It's assinine, banal and vapid to the point of absurdity. As well as a further play into a media and public campaign by politicians that purposely set to shift discourse onto "squatters" as a stereotype and away from "squatting" as an activity based around the fulfilling of a basic need; housing. It's clearly much easier to rally public support around a squatting ban when focusing on bad squatters rather than the much harder argument of squatting in itself. Playing up to the good squatter as student is simply the reverse of this political coin of media representationalism. Not shifting the terrain of debate or even questioning the limits of the debate, realising that every debate is always framed within limits acceptable to the government/state/capitalism. The point is to expose those limits as false and offering ordinary people/workers/students/squatters nothing.
One may as well have slogans such as
"I work therefore I squat"
"I pay taxes therefore I squat"
"I draw social welfare therefore I squat"
"I drink beer therefore I squat"
"I cycle therefore I squat"
"I drive therefore I squat"
"I eat therefore I squat"
"I breath oxygen thereofore I squat"
All equally as without substance and reductive to the point of absurdity. Some with less implication or use for the representation of "good squatters" than others but heterogenous, less restrictive and more representative of the heterogenity of "squatters" than the media arguments put forward so far on either side.
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