Notes on what was discussed in the meeting today.

Today we settled on Jody's idea of 'the invisible' as our area of enquiry, so what we need now from each group member is at least one (fairly) solid/coherent strategy for a political intervention based around this theme.Hopefully this way, during the week on the blog and at the meeting on Friday, we can discuss which intervention is best or perhaps take elements of several, and write our short proposal to present to the class.

I really liked Jody's take on the 'cut up' technique, Anna's social idea, and my 'fire' idea, but with so many different themes circulating around, it's going to be impossible to settle on an intervention. Maybe some of the ideas we've proposed can still be tied in, but just with a more solid footing of 'the invisible'?

Just to give everyone some ideas, the things we briefly touched on in the meeting were:

 - 'invisible people' (cleaners, migrants)
but - are these people actually INVISIBLE? number of news reports about migrants etc...and the patronising tone our project is likely to take on if we attempt to 'make them visible'.

 - 'the invisible power of objects' (the extent to which we rely on them...) also touched on by Jody in her post below; 'for without the table, the chair, the colour of the wall, etc, our every day would be very different'

and then there's the other things Jody mentions below, too:
homelessness, mental illness, areas of abuse, the invisible history of the non-West + invisible suppressed urges/desires/needs/origins of humanity?

Which of those is closest to people's hearts, or are there other times when invisibility is prevalent?

here's some things to bare in mind:

• Perhaps Anna's social idea will now form part of our working practice, the way we organise ourselves, rather than the direct subject that we're taking on? Certainly, it might be a good idea for us to produce an intervention that we can only carry out as a group (this reminds me, Anna, did you find out the name of the eastern european manual with strategies for organising action? it might still be useful)

• the course guide encourages us to engage with the 'relationship between theory and practice'. Any idea for an intervention should try and think about where the theory and practice of everyday life intersect, for example - is an idea such as re-assigning some agency to objects a bit too abstract, removed from the 'reality' of many people's day to day activities? is this us being too 'self-absorbed' when we should be thinking of others?
• how are we aiming to reconcile the tension between not wishing to add to this 'culture of immediacy' / 'society of the spectacle' but also wanting to make an impact, i.e. 'get the facts out there'?
• we also get marks for originality - Karishma's idea of approaching customers outside a store, for example, whilst potentially powerful, has been done many times before...

• Whilst the consumer having a greater share of the knowledge of what they are buying is great in principle, there are also many problems with trying to 'get the facts out there' - will people just think we are preaching, will they 'put their guard up', to resist being challenged? I also raised in the meeting how for many people it simply isn't an option to spend more in order to be ethical. I think this is a really key point - how much influence does society have on the individual? how much can the individual really be held responsible for their purchasing habits? who are we, middle class university students, to tell them differently?
  
  But then if we don't tell the consumer, who will...?