That is the question. Or maybe -- how we ought to re-occupy. Though to this point it has been more a question of when, rather than if or how. Once Occupy Vancouver's camp was evicted, First Nations elders reminded us that winter was the time for recuperation, storytelling, planning, and readying for the spring. And indeed, the call for a spring re-occupation has been in circulation almost since the evictions became general, with perhaps the loudest and clearest call coming in the form of the Spanish Indignados and the DRY (Democracia Real Ya) movement's #12m12 call to make the 12th of May 2012 a day of global action: "Let's turn the streets into the biggest loudspeaker on earth."

Sins Invalid is a disabled performance project that formed in 2006 in San Francisco. Founders Patty Berne and poet Leroy F. Moore Jr., both people of colour with physical disabilities, wanted to celebrate artists with disabilities, especially those who were queer, racialized, gender-variant or otherwise marginalized. Their shows actively challenge what is considered "sexy" or "normal" by using personal stories from the artists and adapting them into performance pieces.

Performance

It is a truism to say that democracy began with the Greeks -- less so to say that it originated in popular rebellion against debt and debt-bondage. Yet, with the Greek people ensnared once more in the vice-grip of rich debt-holders, it may be useful to recall that fact. For the only hope today of reclaiming democracy in Greece (and elsewhere) resides in the prospect of a mass uprising against modern debt-bondage that extends the rule of the people into the economic sphere.

A text originally published in edition 12 of Four Minutes to Midnight, launched in November at Expozine in Montreal. Ideas expressed in this article largely are linked to and inspire the work of the Howl! arts collective in Montreal.

In Montreal, art is a key element of the intensely complex collective identity that stretches across this beautiful island city.