antiproibition action in Vienna

From the 6th to the 18th of April 2003 in Vienna, Austria representants of every government in the world will gather to evaluate, at the first half of it's path, the ten years strategy under the direction of the italian Pino Arlacchi stated in New York in 1998 during the special session on drug abuse of the general United Nation's council opened with the slogan:"A drug free world, we can do it".
We can remember Mr. Arlacchi declaring to the press, at the beginning of his war against drug campaign, the firm intention to bring down to zero the demand of drug in Europe Before year 2008
After five years the breakdown is absolute, and Arlacchi was fired from the direction of the UNDCP (United Nations International Drug Control Programme, the U.N.'s drug agency) as immediate consequence.
Historically drug proibition has been one of the first internationally globalized policies starting to spread his harms immediatly after the II world war, the social costs for the victims of drug repression and for society is still enormous.
The militar pressure of the U.S. against the south american populations is the more destructive aspect of tis war against drugs, the pragmatic drug policies taking good results in many european countries are expressing insofference towards for the dominant U.S. philosophy of drug wars, the increasing requests for authorizations to medical uses of cannnabis is breaking a taboo.
These are only three of the many contraddictions about drug policies that are exploding in these days.

The UPPERGROUND event in Vienna is actually very delicate for Italy, whose delegate, the vice president of the Ministry's Council Gianfranco Fini from A.N. (the post-fascist governing party), will shurely push for harder policies and against those developing policies that are spurting in the rest of Europe, giving directions for non repressive attitude to drug problems.

For this international event the MDMA (Movimento Di Massa Antiproibizionista) together with other international antiproibitionist associations, will organize meeting, seminars, parlamentar enquries, city meetings to ensure the presence in Vienna of a different voice from the one of a global government, who's pushing for a punitive policy and against the citizenship right.

UPPERGROUND is an antiproibitionist artistic project that will announce from different european cities an antiproibitionist meeting during the United Nations's international conference of the "War against Drugs" commission in Vienna, Austria from the 6th to 18th of april 2003.

Call for artists.
The word "UNDERGROUND" whose letteral meaning is"under the ground", also means that drowned world, maybe more a way of life, who took inspiration from the "Beat" generation, from it's music, it's licterature, from it's excesses: lifestiles dedicated to the total liberation of the habits from the dominant morality.
The introspective lisergic experimentations for new ways of sociality and communication, from Timothy Leary to Allen Ginsberg, from Kerouac to Corso, to Burroughs and many others; these authors have been talking to us describing their life, their emotions, and desires through the psichotropic substance's filter.
Going back through the time we can virtually overlay the underground or the hidden part of the beat generation to the french Boheme and the result would not change.
At that time cocaine and opium were freely sold in pharmacies. From Van Gogh o Baudelaire, from Walter Benjamin to Edgar Allan Poe, the art of that times was heavily influenced by drug induced altered states of consciousness.
Further back in time from the paintings of J. Bosch in the fifteenth century were silocibinic mushrooms were represented, to the "kikeon", the magic potion based on natural lsd ingredients of the greek B.C. era, to the pre-columbian and oriental cultures, is more than evident that trough the ages and beyond the continents big part of the culture and art was heavily inspired from altered states of consciousness, used by artists who were psiconauts themselves.
The contraddiction is the fact that while one hand humanity divinizes, desires, and in somehow is breeded from the product "art" on the other hand society criminalizes that habits and uses that are the substrate of art.
"Art" as a good is ok, but he who produces the good is a non frequentable pathologic subject, a drug user, a deviant that has to be put in jail and to be "cured", even against his will.
An evident discracy beetween the non respect of the person, his path, his life and the desire of what is producing as an artist.
From underground to UPPERGROUND, proibitionism is criminalizing a mass phenomena interesting personal liberties, is pushing millions of people in emargination, putting them under harm and prosecutions.
"Drugs are not forbidden because they are dangerous, they are dangerous because they are forbidden".
The operation UPPERGROUND is proposing to give back the right of citizenship to the slice of humanity identified as "drug user", using artistic and poetic codes, with the aim to destroy as soon as possible the corpse of the proibitionist hipocrisy

Street billboards and advertisement normally have commercial contents with proper aesthetic and and linguistic coding, projected with the aim of selling goods or services. The same spaces can be used to spread a creative and political idea.
And it's there, downtown that is important to give a poetic and reflective moment with artistic advertisement covering street advertisement reclaiming a public space of communication in place of street commercial advertising.
The aim is to support an antiprohibitionist campaign using the same spaces, codex and languages used by the multinationals to sell sell their products, a campaign that gives a different lecture of drug use and proibitionism criminalizing and denying the right of citizenship to a wide slice of humanity, only to grant profit for the pharmaceutical industry and narco-mafia.

For the realization of the project UPPERGROUND invite european visual artists, musicians, actors to realize an image, a track or song, a performance or an original writing for this campaign.
The visual art will be photographed and printed on posters(1X1,5m) to be sticked in Vienna's street publicitary spaces.
The original pieces of the participant artists can be realized on every support (max size 50X70cm) and delivered as soon as possible by the 15th of march)
Images and text obtained will be used by a graphic team to realize an anti proibitionist campaign.
For economic and logistic problems for the beginning of the campaign in Vienna will be printed a selection of the received materials, the resting part be employed in a later moment in the following months.
The original pieces of every participant artist will be exibited in a collective show in the days of the UPPERGROUND event against United Nation's international conference on war on drugs from 6th to 18th of april 2003 in Vienna
The antiproibitionist campaign UPPERGROUND will see the patecipation of actors and musiciansin the streets of Vienna during the international United Nation's forum on drugs.

The antiproibitionist campaign UPPERGROUND is promoted from:
ENCOD (European NGO Council On Drugs and development- Belgium)
MDMA (Movimento Di Massa Antiproibizionista- Italy)
FUORILUOGO (Italy),
U.N.O. (Austria).

For general information visit Vienna 2003 official website: http://www.vienna2003.org/

To subscribe participation as artist write to the address below:
emilio.leofreddi@fastwebnet.it
For further information (only artists please):
Emilio Leofreddi tel 06-5800272 /06-5882457

arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)