<nettime> WITPLan blog for practical utopists

[Tjebbe van Tijen <tjebbe@imaginarymuseum.org>]

Launched on new years day


WITPLan blog for practical utopists

A piece of paper and a pen, an idea, several people around, ?what if  
we could ??, discussions, jokes, scribbling, more words, bits of  
sentences, someone starts to formulate, ?yes! write that down?,  
scratched through sentences, new lines, ?can you read it now, aloud???

That?s how a WITPLAN (white plan) was born almost half a century ago.  
Next thing was to get a typewriter and to hammer the words in the  
waxed surface of a ?paper stencil? or use a pen or brush with a  
special etching ink to make a kind of paper printing plate. All this  
was two steps away from hitting the world with your plan. First the  
duplicating machine to churn out hundred or more leaflets. Next to go  
out in the streets and distribute the leaflets at a proper moment,  
which would be often a ceremonial gathering in the form of a street  
happening, whereby one had to make sure that some sympathizing  
journalists in the nearby cafe would get their personal copy, to  
increase the chances for posterity.

Communication point for launching WITPLANs the Lieverdje (little  
rascal) statue at the Spui square in Amsterdam and one of the Provo  
gathering and printing places the cellar of the gallery De Witte  
Neger (the white negro) at the Korte Prinsengracht (photographs Ron  
Kroon and Cor Jaring). The leaflet shown is the White Bicycle Plan.  
Click picture for full size view.
This new weblog WITPLAN offers another kind of meeting point for  
?white plans? in the 21st. century. White plans in which means and  
ends are of the same order: social use of the liberating potentials  
of technology combined with the joy of sharing. This blog is not  
longing for the past but has a nostalgia for utopia, projecting the  
liberating spirits from the past upon the future.


Tjebbe van Tijen
Imaginary Museum Projects
Dramatizing Historical Information
http://imaginarymuseum.org
web-blog: The Limping Messenger
http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/


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