Blog – Disgraça

Olá!

Com o processo de compra da Disgraça em andamento – dos quais já arrecadámos 7,380€ em crowdfunding, 4000€ no Smash the Estate Fest no mẽs passado, bem como alguns empréstimos de companheires – permitimo-nos alguma nostalgia e decidimos relembrar os primeiros passos do centro social.

Tudo começou no 11 de Setembro de 2015. No topo de umas das colinas de Lisboa, abriram-se as portas da Disgraça. Das paredes brancas e insípidas, das salas vazias e de eco enfezado, e da multitude das vontades que convergiram para aquele lugar, desabrochou este projeto irrequieto. Paredes cairam, paredes subiram, paredes rabiscaram-se. E como se de uma nascente de insubordinação se tratasse, vinda das profundezas do subsolo da cidade, materializámos, sala por sala, o potencial comunitário de cada uma. Movides por sonhos, vontades e necessidades comuns, construiu-se uma cantina e sala de convivio, uma biblioteca, uma sala de concertos D.I.Y., uma oficina onde impera o caos, uma sala de ensaios e uma de serigrafia, um ginásio (o lugar mais arrumado da casa), a loja livre Desumana, e, da memória de uma montra vazia, fez-se uma acolhedora livraria anarquista – a Tortuga.

Porém, o trabalho de arrequedação de fundos, construção de afinidades e exercício do imaginário coletivo começou alguns meses antes, em momentos e espaços espalhados pela zona metropolitana da cidade, onde váries companheires se reuniram, muites pela primeira vez, motivades pela seguinte chamada:

Estamos aborrecidos.
Fartos da cíclica e entediante procura por um espaço de expressão livre. Livre das expectativas de gestores de espaços “coolturais” presos a métodos enraizados no medo da dissonância e distorção humana. Livre das pressões económicas dos profissionais da cultura. Livre daqueles para os quais a criatividade gratuita ou a baixo preço não parece uma boa premissa e que querem a todo o custo taxá-la, regularizá-la, limitá-la e obter lucro a partir dela. Vai sempre existir uma licença em falta, uma lei inventada, uma queixa falsa ou qualquer outra coisa com vista a impedir e complicar algo tão simples como 3 acordes.

Não queremos ser castrados nem esterilizados.

Queremos motivar e ser motivados.

Queremos abrir um espaço que seja um laboratório de expressão individual, onde qualquer um possa realizar os seus projectos e ideias de maneira espontânea e incondicionada. Um espaço que estimule o espírito DIY e de autoprodução.

Queremos espaço para a música percorrer um caminho mais curto entre os executantes e o público.

Queremos providenciar ferramentas para a emancipação individual e colectiva através de espaço para o corpo, a mente e habilidades, assim como para a canalização da frustração e da raiva.

Não nos vamos deixar subjugar por quem claramente não quer que certas ideias sejam difundidas, que certos eventos sejam realizados, ou que certas verdades sejam berradas.

Por isso criámos um colectivo para auto-gestionar um espaço arrendado no centro de Lixoboa. Uma sala de espetáculos, um estúdio, uma infoshop, um espaço para actividades físicas, serigrafia, workshops vários e tudo o que a imaginação e as oportunidades nos permitirem. Um lugar para construir, destruir e reconstruir.

Para que esta ideia se torne realidade, planeámos uma série de eventos benefit que contribuirão para a primeira renda e despesas iniciais inerentes à abertura do espaço.

Até lá se não antes.

Disgraça.

15/03/2015

Para acabar, aqui vai uma data de materiais que podem usar para nos ajudar a divulgar o crowdfunding:

disgraca.com/material

Saude y anarquia!

disgraça

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English

Hello!

With the process of buying Disgraça underway – of which we’ve already raised €7,380 in crowdfunding, €4,000 at the Smash the Estate Fest last month, as well as some loans from companions – we allowed ourselves some nostalgia and decided to look back on the social center’s first steps.

It all started on 11 September 2015. Atop one of Lisbon’s hills, the doors of Disgraça opened. From the vapid white walls, from the empty, echoing rooms, from the multitude of wills that converged in that place, this restless project blossomed. Walls fell, walls rose, walls were scribbled on. And as if it were a spring of insubordination from the depths of the city’s subsoil, we materialised, room by room, each one’s community potential. Moved by common dreams, desires and needs, we built a canteen and community space, a library, a DIY concert hall, a workshop where chaos reigns, a rehearsal room and a screen printing room, a gym (the tidiest place in the building), the free shop Desumana, and, from the memory of an empty shop front, a cosy anarchist bookshop – Tortuga.

However, the work of raising funds, building affinities and exercising the collective imagination began a few months earlier, in moments and spaces scattered around the metropolitan area of the city, where several companions got together, many for the first time, motivated by the following call:

We are bored.
We are fed up with the cyclical and tedious search for a space for free expression. A space free from the expectations of the “cooltural” managers who remain mired in methods that are rooted in fear of dissonance and human distortion. A space free from the economic pressures of the cultural professionals. Free from those for whom free or inexpensive creativity does not seem a valid idea and instead want to tax it, modify it, limit it and profit from it, at all costs. There will always be a missing license, a made up law, a false complaint, or anything else they think of, in order to prevent and complicate something as simple as 3 chords.

We do not want to be castrated or sterilized.
We want to motivate and be motivated.

We want an open space, a laboratory for individual expression, where anyone can realise their projects and ideas – spontaneously and unconditionally. A space that stimulates the DIY spirit and self-production.

We want a space where music can find its shortest path between the performers and the audience.

We want to provide tools for individual and collective emancipation through a space for body, mind, and skills; as well as to channel frustration and anger.

We will not be overwhelmed or undermined by those who clearly do not want certain ideas to spread, certain events to be held, or certain truths to be screamed.

So we’ve created a collective to self-manage a rented space in the center of Lisbon. A concert hall, a recording studio, an infoshop, a space for physical activity, screen printing, various workshops, or anything that the imagination and opportunities allow. A place to build, destroy and rebuild.

For this idea to become reality, we have planned a series of benefit events that will contribute to the initial expenses related to the opening of such a space.

Until then… (if not before).

Disgraça

Finally, here are some materials you can use to help us spread the word about the crowdfunding:

disgraca.com/material

Love & rage,

disgraça

https://www.gofundme.com/disgraca

9 years ago, we decided to break the boredom that haunted our routines and get together to open an anti-authoritarian space. A space where we could discuss and create collective solutions to problems that we had been individualising. Today, in a city devastated by real estate speculation, the housing crisis and the elitisation of culture, we have come together in resistance, this time to put an end to the monthly extortion we are subjected to and collectively acquire the space of Disgraça. A space where we and so many others have been organising, conspiring, dreaming and having fun for the last decade – for a future based on solidarity and mutual support, as opposed to one based on the property market and private property, hostage to landlords.

It all started on 11 September 2015. Atop one of Lisbon’s hills, the doors of Disgraça opened. From the vapid white walls, from the empty, echoing rooms, from the multitude of wills that converged in that place, this restless project blossomed. Walls fell, walls rose, walls were scribbled on. And as if it were a spring of insubordination from the depths of the city’s subsoil, we materialised, room by room, each one’s community potential. Moved by common dreams, desires and needs, we built a canteen and community space, a library, a DIY concert hall, a workshop where chaos reigns, a rehearsal room and a screen printing room, a gym (the tidiest place in the building), the free shop Desumana, and, from the memory of an empty shop front, a cosy anarchist bookshop – Tortuga.

Since then, we have devoted endless hours, individually and collectively, to the almost daily demands of the project. Demands haunted by needs for conflict management, waves of exhaustion, the thankless metronome of rent, high expenses, and life in a city that is emptying of life with each passing day. While self-management is our bulwark, we are yet to arrive at a place where we can do so sustainably. By collectively acquiring the Disgraça space, all the resistance collectives and social movements that depend on this social centre will gain greater sustainability and autonomy. Without a rent and a landlord, we can focus on continuing to create the future we envision together.

An informal laboratory of anti-authoritarian practices

The city of Lisbon, like all big cities, is increasingly hostile to ways of life that go against the mercantile logic. Many of us have been expelled from the centre to the margins by tycoons, entrepreneurs and digital nomads. And, even though their uselessness translates into a dependence on our work and the daily movement of our bodies to that same centre, they don’t tolerate our involvement in the political, social and cultural dynamics of the luxury amusement park they call a city. Every month, many of us lose our homes or are at risk of losing the associative spaces where we weave affinities (let’s remember our fellow resistants in Sirigaita and Zona Franca, for example). In the face of the violence of the forced displacement of people and spaces, we have organised ourselves into anti-displacement collectives, in the occupation of vacant buildings that come to life with our entry, with the collective mobilisation of the occupation of “public space” in squares, alleys and gardens.

Disgraça, this informal, often clumsy but always obstinate, laboratory of anti-authoritarian practices and ways of thinking, is organised horizontally, by volunteerswho, among themselves and with those who go there, experiment, care, think, decide, make mistakes, antagonise, transform, catalyse, shelter and come together in getting closer to trying out a world shaped neither by capitalnor by the exhausting rhythm of the drum of the empire, but by self-organisation, self-determination and expression, mutual aid, (de)construction of community and subversion of that which constrains us.

Over time, Disgraça has become a place of convergence and organisation of struggles in the city of Lisbon and beyond, providing space for meetings, preparation of materials, events and fundraising. Among the intricacies of maintaining and organising the space, there have been conversations and reading groups on anarchism, anti-racism, anti-colonialisms and the most diverse indigenous, queer and feminist struggles. Bridging the gap between theory on Tortuga’s shelves and practice – in our lives, there have been roundtable discussions on prison abolition and prisoner support, on housing struggle and squatting, as well as strategies for resisting green capitalism, climate collapse and extractivism.

Hundreds of bands have played in the space’s abysses, mirrored by the countless evenings of cinema cycles and donation-based vegan canteens. Here, DIY learning spaces based on mutual aid grow alongside workshops on anti-authoritarian health practices, food sovereignty, self-defence, free software and hardware, DIY art, recycling materials and zine production.

Now what?

In order to continue these desires and struggles, we have drawn up a one-and-a-half-year plan to secure, once and for all, this space that is so important to all of us. This plan includes securing interest-free loans, fundraising events, a caravan tour all over Europe. Apart from this is, of course, this crowdfunding: we need to raise 100,000 euros by the end of summer 2024 to be able to secure the space for the immediate long-term sustainability of Disgraça and all the collectives that use the space. The remaining amount would need to be raised in loans which we would slowly pay back – but the more we can raise here, the quicker we can have no financial obligations and freedom.

If you can’t support by donation, there are of course also other things you can do:

We’re looking for comrades willing to give us medium/long-term, interest-free loans. These loans will be essential to give the initial down payment to the owner of the space and will be repaid upon request with a 6-month notice period.
We’re asking collectives (and folks who are both part of and not part of collectives!) who have been sharing space with us for the last decade to help us publicise this through your networks and affinity groups. We want to do this together!
We’re going to organise several benefit events inside and outside the space next year. We challenge other groups in solidarity with Disgraça to do the same in their geographies.
We want to make a caravan that passes through various anti-authoritarian spaces and festivals throughout Europe, to organise events and talks to spread the word and raise funds.

If you’d like to join this effort with any of the above ideas or others, send us an email.

See you soon 🙂

Love & Rage.

Há 9 anos atrás… | 9 years ago…

English

We’re buying Disgraça!