Brugges and the Donkey Squat – not a love story (2)

Then the people´s kitchens, the bike workshops and arty gatherings had to stop. The fun seemed over in 2011 when the local authorities made the owner of the house take legal steps against the squatters.

“The Donkey” is still there, in Ezelstraat 68. It pays rent now and is officially an atelier. It even had to change its facade – the Hundertwasserpaintings had to make space for a neutral white to fit in its normalised environment in a shopping street.

The colours inside the house remained: when you walk through the cosy courtyard and go through till the end untill you reach a tunnel – like the one when Alice hunts the White Rabbit into Wonderland, but red.
It leads you to a massive abandoned building whose walls are literally all covered with paintings. You can walk through it like through an exhibition or take a seat in one of the abandoned rooms with human traces.

Brugges and the Donkey Squat – not a love story (1)

It is very plausible to say that the city of Brugges in Belgium did not fall in love with its tiny squatters movement. Brugges is a city of ancient facades, tourism, chocolate, consumption, noble expensive restaurants and boat trips on canals. Different from Gent, where the squatters movement is thrillingly thriving, where empty buildings get frequently turned into well frequented bars and social centres – and stay for at least some months untill they reappropriate a new space, Brugges was not particularily blessed by this type of activity.

However, a few years ago the empty house in the Old City centre in Ezelstraat 68 surprisingly got transformed from inside and outside. Arty people moved in with their tools, their paint, their canvases, ideas and spray cans – and called themselves the Donkey Collective (Ezelstraat means Donkey street). The boring white facade of the house changed and got colours – Hundertwasser style. A transformation process also got hold of the inside of the house. Not only because it got filled with workshops, free shops and events but also because the house is in reality much bigger than it seems from the outside and offers a lot of space for extremely creative expression …

L´Oukaze – a new autonomous space in Begles (2)

L´Oukaze is not only a space where those in lack of a safe home can find shelter and accessible resources to cover their primary needs in life but it is also a space of activities, music, workshops… it is a space where you can find sawing machines in the attic and where people organise demonstrations against gentrification.

Yet, the struggle for autonomous spaces seems easy and comfortable from inside the peaceful L´Oukaze. The washing is drying in the sunny garden and people are sat chatting around a big table under a tree.

The local authorities of the small municipality of Bègles are not used to the phenomenon of squatting. They are confused and surprised – which is a reason why L´ Oukaze is still there and is not facing violent eviction – unlike the squats in the city centre of the town of Calais in France, for example. Here their appearance in the city centre made the local press describe them with all available hostility as a spreading disease.

In Bègles the local authorities sent the squatters an amusing letter with a notice that “their property” is squatted. There is a massive difference between how squats on the outskirts and squats in the centres are treated and whether and how they face eviction and repression.

L´Oukaze – a new autonomous space in Bègles (1)

Five people meet in and feel political affinity – and loads of energy. They open a new legal squat in Bègles, a suburb of Bordeaux … and are allowed to stay; even untill next spring as it seems now!
A utopian story of the birth of a new autonomous space. Let´s see what the Oukaze has become now, several months after it came to life in february.

The gate to the new squat which is in a massive beautiful old villa with a garden is closed. It is metal black, on the outside you see flyers and little pieces of street art – and inside you will see even more of it. There is a bell and you can shout as well. It´s easy to enter, someone will always open.
The entry to the magic villa is made acessible with a ramp, words of welcome are written on it. And inside you will see dark wooden floors, loads of stencils, pictures, decorations, banners – all put together it makes it feel like a very cosy art gallery, all ready for interaction with the oevre, all ready to be changed and cosy comfy seats inviting the spectator to stay and become part of it.

But this is just downstairs. Upstairs there is room to come and stay and rest and sleep as well. People who have no other home are welcome here. And they can just take one of the rooms and make it their home. “Many migrants were sleeping here in the past. The house was really full with people and it became a bit too much. So a few months ago we tried to regulate the flow of people a little bit to make it a safer space” says one of the squatters as he shows guests around. …

Freedom Press – books, advice and more (2)

The bookshop is squeezed into a tiney alley – no eye cathcers, no advertising signs.
On the wall of the building: a massive portrait gallery of anarchist writers and thinkers.
The entrance has been relocated around the corner recently. In February the bookshop has been firebombed by fascists and a fire caused damage to the books. It took the volunteer staff of the bookshop only few days to re-open the shop, clean and sort out the books.
The London Coalition Against Poverty, the advice centre for squatters, the Solidarity Federation and Corporate Watch all have their offices in the same building and spin a tight network of solidarity to the bookshop…
The latter one has to move for the coming months to a small room up the narrow wooden stairs that now contains all the books having survided the fire – and its surprisingly quite a few!

Freedom Press – books, advice and more (1)

Most probably the easiest way to access books about anarchist history, theory, worker´s struggles, … the latest anarichst pamphlets, Zapatista coffe and advice on squatting and prisoner´s support at once in London is to go to the Freedom Press bookshop.

How happy Peter Kropotkin would have been about the U.K.´s biggest anarchist bookstore is subject to historical speculation. Him and his friends founded Freedom Press of which the bookshop is an offspring way back in 1886. Since then the lifes of people involved in the bookshop and the publishing group have not ceased to be exciting:
Vernon Richards – arrested for publishing an article undermining “the affections of members of His Majesty’s Forces” in 1945, Colin Ward – who in his youth worked as a journalist reporting on the squatter´s movement, Charlotte Wilson – memeber of the think tank Fabian Society who resigned as a result of the debate about organising the group as a political party … and many, many other revolted political subjects. The Freedom Press bookshop was fire bombed by fascist several times in its history but still resists and exists in Angel Alley, London.
…

Vegan Public Livingroom (2)

How to make the stickiest vegan chocolate cake? How to make a thick vegan crème fraiche? Vegan Tiramisu? No problem. The volunteers in the Pogo cafe cook and bake for life and taste.
Next to the counter there is a board with people´s names and free slots to take “shifts”. During a shift there is a chef cook, a main assistant and people who just chop fruit, tofu and veg … just because a non-hierarchical gastronomic system hasn´t been figured out yet. Work in progress.

The money made through selling vegan salads, soups, sandwiches, cakes and sweets is used solely for ingredients and paying the rent. The stated mission is to bring affordable vegan food to the people.

When the shift is over the volunteers hang out on the soft sofas in the cafe, read books from the shelfs of their tiny but meaty;-) bookshop, play games and cook food with things from the volunteer fridge which contains older and skipped food – vegan of course. Some stay over and sleep on the couch to wake up when the first shift starts and continue to make food. The transition from the vegan public livingroom to the vegan cafe and vice-versa is organic.

Vegan Public Livingroom (1)

Some years ago the Pogo cafe in Hackney, London was a worker´s co-op. Some people behind the counter and in the kitchen would get payed some money, others would volunteer.
They would make vegan sweets and dishes, sell homemade soup and anarchist books. Then happened what is in the Pogo-milieu referred to a “the historical coup”. It was an argument about skipped meat in the freezer.

As a result those volunteers and payed workers on the top of the informal hierarchy that had developed in the community cafe over the years left the Pogo. A new crew of people took over the daily business and made the Pogo cafe a place for militant veganism, home-made soup sold in recycled bottles and road protest info-nights.

Psychatric Hospital Bordeuax – le H.P. (2)

It is totally silent around this anonymous block of flats next to the highway on the outskirts of Bordeaux. To find the H.P. one has to know that it exists. The entry is an inconspicuously looking door that most people enter only for one purpose: dancing while releashing their crazy enrgies.

Every week the H.P. attracts around 300 young people for an entrance fee of one or two Euros that goes towards the bands. Most of them don´t know that the H.P. is a squat but all of them act as if they felt that the H.P. is a place where social norms of interaction have to be liberated from mentally oppressive patterns: they make a grimasse when dancing and jumping, they do pantomimes, talk to those they don´t know and dance in a big wobbling circle.

After the party, when the sun rises and the last dancers are tired, the place is kept neat and tidy by one person who lives above the dance floor. No one knows his name and even fewer people have ever seen him.

The invisible squatter was according to some also the creator of the large paintings on the walls that picture people who look incredibly stiff.

Psychiatric Hospital Bordeaux – Le H.P. (1)

H.P. in French is short for psychiatric hospital. There are several of them in Bordeaux. But one of them has no doctors and nurses. It has no beds or waiting rooms, no registers and does not require a health insurance. Le H.P. is in a huge building parts of which got squatted three years ago by artists to open ateliers in deserted flats.

Some of the flats are now also squatted for living, in some of them there are parties happening every now and then, some of them are quiet working spaces and some of them are galleries or open spaces for Art Symphosiums … but this is kept rather secret.

The most prominent part of the H.P. is a huge room that is used as a dance floor …