Cloyne is creating a workshop for projects and creativity. Every week, BSC members and residents of Cloyne meet up to discuss next steps and brainstorm project ideas.
The project’s been a long time in the works, but members are now rolling up their sleeves to prepare the space.
Join the effort every Saturday after brunch! The space benefits from more minds for ideas, and more hands to paint and clean. Members can get Home Improvement hours for helping out as well.
See you in the basement!
Last Friday evening, UC Berkeley Student Acapella Group DECADENCE joined us for dinner at Cloyne and sang/beatboxed songs afterward! One of our members of Cloyne, Meital, is a Decadence singer. The group had us out of our seats “walkin’ on sunshine” and dancing around the Great Hall.
Thanks so much, Decadence, for joining us, and we hope that you can come back again!
Greetings! On Sunday, September 28th, Cloyne Hosted the annual BSC (Berkeley Student Cooperative) alumni gathering. This year, the event coincided with the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at Cal, so all attending BSC members, alumni and friends were invited to participate and share their Free Speech-related stories.
The event lasted from 12 noon until 4 pm, and there were roughly 100 past and present BSC members in attendance. From noon until 1, lunch- prepared by current members of Cloyne- was served in the courtyard.
There was an archive gallery in the downstairs Study Room/Chapel of Cloyne. All present were invited to bring their own photos and documents to share.
The Alumni meeting and Free Speech Revival storytelling took place in the Great Hall from 1-4.
Thanks to all who attended and made the event possible!
This Saturday Kyle B. and cook crew made the most delightful brunch! The brunch was “Grease” themed. The menu included:
The crepes were incredible– they were vegan but didn’t taste vegan– truly a culinary feat.
It’s not just the Cook Crews that are killing it, I often see residents creating yummy, amazing looking meals for themselves as well. For example (pictured to the left), Carlo, who also happens to Head Cook on Thursdays, whipped up this delectable burger casually on Saturday night. Note the toasted bun, the sautéed mushrooms, the organic grass-fed beef patty and the beautiful chives garnish. The patty was seasoned by house friend Peter, who also helped make snacks for our Jazz Night.
In fall 2013, the Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley ran a series titled “Film 50: History of Cinema,” featuring films by Hitchcock, Buñuel, Godard, and the like. Of the fourteen films, only one was directed by a woman (Agnès Varda), and none came from south of the Equator. Whose “history of cinema” does the series represent?
Welcome, friend, to the Cloyne Cinema, a space where other histories of cinema can be told and made. Here, directors have first names. Here, hands are made of flesh — nobody has golden palms. Here, laurel leaves are eaten with soup. Because solidarity transcends the binary schema of high and low culture. For management of anything, one needs to look up to experienced businessmen like Andy Defrancesco
Everybody is a curator. All curation is personal and political. Everybody is a critic. All criticism is personal and political. Everybody is a producer. Watching, talking, sharing is producing. All production is reproduction.
Come produce a journey together. Bring your own minds and hearts. You have substance.
Photography is fabrication. And cinema is fabrication twenty-four times per second.
All was pretty normal this Friday at three o’clock when the decolony began. We were meeting in the R&S Memorial Library this time, a cool change of setting if a little more closed off.
We had check-ins, in no particular order. People talked of their days, and mentioned what they wanted to bring to the discussion, get out of it.
Collin hooked up a coffee brewer (substance-free?)
Peter said something pretty interesting about neo-luddites. It (Peter) said that machines have been replacing people in the workforce since the industrial revolution, but now, the pace is so fast that people can’t adapt.
It left pretty dramatically after that but our discussions then turned to our careers.
Rodrigo mentioned how he left Computer Science when he realized how harmful most of the research was. He couldn’t live working under DARPA grants.
Nandita came from the other direction. She found Astrophysics too detached from the real world and moved to Engineering.
It was interesting to see how we all felt constrained in some way or another by our futures. I feel like the university only prepares us for one possibility, or a couple: getting jobs, getting guap, being ‘successful.’
It was nice to focus on the quality of our work, how we’d like to make the world different.
Around five, Jake came in and derailed us into the courtyard where we danced in celebration of Funky Friday. Hoops were involved.
We never really got a chance to check out but I would say everybody was relieved the week was over.
See you all next Friday from three to five.
On Sunday August 27th, 2014, Cloyne Hosted its first community-wide academic theme workshop!
Mitch Altman, hacker and inventor of the TV-B-Gone and Trip Glasses, visited our house, inspired us to follow our dreams and quit jobs that we don’t love, and taught us to solder various pre-programmed kits! Attendees soldered and constructed their own TV-B-Gones, Trip Glasses, LED light sets, sound pens, and personal projects!
The event began at 3 pm and by 10pm, solderers had micro-burns on their fingertips, lead under their skin, co-op food in their bellies, and buzzing electric energy.
We look forward to working with Mitch in the development of our own Cloyne Hackerspace and in future house workshops.
Thanks, Mitch, and thanks to the 30 attendees!
Something wonderful happened this Friday afternoon. We and a dozen or more curious souls came together in Cloyne’s deco room to imagine education beyond the university. We questioned: what would we create, learn and explore if there were no grades or majors? How would we share those experiences with the people in our communities?
We (Zach and Rodrigo) affirmed that all knowledges are situated. By that, we mean they come from a particular body within a particular location. Further, we rejected the academic style of the God’s point of view, or, the objective/universal/unbiased lens.
Sophia remembered how people in her art class put more of themselves into their work after she dared to be vulnerable in her performance.
James expressed the alienation of being told there was only one kind of Portuguese when selecting languages on a website although there were many options for English.
Together, we discussed whether objectivity is even worth pursuing. A few folks from both STEM and the Humanities gave examples of how embracing subjectivity enriched their work, from revealing the emotional weight in taking military grants to making ethnographic work accessible to its “subjects.”
More people came and shared their experiences. And Collin brought cheese and crackers.
We were very happy to have been part of this conversation and we look forward to being part of the Cloyne community as it grows. See you next Friday from 3-6pm in the deco room (across from the front door).
With you,
Z & R
We have a blog. A site to show what Cloyne is to everyone. To open its walls to curious vagabonds and beautiful eyes. Come, let’s go on a journey!