A group of protestors will try to levitate Vice's Brooklyn headquarters into the East River today
According to a Facebook page dedicated to the event, the group will apparently be attempting to levitate Vice's building into the East River, after which the "spirits of the Displaced and dormant creative energies underneath the foundation of Vice's Media HQ will be unleashed" and "a creative re-flowering of the Williamsburg Waterfront Communities will regenerate."
The event's organizer, Matt Mottel, told Brokelyn that the exorcism-like event is not a protest but "an act of public assembly, using levitation as the mechanism to channel public awareness to a situation that has displaced and effected many."
Vice's plans to move into a complex of warehouses along the East River have upset some in the Williamsburg creative community. Two indie music clubs - Death by Audio and Glasslands - recently moved out to make room for the media company. Vice has said they played no role in their displacement.
"It was the landlord's decision to not renew their leases," Hosi Simon, general manager at Vice, told the New York Times. "And it was the tenants' decision to take buyouts."
With their levitation ceremony today, Talibam! hopes to create "an open dialog between Vice, the directly displaced live/work communities in the Kent ave building, the long term Latino communities being displaced via the 2005 Williamsburg Rezoning and the greater New York city artistic community that Vice has cannibalized with their take over of that building."
The group will have a rehearsal before beginning the levitation at 3:35 this afternoon.