Laura Watts at the Chicago #noNATO protests, May 2012, by Molly Crabapple, with words by Laurie Penny

Laurie explains the project below….

Discordia is coming!

We’ve been waiting to announce this for a while. On the 4th of July, the splendid Ms Molly Crabapple and I are going to Greece to do some reporting, meeting up with activists and community organisers on the ground in Athens and elsewhere. Molly is an artist who lives in a loft full of birdcages opposite Zucotti Park; I’m a journalist who lives out of a large red backpack on Molly’s floor. We met during Occupy Wall Street and have spent the past several months experimenting with making things happen together – when I went to cover the protests in Chicago and Montreal this summer, I took pictures on my phone and sent them to Molly, who created art from them. Discordia, however, is the first trip where both of us will be there on the ground. She will make pictures, I will make words, we will try very hard not to get arrested or deported, and all shall be marvellous. Discordia is an experimental art-and-journalism project, taking the Hunter Thompson-Ralph Steadman macho model and twisting it to our own ends, and it’ll be published as an ebook in the Autumn.

Putting this project together has been interesting from the start, as I assumed we’d be staying on the floor of a squat and Molly assumed we’d be in some sort of bougie hotel with taps that actually work, and the process of gradual compromise began there, as did my exhortations that Ms Crabapple wear shoes that are at least vaguely sensible. Right now we’re learning rudimentary Greek, pestering contacts and reading a great deal, and whatever happens while we’re there, we hope to produce something really innovative and worthwhile. Stay tuned!