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The Art of Insurrectionary Imagination

Adam Pugh | 04.11.2009 11:57 | Culture | Free Spaces | Cambridge

A slide talk by artist-activist John Jordan (Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination). A feast of images and anecdotes about forms of creative resistance where art and activism merge to create moments of intense pleasure and effective direct action.


Ranging from the audacity of Reclaim the Streets to the stupidity of The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, from the beautiful tree houses of the 90s anti-roads movements to the utopian vision of the Climate Camp, the talk expounds on what happens when the fluid boundaries between art and life, imagination and action are dissolved.

John Jordan's work merges the imagination of art and the social engagement of politics. Co-director of interdisciplinary social practice art group Platform (1987-1995), which was profoundly influenced by Beuys and social sculpture, he then went on to be a co-founder of the infamous direct action collective Reclaim the Streets (1995-2000). Working with social movements as his material became the central concern of his practice. This involved constantly blurring boundaries between being an activist and an artists and involved collectively creating political events and situations that felt neither like activism or art but had the best of both these worlds embedded within them. The idea was not to make political art but to apply creative thinking and practise to radical politics, to reject representation in favour of transformation.

This is a FREE event (+ free drink!) at OUTPOST, Wensum Street, Norwich
Monday 9 November at 6pm.
Part of AURORA 2009: Common Ground - see www.aurora.org.uk for more information.

Adam Pugh
- e-mail: adam@aurora.org.uk
- Homepage: http://www.aurora.org.uk

Comments

Display the following 3 comments

  1. Dissolve — Kleiner
  2. John Jordan - snitch and collaborator (we remember...) — @
  3. another public school tosser — arts council gwant