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| Dan Clore... |
 Posted: Sun Oct 25, 2009 4:45 am |
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News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/10/24
Saturday, October 24, 2009 by The Guardian/UK
Artists to Use Public Money to Fund Copenhagen Summit Protest
Bristol-based project may use installation made from old bikes and
funded by Arts Council to blockade streets in Copenhagen
by Steven Morris
Artists and activists have been given public money that could be used to
take part in civil disobedience at the Copenhagen climate change conference.
They are working together at the Arnolfini art gallery in Bristol before
the Cop15 conference, which is expected to attract thousands of
demonstrators. Most are producing work intended to draw attention to
climate change issues, such as inviting people to bring in unwanted
trees that will be planted in a community wood or perhaps along a cycle
route.
But many will be travelling to Copenhagen, and some admit that they will
take part in acts of civil disobedience.
One of the most striking projects is being organised by a group called
the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination - Lab of ii.
It will be designing a huge "carnivalesque" installation out of old
bikes that it may use to blockade the streets in Copenhagen or to trap
fossil fuel lobbyists in their hotel.
"We're not sure exactly how we will use it. It just depends how it turns
out," said one of the Lab technicians, John Jordan. "It will certainly
be used in some act of civil disobedience."
The Lab of ii will build a prototype of their work in Bristol and then
put together the real thing in Denmark. Jordan said: "As far as we are
concerned history changes through disobedience. Freedoms we take for
granted happened because people broke the rules."
Jordan said the exciting thing about the Arnolfini project was getting
artists and activists together. "Artists are imaginative but don't have
much real courage or involvement in the real world but bringing the two
together is magic. For me art is now about showing life to people, it's
about changing everyday life."
Jane Trowell, of the eco-artist group Platform, which is curating the
project, called C Words: Carbon, Climate, Capital, Culture, agreed. "A
lot of environmental art is being made. It's beautiful, touching,
engaging but can be a way of just commenting on rather than provoking
discussion and action on climate change.
"We're hoping to say it's not just enough to make work about it or
comment or describe it, let's do something," she said.
The Arts Council is funding the project and the Arnolfini is also
supported by Bristol city council. In effect, taxpayers' money is being
used to help artists and activists, some of whom are vowing to take part
in civil disobedience.
Tom Trevor, the director of the Arnolfini, said that 10 years ago public
money would not have been used for such a project - and it might be well
different after the next election.
"But for now the state is funding anti-state activity, which is very
interesting," he said. Trevor also conceded that if the conference was
taking place in Bristol, the gallery would almost certainly not support
direct action so overtly. "It would be difficult to keep all our
stakeholders on board," he said.
Another group taking part in the project is the Anderson family -
parents Gary and Lena and their sons, Neal, Gabriel and Sid, aged from
two to nine. They go under the name the Institute for the Art and
Practice of Dissent and Home.
The family, from Liverpool, are spending half term living on a boat
moored in the harbour outside the Arnolfini, and running activities
including an anti-capitalist Halloween.
They will create performances from what they learn and will stage them
in Copenhagen. "We won't want to get into any trouble but we do want to
create an activist cell as a family unit," said Gary Anderson.
--
Dan Clore
New book: _Weird Words: A Lovecraftian Lexicon_:
http://tinyurl.com/yd3bxkw
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We˙rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"Don't just question authority,
Don't forget to question me."
-- Jello Biafra |
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