we’ll be making an installation for this on the 12th NOVEMBER off brick lane……………

Signs of Revolt–Creative Resistance and Social Movements since Seattle



EXHIBITION AND TALKS

Space Hijackers/Ultimate Holding Company/Reel News/kennardphillipps/ Cactus Network/Jonathan Barnbrook/Pedro Inhoue/Noel Douglas/David Gentlemen/Guy Smallman/Jody Boehnart/ Jess Hurd/Notes from Nowehere/Movement of the Imagination/Rebel Clown Army/ Indymedia London/Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination/Creative Resistance Research Network/ Turbulence/War Boutique/Josh On



Opening FRIDAY 13 NOVEMBER 6pm then SATURDAY 14–SUNDAY 22 NOVEMBER 


Opening Times: Weekends 10-10pm, Weekdays 12–9pm

Shop 14


The Old Truman Brewery

 91 Brick Lane 


London


E1 6QL



10 years ago, in November 1999 an alliance of direct action activists, environmentalists and trade unionists shut down the meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Seattle, stopping the next trade round of Capitalist Globalisation. In the process they sparked a Movement of Movements right across the globe its slogan became ‘Another World is Possible’.

This November exactly 10 years from that momentous demonstration, and with most of the predictions of the movements rapidly coming true what with the crisis of the economy, a permanent state of war and the collapse of our eco-system wrecking lives across the planet, the rich and powerful meet again in Copenhagen to discuss the next Climate treaty after Kyoto, yet again activists are preparing to challenge the idea that the Market can solve the problems of the world, and take another step toward that possible world after Capitalism.

Signs of Revolt is an exhibition that weaves together the story of the past decades social movements, drawing out the influences and connections between and across the movements against Capitalism, War and Climate Change. Using archive material and documentary photography and video from movement photographers and filmmakers. It reveals the story of how we got from Seattle to Copenhagen.

Interspersed in this narrative are works by artist and designer activists and collectives, produced during, within and for the movements, this is the first time such a collection has been brought together in the UK and it will be a chance to reflect upon and celebrate the new creative impulses that the movements spawned and the possibilties for developing the creative capacity of future movements, these issues will also be discussed in greater depth during a series of talks during the exhibition. (timetable here).

As Capitalism threatens our very existence, Signs of Revolt defiantly maps out possible routes to a future filled with hope…


signsofrevolt.net

Control Room 2

6m x 18m

oil, acrylic, pigment ink, paper on billboard print

2009

Akademie Der Kunst, Berlin, Germany

We were commissioned to make Control Room 2 for Embedded Art , a group exhibition dealing with issues of surveillance. We got the background image of a control room printed as three 6 metre by 6 metre street posters on blue back billboard paper.

Pasting them butted up together, directly onto the untreated concrete wall we then collaged about 100 images onto the base paper and scraped into the images using industrial grinders, tearing at the paper and adding oil and acrylic paint. Trying to encapsulate the separate works in the show which dealt with surveillance from the domestic to the military, our work uses images of police action (mainly in Germany where it was made for) to Iraq . We show images of state torture adjacent to surveillance photos of western streets. Looking at the work the audience is watching the watched looking back at them, while all the while being filmed and  projected in another part of the exhibition.

The work was destroyed by the Akademie at the end of the show in March 2009. See it being made and in detail here………

we had to paste up a base layer of random billboard sheets before pasting up the real base image, donated by a mate, Fibs helped us - thanks Fibs!

relief when we finished pasting up the base image

the opening at the posh Akademie der Kunste where our dirty, protest work was on show

the public could view the work from above..............

.................and below

photos by Kristian Buus

Playing around with the the concoction, fabrication of value in the global capitalist financial system, we engaged city workers with some simple truth derivatives during their lunchbreak, equating their salaried/bonus income with the cost of lunch for a worker in the producing countries ie Mozambique, Brazil, Indonesia, Bangladesh.

The Cafe of Equivalent$, a lunch food stall selling food at cost equivocal to food affordability in the producing countries – the research to tailor the pricing for the project is not complete but – soup and bread in Mozambique for a worker earning $2 a day costs 20 cents , 10%daily wage – applied to the average bonus-earning-banker  soup and bread from our stall costs $181.67, £111.20

This intervention is an attempt to create a transparency in an opaque world of money, making material the physical possibilities of using financial resources for need rather than profit.

Clients at the stall are invited to write their aspirations for a different future across the artwork.

Cafe of Equivalent$ was commissioned by LII for C.R.A.S.H. A Post Capitalist A-Z as part of 2 Degrees festival hosted by Arts Admin, June 2009. We setup in Leadenhall Market at the back of the Lloyd’s building in the heart of the City.

photos by Jenny Matthews