Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Glasgow School of Art
Cultural Hijack: Rethinking Intervention
This Exhibition Output comprises three parts of a four-part methodology around ‘Cultural Hijack: Rethinking Intervention’. The publication and essay, Cultural Hijack, is the fourth part and my other submitted Output. The Exhibition involved: i) a survey exhibition at the AA Gallery of documented international artworks and a programme of artists’ talks; ii) a programme of live-interventions in which artists infiltrated the urban territory of London, and; iii) CONTRAvention, in which the programme culminated in a weekend of lectures, symposia, screenings, and participatory actions. Research for the exhibition addressed the intersection of contemporary art, politics and social justice, as we witness a rising tide of resistance to neoliberal capitalism through an expanding ‘movement of movements’, from Zapatismo to the Arab Spring, from alternative G8 summits to Occupy Wall Street. In the shadows of this mass movement, artists assist the writing of alternative histories and the reclamation of our rights to the city. Cultural Hijack addresses what it means to intervene, to insert cultural experiments without warning or consent, and asks: do small acts of resistance and creative disruption feed an appetite for real alternatives to neoliberal capitalism? What might the tools, tactics and poetics of the interventionist who exposes the blind spots and plays in the cracks of capitalist ideology offer the insurgent imagination of activism and social movements? Exhibition: ZEVS (FRAN), Ztohoven (CZEC), Krzysztof Wodiczko (POL), Matthias Wermke & Mischa Leinkauf (GER), Upper Space (UK), Gregory Sholette (USA), Michael Rakowitz (USA), Ben Parry (UK) & Peter McCaughey (IRE), Tatzu Nishi (JPN), Renzo Martens (BELG), Knit the City (UK), Peter Kennard (UK), Laura Keeble (UK), Allan Kaprow (USA), Tushar Joag (IND), Space Hijackers (UK), Paul Harfleet (UK), EPOS 257 (CZEC), Electronic Disturbance Theater (USA), Nina Edge (UK), Alan Dunn (UK), Paolo Cirio (ITA), Leah Borromeo & Dr. D (UK), BGL (CAN).
