2009

Archive 2009

 

Participation at PLATFORM‘s C Words: Carbon, Climate, Capital, Culture, Arnolfini, Bristol

The Institute took up a residency at C Words – Half-Term Holiday on a barge with an array of events, performances and activitiies.

Here’s a peek at the Institute’s week diary:

Monday 26th October: Gary Neal and Gabriel arrive in Bristol, sleep in a canal barge with the Arnolfini to one side and LloydsTSB to the other. We live that way for a week.
Tuesday 27th October: Spending taxpayers money on an ethical shopping tour and picnic (led by Bristol based James from Action Hero)
Wednesday 28th October: A performance ‘Planes, Trains and Slow Travel’ at the Embedded Symposium. Branka, our eco-au pair arrives from Zagreb, Croatia just in time to take part in the performance – check her slow travel blog.
Thursday 29th October: Branka’s performance with Neal and Gabriel ‘Acid Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’ about the easy flow of Acid Rain from affluent to non affluent nations in this case Austria to Croatia. Lena and Sid arrive.
Friday 30th October: Mizzy day in the gallery (inspired by mischief night) + the painting of the banner with a new slogan ‘With our £2000 artist fee we are going to COP 15’.
Saturday 31th October An anti-capitalist Halloween. We sat in Trapese’s Geodome and reached group consensus with children and others on how best to protest the current banking crisis under the disguise of Halloween.
Sunday 1st November: A Performance Report – A performance that detailed most of the week’s highlights (and lowlights). Full text and edited video version is available in DOCUMENTS

 

Participation in DIY 6 ‘Exercises to Activate the Political Imagination of the City Wanderer’ led by Lorena Rivero de Beer

 

A Couple of Attempts at Slow Travel

From Liverpool to Dubrovnik in June 2009 – part of Two Degrees commission:
Liverpool – London train, sleepover at Ben and Tina’s 16/6
London – Paris train, Eurostar 17/6
Paris- Munich overnight train 17/6
Munich – Zagreb, all day train, sleep at Branka and Sandro’s 18/6
Zagreb -Split overnight train, 4 hours late, makes us miss our ship to Dubrovnik 19/6
Split – Dubrovnik coach 20/6

From Dubrovnik to Liverpool in August 2009 – the aim was to get to Climate Camp, but we never made it…
Dubrovnik – Rijeka ship 27/8
All day in Rijeka 28/8
Rijeka – Munich overnight train 28/8
Munich – London all day train via Brussels, sleepover at Christine and Charlie’s 29/8
Climate Camp, we came to the very brink of it and defeated/run down, conspiracy of circumstances, decided to turn back…. 30/8
Rent-a-car to Liverpool! 30/08

 

Participation at Two Degrees event at Artsadmin, London

We performed A Promising Family Picnic on the 16th June at 7pm. Working from the prototype performance we had devised for Hazard 08 we decided to make speeches and promises to end climate chaos as a family. We listed all of the flights we have taken over the past nine years, most of them to get from Liverpool to Dubrovnik – where Lena is from. We were inspired to forego the chance of flying directly from Liverpool to Dubrovnik – with EasyJet which was running this connection for the first time ever and so, as we packed our family picnic away we delcared that this performance would end with a four day slow travel to Dubrovnik, then up to Zagreb for the Performance Studies international conference. You can see video footage and read the entire performance text in DOCUMENTS.

 

Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping Visit the Institute

Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping came to the Institute to catch their breaths on a breakneck Shopocalypse tour of the UK. After an exorcism of the tills at TESCO on Bold Street and a sojourn in the bombed out church, St Luke’s, the Rev and the church all crammed into the Institute and poured blessings upon it and ourselves. We bought some locally sourced and sold cakes for the bishop of anticapitalism and his faithful and inspiring crowd to munch on before they bolted back to the Bluecoat for another evening show. We felt truly holy and really inspired both at the Institute’s blessing and at the evening perfromance. Eternal Life to the Church of Life After Shopping and its prophetic ministering! Here is the Institute In Reverend Billy’s own words and
the initial Letter of invitation to Reverend Billy available in DOCUMENTS.

 

Financial Fools Day G20 Protests

The Institute went on a day trip to the Square Mile, London’s Financial District. We joined thousands of others determined to bring down the capitalist system and imagine another world. Check out our very short videos: A Family Day Out and Clowns Have The Last Laugh

 

Beyond the Nuclear Family

As part of the Institute’s ongoing quest to politicize and critique family structures, we invited Kate Rowles to share with us her home videos, we took part in ‘artists as parents as artists’, a weekend organized by Townly and Bradby at Wysing Arts Centre, spent a child friendly and critical (what a welcome combination!) weekend with Paula McCloskey & co at the Institute, and were interveiwed by Thelma Mort who is carrying out research into alternative structures for children’s education. Abi Lake joined us for a residency in July in order to investigate family structures.

 

Dissemination

Lena presented the Institute with two different topics, one on internationalism at Internationale: Radicalizing Internationalism in the Arts, an event at the Bluecoat, one on maternal labour at M(o)ther Trouble conference at Birkbeck. The Institute is pleased to present Maternal Labour DVD.

Participation at Performance Studies international (PSi) Conference ‘Misperformance’ in Zagreb (June 2009). Lena chaired a panel of ourselves, Branka Cvjeticanin along with curators of the Salon of the Revolution Ivana Bago and Antonija Majaca.

Ania Bas invited the Institute to make a banner for her blog for the month of May. We decided to draw from the rich tradition of Mayday banners and made our own. We believe that another world is possible and can hear the rising cry of our own capitalistic subjectivities screaming “MAYDAY!MAYDAY!MAYDAY!”

Gary thought it might be useful to offer a dissenting voice to the Climate for Change event at FACT. During a panel Assault on Culture III covened by Mute Magazine (April 2009) he gagged himself with gaffer tape and read out (in a muffled voice) a prepared statement about the inherent dangers afoot when institutions actively promote dissent.

In September Gary made a trip to Bristol for Residence in Residence event and in October he joined in INTERROGATION Walsall event.