Fantasies of participation: The situationist imaginary of new forms of labour in art and politics

The Situationist International (SI) have become a canonical reference point when discussing artists' participation in political action or activism. This article attempts to decentre the SI from this position, by tracing their theories and representations of political agency and labour. I argue that their notion of agency is deeply conflicted, epitomized by the dual invocations 'never work/all power to the workers' councils. I examine how the SI's representations of agency betray an attraction to and fascination with 1960s reactionary fantasies around brainwashing, conditioning, control and torture. Their practical descriptions of a constructed situation, which 'makes people live' are, in fact, closer to torturous state control than total liberation. The notions of agency they mobilise draw on colonial and classist sources, which actually deny the agency of radical movements. As a result, the SI produce a series of weak fantasies of participation, in which agency is denied and 'demanding the impossible' is actually a demand to constitute and police the impossible. Artistic-political agency was both guarded centre and constituent other. The SI's policing of their identity, tied in name to the agency of 'situations', involved the ongoing exclusion and repression of other artists' more practically-engaged labour within social movements

Mapping British Public Monuments related to Slavery

This article is a product of the first complete survey of British public representational monuments in the UK related to transatlantic slavery, available online at Britishpublicmonumentsrelatedtoslavery.net. Identifying over 900 monuments, it brings this survey to bear on current public and policy debates about such monuments’ history, significance and meaning vis-à-vis slavery, art and heritage. Examining the monuments at scale, we identify the monuments’ patterns of production and provide data-led answers to specific questions such as what Britain’s most significant monumental legacies of slavery are; how enslaved people appear in British public monuments; and how this data might support rethinking these monuments

Surrealism, Dada and the refusal of work: autonomy, activism and social participation in the radical Avant-Garde

Discussions of the relatively recent notion of ?activist-art? have two common art-historical frames. The first is formal: the post-modern move towards collective or participatory art practices.1 The second is critical and historical: that of the revolutionary ambitions of the historical avant-garde, and their ?failure? or ?success'. This frame, made central by Peter B�rger in 1974, has produced a wealth of criticism.2 Perhaps due to this weight of criticism, these two frames are often considered in isolation from one another. Meanwhile, the narrative of the failure of the radical avant-garde3 project has become a common one. However, this tragic historical narrative is far less clear cut than it is often presumed to be. Against these melancholy readings of history, it is possible to trace another, joyful, trajectory: a history not of the failure of the radical avant-garde, but of its success. But rather than defending the ?success? of later ?neo-avant-garde? art, this article will attempt to offer a historical rethinking of the frame of radical avant-gardism in the art and writing of Dada and Surrealism by drawing on the ideas of autonomist Marxist theorists such as Antonio Negri, Mario Tronti, and others.4 This is a tradition that, while still Marxist, is opposed to the philosophical Western Marxist tradition5 to which B�rger belongs in its emphasis on the primacy of revolutionary agency over ideological critique. This reappraisal of the radical avant-garde begins by examining the theme of the refusal of work in Surrealism and Dadaism.6 But to do so first necessitates a critical return to accounts of the avant-garde's use or negation of the autonomy of art, alongside an examination of their engagement with cultural practices beyond this autonomy

Curating With Counterpowers: Activist Curating, Museum Protest and Institutional Liberation

this article examines the recent turn in Anglophone protest cultures since 2007 towards curating, museums and heritage: a rise in the toppling of statues; demonstrations inside museums; and in the creation of exhibitions, displays and archives within the ephemeral spaces of protest camps and other mobilisations. It argues for the historical causes of this turn in movement cultures; examines the structural power dynamics of this extra-instructional curating vis-à-vis the practices and policies of cultural institutions; and puts these developments in critical dialogue with recent debates on ‘activist curating’ and ‘institutional liberation’. Lastly, drawing on this analysis and the authors’ firsthand experiences on both sides of this dynamic (as a core member of the collective Liberate Tate and as co-curator of the V&A exhibition Disobedient Objects), it assesses this trajectory’s potentials and limits as a cultural strategy for social change

Revolutionary Romanticism: Henri Lefebvre's revolution-as-festival

This article examines Henri Lefebvre's concept of revolution-as-festival, its textual sources and its relationship to contemporary notions developed by Georges Bataille and the Situationist International. It is a companion-piece to the examination of Bataille's revolution-as-festival in Third Text 104, vol 24, no 3, May 2010. The author argues that Lefebvre's revolution-as-festival embodies the multiple methodological ambiguities of his ?open? dialectical approach, and his attempt to transplant Surrealist and Dadaist concerns into a Marxian framework. It is, paradoxically, these ambiguities that allow his revolution-as-festival to become a useful concept: firstly as a discursive making-visible and valorization of the art and culture of social movements; and secondly as a term through which to critically re-imagine this art and culture's limits and possibilities. This potential is borne out, not least, in the influence of Lefebvre's essay ?Revolutionary Romanticism? on the founding debates of the Situationist International