Cultural Hijack: CONTRAvention
23rd-26th May 2103
The exhibition Cultural Hijack at the Architectural Association culminates in the CONTRAvention: 23rd-26th May - a carnival weekend of lectures, symposia, screenings, participatory actions, interventions, meals and debate.
The main CONTRAvention event - Cultural Hijack: Rethinking Intervention - takes place at RIBA (the Royal Institute of British Architects), London on Saturday 25th May, 9am–6pm.
Moving beyond contemporary art discourses to the concerns of city-living, the built environment and urban futures, Cultural Hijack foregrounds the practices and concerns of the interventionist and the artivist. This part of the CONTRAvention brings together leading voices of dissent, provocation and critical practice, offering ways of advocating, analysing and agitating for alternative futures.
Speakers include: Gregory Sholette, Voina, Ztohoven, John Jordan, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Space Hijackers, Yana Sana, David Pinder, Ben Parry, Peter McCaughey, Graham Jeffery, Vanessa Norwood, Gavin Grindon and others...
CONTRA contributors include: Renzo Martens, Nina Edge, EPOS 257, International Peripatetic Sculptors Society, BGL, Alan Kaprow, Katarzyna Kosmala and others....
What might the tools, tactics and poetics of the interventionist artist offer the insurgent imagination of activism and social movements? Do small acts of resistance and creative disruption, build muscle that encourages an appetite for real alternatives to neoliberal capitalism or do they end point and sate such an appetite? At what point does the whimsy of the slactivist turn into the hard thinking of the committed activist? And what of ‘commissioned resistance’, is it implicitly flawed, sponsored by the system it seeks to critique, or can it, despite its origins, have impact?
These questions, and yours, will be picked over in the CONTRAvention.
Book your place NOW at: http://culturalhijack.eventbrite.co.uk.
Ticket price: £15/£25/£40 (includes light breakfast & refreshments throughout the day.)
CONTRAvention is curated by Ben Parry and Peter McCaughey and co-produced by Jump Ship Rat and WAVEparticle with Creative Futures Institute, University of West of Scotland.
