Andrew Boyd is an author, humorist and a true veteran in the difficult art of devising creative political campaigns such as the famous Billionaires for Bush, in which a group of performers pretended to support he policies of George Bush in favour of big corporations and powerful American magnates. Boyd will be joining us to present the book Beautiful Trouble, an exhaustive compilation of ideas and tactics for creative direct action.
The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination lies somewhere between art, activism, poetry and politics. This network of artists and activist is known for cultivating civil disobedience wherever they go, with their postcapitalist culture workshops. The results include some of the most ingenious political actions of the last decade: The Clown Army, The People vs The Banksters, The Bike Bloc… A ham radio fan once intercepted an internal Scotland Yard briefing in which the police commander warned that “This isn’t a normal theatre company you know!” Indeed, the Laboratory is insurrection made art.
Enmedio began when a group of designers, photographers, filmmakers and artists frustrated by the lack of connections between art and social action decided to leave their usual fields of work and get in the midst of things: Enmedio. In the midst of nowhere and everywhere. From there, they explore the transformative power of images and stories through spectacular interventions, using all the means within their reach: performance, photography, design, the media… to create what they call “interference in the dominant narrative”. Some of their actions ( Party in Bankia, Reflectors against Evil, We’re not numbers, Champions of Unemployment…) are now among the classics of international artivism.
Gan Golan is an artist, agitator, and author of comics such as Goodnight Bush and The Adventures of Unemployed Man, which have become bestsellers in the United States. His many forays into street theatre and social activism include creating the Tax Dodgers, a totally fake baseball team that criticises tax evasion by the rich. In 2011, Golan moved to New York to do his dream job: occupy Wall Street.
These girls don’t fool around, they aim their actions right at the very heart of the beast: financial power. 100% subversive, GILA act locally, always keeping one eye on the global. If you take a look at their actions, you will see how good they are at turning irony into a tool for social intervention. Their speciality is to point out Evil, to draw the monster out of the shadows and make it visible so that it loses some of its power.
High quality cultural sabotage. My Dad’s Strip Club doesn’t just attack advertising and the dominant power of multinationals, it strikes at the very desire to consume more, to buy more. Their many interventions include Urban Decoy, an interactive war game that helps us to understand the sad conditions that consumer culture imposes on us. A slap in the smiling face of capitalism.
Enrique Flores is an illustrator, activist, storyteller, and raconteur. This versatile artist’s felt-tip pens manage to portray the social movements around the crisis like none other. Many people are already turning to his illustrations as the unofficial chronicle of what’s happening on the streets. His Cuadernos de Sol (Sol Notebooks) are undoubtedly one of the best first-hand accounts of the events of 15M, the most important citizen movement in the history of Spanish democracy. He makes all his material available to everyone on his blog.
The aim of this artists’ group is very simple: to liberate drone technology and place it within everyone’s reach. They work towards this aim because they believe that the airspace belongs to everybody, and that we all have the right to enjoy it as we see fit. In their workshops, smartphones become the heart of unmanned aerial vehicles, cheap drones that can easily be controlled through an intuitive interface of their own design. Flone’s recipe for ending evil is technological empowerment. What you do once you’re empowered is up to you.
