This is a short theoretical, strategic critical essay written in December 2010 during the student protests in London, and distributed at several occupied art schools in the city, reflecting on and trying to encourage new forms of political/symbolic action amongst art students and others in the current struggles against auesterity in the UK.…
Read more »UK
Affect & the Politics of Austerity
The political climate in the UK, given as it already was to the emotive and nationalist tropes of the War on Terror, found a new affective register with the financial crisis: the invocation of public and personal shame. Admittedly, shame and other moralized negativity has been never far from the national imagination. Some recognizable examples would be the Victorian marking of deserving and undeserving poor, the various moral panics of youth deviancy or the influence of communitarian authoritarianism on New Labour social policy.
Read more »DIRECT WEEKEND – Arts Against Cuts
Following on from the fantastic Long Weekend at Goldsmiths in December, the Turner Prize Tate and National Gallery teach-ins, the Book Blocs and the many occupations and actions that emerged from this meeting, Arts Against Cuts are organising another weekend of action, planning, imagining, working and thinking together….
Read more »The Great Firewall of the US and “Wasteful Spending”
RT @JPBarlow:
The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops. #WikiLeaks