Cultural Resistance Urban Activism and the Arts

Posted on Jul 21, 2015 in Conference
Cultural Resistance Urban Activism and the Arts

On 8th September 2015, we have a panel focusing on Cultural Resistance, Arts and Activism.

The Panel will be at 14.30-15.30 Garstang Building Room 7.36, School of Geography at the University of Leeds. It is free to attend and there is no need to register.

Speakers at this Panel are drawn from two sessions at the Capitalism, Culture and Media conference at the School of Media and Communication (which is happening at the same time as our talks). More information on these participants and panels are below:

 

Cultural resistance in culture-based capitalist economy: thoughts, spaces and experimentation

In his introduction to The Art of Rent (2002), David Harvey tackles the complex relationship between culture and capital and the complexification of this relationship since the development of so-called cultural industries. “That culture has become a commodity of some sort is undeniable” Harvey states; but it is a commodity like no other, he continues, as culture largely contributes in solidifying social memories and affective communities.

Amongst the critique that have been articulated in the aftermath of the of the honeymoon between capitalism and the cultural industries, there is a temptation to solve the debate by either compromising with the fact that culture and capital operate in a dynamic, innovative relationship (overlooking the damages of such development) or consider that cultural producers and products have been majorly depoliticized (if not major engines of capitalistic spread).

The incentive for bringing together the three panels below is to gather a range of scholars and cultural producers whose works urge to further challenge the social and political value of culture. Issued from both the academic world and the artistic field, the panelist will aim at discussing how the transition towards the development of so-called cultural industries has contributed in the deterioration of conditions of cultural production, in the pacification of cultural actors and in the depoliticization of cultural products. But they will more essentially explore expressions of “cultural resistance”, featuring contribution of cultural producers (and sometimes consumers) in articulating a critique of capitalism and resisting for spaces of alternative culture.

Monday 7th of September

Artists, radical artistic practice and anti-capitalist thoughts in and against the creative class

Chaired by Liz Sterling, Leeds Beckett University

Nils Norman, (Royal Danish Academy of Art and Design, Copenhagen, Denmark) Education of art, art for education: radicality in education as an artistic practice

Artist collective “Haben und Brauchen” (Berlin), represented by Heimo Lattner and Annette Maechtel www.habenundbrauchen.de

Stéphane Press, architect (Geneva), Spaces of art and social experimentations in Geneva between 1983 and today

Marie-Avril Berthet (University of Leeds), Nightlife, experimentation and resistance of alternative culture in Geneva, Switzerland

 

Tuesday 8th of September

Theorizing culture and resistance to capitalism in urban studies: space, law, experimentation and capitalist moralism

Chaired by Liz Sterling, Leeds Beckett University

Mischa Piraud (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)Geneva: squats and the development of an alternative cultural scene

Robert Hollands (Newcastle University)Urban cultural movements and alternative creative spaces

Deborah Talbot (Freelance researcher and writer, London, UK) What happened to Wally Hope: what regulation has to do with nightlife has to do with cultural resistance.

More information about the other events in the Crisis and Hope series

Image credit “Protest in support of alternative culture, Geneva, 2010” Courtesy ARV

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