My book, Fat Activism: A Radical Social Movement, is based on my PhD thesis. But it is not like most PhDs and it is not like most books. When I did the research for it and wrote the book, I wanted to make something that would help demolish unethical power systems. I wanted to create a resource that would be meaningful to activists like me.
In this session I would like to talk a little bit about how I wrote and published my book, and I would like to open out some of the themes for a wider discussion. These themes include: research justice, queer methodologies, historicising activist movements, the para-academy and DIY publishing. It is my hope that, by talking and listening, we can generate ideas for research and publishing tactics that continue the work of demolishing unethical and unequal power systems.
Bio: Charlotte Cooper is a psychotherapist, cultural worker and para-academic working and living in East London. Visit charlottecooper.net for more information.
In this workshop Bristol's favourite poet, playright, historian and general all rounder Edson Burton will respond to ‘Concerning the Poem’s Information’ from Édouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation. Within the text Glissant contrasts the logic of computers or 'information' with poetic knowledge, in order to highlight differences between these modes of thinking/ being. What insights can poetry, and the poetic give us, that computers simply cannot? Does poetry, in some way, resist thinking that seeks to calculate and control outcomes? Or can similarities—and even alliances—be drawn between the unruly suggestiveness of poetic language, and the systematic world of computational prediction. This workshop will create time and space to respond to the short text in a collective setting, with reference to our current, historical reality.
This presentation will discuss the ideas of French philosopher Bernard Stiegler on the topic of participation in aesthetic production — the malaise that results from our alienation from this, and how he suggests this can be remedied.
Using creative exercises which facilitate a safe and inspiring group dynamic, we will explore the challenges that differences can bring.
Exercises which reassure the nervous and challenge complacency.
Practices of freedom which enable us to tap into our creative potential and express ourselves more fully, individually and collectively.
There will be opportunities for discussion and reflections on the social implications of improvised music as a way of communicating more freely and nurturing authentic ways of being.
In our different rhythms together, we co create social virtuosity.
]]>This workshop will look at types of silence as a palpable musical event within totally improvised music, as well as conversation; types of silence and ways of hearing/changing them.
All abilities welcome.
Born and based in Derby, Corey Mwamba's commitment to jazz and improvised music in Britain and Ireland drives all aspects of his work, whether through composition, playing, or promoting new music.
Corey predominantly plays vibraphone; he also plays dulcimer and uses audio processing software. He is recognised as a highly creative improviser and composer working across a wide range of jazz and contemporary music. Mwamba's distinctive approach and tone is instantly recognisable in any context: a potent blend of pure sound, highly melodic phrases and ethereal textures; barely whispered chords and ear-piercing robotic screams. Corey won a PRSF/Jerwood Foundation Take Five artist development award in 2007; was short-listed for the Innovation category in the BBC Jazz Awards in 2008; and was nominated for "Rising Star on Vibraphone" in the 62nd and 63rd DownBeat Annual Critics' Polls.
This workshop is based on the foundational writings of Martinician psychiatrist and anti-colonial activist Frantz Fanon. Drawing links between Fanon’s socio-psychological taxonomies of the pathologization of the black body in his early work and his anti-colonial political theorization in his later writing, the workshop examines how a radical politics might intersect with notions of resilience in the context of oppression under late capitalism in the twenty-first century. The workshop will take a mixed format, using extracts from Fanon’s writing as the basis of a series of guided discussions, and then moving into a strategy-based session which will use Fanon’s work as inspiration for developing a set of alternative models for institutions and structures which might promote a truly radical and free oppositional politics in the context of everyday life.
Bio: Madhu Krishnan is a Lecturer in 20th and 21st Century Postcolonial Writing in the Department of English at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on contemporary African and African diaspora literature and culture, with a specific interest in the socio-political interventions that the circulation of ‘African literature’, as a category, participates within.
In this interactive history workshop, we time travel to meet colonial Australia’s first cook book writer - Mina Rawson. We will watch Mina arrive on the beautiful shores of Butchulla country, with her gun, her Pacific Islander slaves, her husband, and her dreams of making money in global capitalist networks through conquering the land and together analyse what our reactions to her actions can tell us about how we eat and live today. Are the margins of time, violence and the colonies at the dinner table with us still? What might it mean to kick colonisation out of the kitchen? A gentle and provocative engagement with how history can affect and inform us today.
‘Life can express itself and realise its freedom only through forms yet forms must necessarily suffocate life and obstruct freedom’ Georg Simmel
Forms/Movement: sky maps, road signs, street zodiacs, framed cartographies, spatial signifiers- travel routes ruled and governed by collusive eras and monetary systems that collapse and repress; each is as ineffectual as the last. We recreate the monolithic and archaic, streets of repetitive movement, plan upon plan, layer upon layer of ash and bone ad infinitum, built upon the foundations of another immovable transitory flight of being, a swirling mass of margins where there is no guidance and we bear witness to transparent city walls that breathe, contract, grip and expel.
The City (Transition) is a solo performance that uses sound and video improvisation, performance, composition and collage.
Bio: abher behn‘s creative output spans over two decades of music and sound composition, writing and visual work alongside art/feminist activism and DIY/community organising. Her belief in the necessity of a politicised feminist community and autonomous space for self identified women, queers and people of colour alongside the creation and sustenance of a non-corporate DIY cultural ethic without compromise, has remained the backbone of her life and work.
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In 2 x120, cellist Bela Emerson invites the audience to become live co-creators. This forty-minute piece connects a series of spontaneous interactions between Emerson & individual audience members, who are invited to improvise with her for two minutes each. Participants are offered one of three specific ways of interacting (two sonic, one visual), to generate a unique collaborative flow of sound. Drawing together Emerson’s extensive experience as both improviser and community musician, this is innovative and inclusive work.
Bio: Bela Emerson is an innovative cellist who composes in the moment using electronic processing. She has performed residencies at Sydney Opera House and Royal Festival Hall, as well as being commissioned by BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction as a solo performer, and releasing four solo albums. Her various collaborative works with artists such as filmmaker Tereza Buskova, acrobats Mimbre and musicians Sarah Angliss and Stephen Hiscock have been supported by PRS and Arts Council England and commissioned by BBC Radio 4 and the BFI. Bela also works as a community musician with Open Strings Music and Rhythmix’s Wishing Well, using music as a tool for connection, engagement and wellbeing.
A day of workshops, discussions and performances which explore the proposition: Wages for Digital Labour?
How do we, as everyday users of digital technologies, help to create wealth for large multinational companies?
Should we be paid for our time and labour generating data?
Should we be demanding Wages for Digital Labour?
How are ideas of of privacy, public space and openness changing within the 21st century's data/ information economy?
What is the relationship between the consumption of gadgets and the labour conditions in which they are produced?
Do digital technologies 'compress' or expand our realities?
11.00 - 12.00 Hannah Schling – Electronic Labour in the Czech Republic and China
12.00 - 13.00 Freyja van den Boom – Drone Catchers
13.30 - 15.00 Lídia Pereira / Immaterial Labour Union – Care packages for workers in social media networks
15.30 - 17.00 Dušan Mihajlović (A.K.A. “Dr. Spira”)
‘On the path from NOISE to MUSIC - Lossy Compression – the Evil Core of the Holy Church of Everything Digital’
Sue Mountstevens has been re-elected as Police and Crime Commissioner and this occasion is where she will set out publicly her continued commitment to serving the residents of Avon and Somerset with integrity and impartiality.
At the short event Sue will take an ‘oath of impartiality’ with the Police Area Returning Officer (PARO) Dr Jo Farrar OBE, who co-ordinated the election across Avon and Somerset. Sue will also set out her strategic vision for the Constabulary for the next four years of her PCC term.
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east bristol contemporary presents EBC004
overdraft
tom camm
tracy hickinbottom
jack brindley
6-8 may 2016
opening event fri 6th 7-10pm includes bar and shop
open sat 7th 10-5pm
open sun 8th 10-5pm
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east bristol contemporary is an artist-led gallery based at The Trinity Centre, Bristol.
ebc seeks to counteract the lack of established showing spaces for grass roots contemporary artists in Bristol, and seeks to establish a unique and diverse programme of exhibitions and events.
we run events for the public including artist talks/tours, workshops, opening events, events for young people, and discussions.
shows run on the first weekend of each month.
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Jimmy Cauty’s (The ADP Riot Tour 2016)
The fine city of Bristol has never witnessed such devastating scenes of destruction and chaos. So it will come as great comfort to citizens to learn that it is on an incredibly small scale---1:87 to be precise---and safely contained within a 40ft shipping container, as part of a surreal model village experience visiting the city.
The Aftermath Dislocation Principle (ADP) is a post-riot landscape created in miniature by acclaimed artist Jimmy Cauty -- co-creator of chart-topping band The KLF and its subsequent, million pound-burning arts incarnation The K Foundation.
Following The ADP's critically-acclaimed appearance at Banksy's Dismaland last summer, the installation has taken to the road, re-housed in a specially converted shipping container, which will open its doors to visitors across the country, at the sites of historic riots.
The ADP Riot Tour's visit to Bristol on 29th April will see it take up residence at The Trinity Centre, opposite the Trinity Road Police Station, instrumental in The St Pauls Riot of 1980, which saw black and white youth stand up to police harassment.
Far from inciting another riot, the event's organisers hope the experience will be a peaceful and thought-provoking one, with the only real disturbance being the constant chatter of miniature police radios, dotted all over the exhibit.
The exhibit launches Friday 29th April when Jimmy Cauty will be on hand to discuss the work alongside local historians, 6pm - 10pm.
The ADP will then be open daily 10am - 7pm, until Saturday 7th May, and 12noon - 9pm during Trinity Garden Party, Sunday 8th May.
]]>1st-3rd April
opening event fri 1st 7-10pm includes bar and shop
open sat 2nd 10-5pm
open sun 3rd 10-5pm
check website for sat and sun day time events ALL EVENTS FREE
East Bristol Contemporary presents EBC003, the show features work by Bristol artists Harriet Bowman and Oliver Sutherland, who in turn have invited Leed’s artists and collaborators Francis Lloyd-Jones and Peter Simpson, alongside Glasgow artist Toby Christian.
east bristol contemporary is an artist-led gallery based at The Trinity Centre, Bristol.
ebc seeks to counteract the lack of established showing spaces for grass roots contemporary artists in Bristol, and seeks to establish a unique and diverse programme of exhibitions and events.
we run events for the public including artist talks/tours, workshops, opening events, events for young people, and discussions.
shows run on the first weekend of each month.
]]>Every year seems to bring more bad news; the poor have to pay for the mistakes of the rich. The cuts have hammered education, benefits, pensions, housing and the NHS. At the same time, global climate change and corporate land exploitation have caused extreme weather patterns, with oil wars and arms sales stirring up conflict across the Middle East and beyond.
However, people have been fighting back, through strikes and the taking up of arms. If capitalism collapsed tomorrow, we ask ourselves: would we be ready?
As anarchists, we have developed concepts around mutual aid, co-operation, and direct action, but how do we put these into practice?
At this year’s Bristol Anarchist Bookfair, we will create a space for people to explore these ideas. How will we create a better, more equal society? How will we hold people to account for their actions, if we abolish prisons and the police? If revolutions happen tomorrow, we won’t have all the answers, and an anarchist society will not occur overnight. But the core principles of anarchism offer us the building blocks for the future, and a roadmap on how to get there.
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