<nettime> We Demand The Impossible: An Interview with John Jordan and Gavin Grindon

[Stevphen Shukaitis <stevphen@autonomedia.org>]

We Demand The Impossible: An Interview with John Jordan and Gavin Grindon
http://www.furtherfield.org/features/interviews/we-demand-impossible-interview-john-jordan-and-gavin-grindon
By Marc Garrett

Furtherfield interview with Gavin Grindon and John Jordan from the 
Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination about the User's Guide to 
(Demanding) the Impossible. Published by Minor Compositions 
(http://www.minorcompositions.info)

"This guide is not a road map or instruction manual. It’s a match struck 
in the dark, a homemade multi-tool to help you carve out your own path 
through the ruins of the present, warmed by the stories and strategies 
of those who took Bertolt Brecht’s words to heart: “Art is not a mirror 
held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.”

Marc Garrett: In the introduction of publication it says it, "was 
written in a whirlwind of three days in December 2010, between the first 
and second days of action by UK students against the government cuts, 
and intended to reflect on the possibility of new creative forms of 
action in the current movements. It was distributed initially at the 
Long Weekend, an event in London to bring artists and activists together 
to plan and plot actions for the following days, including the teach-in 
disruption of the Turner Prize at Tate Britain, the collective manifesto 
write-in at the National Gallery and the UK’s version of the book bloc."

I think readers would be interested to know how the 'teach-in 
disruption' and the 'collective manifesto write-ins' went?

John Jordan: I was not at the first Turner teach-in so can't give first 
hand account. From what I've heard it was a wonderful moment where the 
sound of the action penetrated into the room where the Turner Prize were 
being held, as the back drop of the channel 4 live link up. Kind of 
perfect, because it was a sound artist who got the award.

As for the National Gallery event - this was held during the evening 
after one of the big days of student action. Having spent the day being 
trampled on by her majesties police horses, a load of us went up to the 
National Gallery and mingled in front of Manet's Execution of Emperor 
Maximillian, opposite a corridor that held a Courbet painting. It was a 
perfect placement as courbet of all the 19th artists was really the one 
who understood the role of art within an insurrection, putting down his 
paintbrushes to apply his creativity directly to the organising of the 
Paris Commune of 1871 just as the impressionists fled the city to the 
quiet of the countryside. Only to return a few years later when 
Impressionism was launched, as a kind or artistic white wash over the 
massacres of the Commune, a return to normal bourgeois representation. 
Courbet had used the rebel city, a "paradise without police" as he put 
it, as a canvas to create new forms of social relationships and new ways 
of public celebration, including the destruction of the monument to 
Empire and Hierarchy, the Vendome column.

Several hundred artists and art students at a given moment sat down and 
occupied room 43, telling the staff that we would leave once a 
collective manifesto had been written. Which is what happened. Small 
groups of 10 or so were formed as the guards and director of the gallery 
paced up and down unsure of how to react, each group worked on points 
for the manifesto which were then read out and merged in 'The Nomadic 
Hive Manifesto' - http://www.criticallegalthinking.com/?p=998 - it was 
an extraordinary moment of collective, emergent intelligence, a 
reclaiming of a public cultural space from the realm of musefication and 
representation.

MG: I have no hesitation in declaring that much of the content in the 'A 
Users Guide to (Demanding) the Impossible' publication, features quotes 
by individuals and groups, who have inspired many of us in the 
networked, Furtherfield community. But, I am also aware that you may be 
a younger generation, presently experiencing the brunt of education cuts 
imposed by the current government coalition. Could you explain how these 
cuts are effecting you and your peers?

JJ: Well I wish I was a younger generation !!! I’m 46 years old, it was 
written for the youth !! You should talk to some arts against cuts folk, 
I can put you in touch if you need to?

Gavin Grindon: I'm not exactly 'the younger generation' either, but I 
guess I'm in a strange position between. I recently finished my PhD, so 
a lot of my friends are either students or just becoming teachers. There 
aren't many jobs about, academic or otherwise, and most of them are 
doing multiple part-time, short-term jobs to make ends meet, without the 
assumed security or career progression of a generation before, and the 
cuts are only going to exacerbate that situation. I guess what's new is 
a recession on top of these kind of precarious work conditions, which 
extend far beyond the University. With part-time, hourly-paid and non 
fixed positions, replacing real jobs.

Of course it's damaging, but it's also been inspiring to see students 
responding to turning over lessons to discuss the cuts and seeing them 
on the streets. It's politicised a lot of young people, and there's an 
opportunity there. At one of the University's I work at, it was great to 
see the art students working together to make protest banners, not in 
their studios but in the foyer, where other people could see and join 
in. And when I started talking with them, we began to realise that with 
all the technical resources of an art school at their disposal, it was 
possible to be much more ambitious and imaginative than just making 
banners or placards, the standard objects of protest. But the history of 
a lot of art-activist groups who had these kind of ambitions isn't 
taught, never mind the more popular history of the arts of social 
movements itself. And it's not just about knowing and being inspired by 
some great utopian tales of adventure, or understanding yourself as part 
of a historical legacy - it leaves you strategically disadvantaged about 
what can be done. So starting a conversation with these students, was, 
as JJ says, kind of the idea behind the guide.

MG: There are various other creative protest groups such as UK Uncut 
(http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/) and the University for Strategic Optimism 
(http://universityforstrategicoptimism.wordpress.com/), whom I 
interviewed live on Resonance FM, December last year 
(http://www.furtherfield.org/radio/8122010-university-strategic-optimism-and-genetic-moo). 
Are you connected to any of these creative activist groups, and are 
there any others in the UK you would like us to be more aware of?

JJ: Yes - I've worked with UK Uncut, and was unfortunately arrested in 
Fortnum and Mason, whilst recording the BBC 4 afternoon play, but that’s 
another story! There are lots of interesting groups that work on the 
edge of art and activism, right now a space to keep an eye out for and 
to visit is THE HAIRCUT BEFORE THE PARTY - 
http://www.thehaircutbeforetheparty.net/ - set up by two radical young 
art activists who have opened a hair dressers that offers free hair cuts 
and political discussion about organising and friendship, rebellion and 
the material needs to engage in it. The salon is in 26 Toynbee Street, 
near Petticoat Lane and open till November. It's an interesting example 
of a medium to long term, art activist project that attempts to create 
new forms of relationship and affinity, and sees itself as building 
radical movement and not simply representing them.

GG: Yeah, again the idea of the text was to build on the connections 
that are already there, which THBTP does too in a more informal, social 
way. And for sure, you shouldn't be seen at the June 30th strikes or UK 
Uncut's support actions without a flash new haircut. I should also get a 
plug in for Catalyst Radio - http://www.catalystradio.org/ a new 24/7 
DIY UK-wide activist radio station, which started up the other week and 
is still growing, and brings together a lot of radical radio projects 
from around the country.

MG: Do you share a mutual empathy and respect for other protesters 
elsewhere such as those in Spain and in Greece, and in the Middle East?

JJ: Of course. Although it feels like the camp protests are lacking a 
conflictual approach and without the mixture of conflict and creativity, 
protest can easily be ignored, which is a bit what has happened with all 
the European camps. Although sitting here in the British library its 
easy to be critical ! Whatever happens, those involved in the camps will 
have tasted politics, new friendships, alternative ways of organising 
etc... As for the middle east, its all still in flux, who knows what 
will happen and the role of artists and musicians has been pretty key in 
setting the powder kegg alight there..

GG: Yeah, though I think there's a tension between the symbolic 
solidarity of occupying city squares and the strategic differences 
between activist practices in different countries. I think solidarity 
between these struggles is massively important, though I'm personally 
not sure how it's best to manifest that here right now.

MG: In the User's guide, it mentions the workshops in art and activism 
at the Tate Modern, held by the Laboratory of Insurrectionary 
Imagination (Labofii), entitled it ‘Disobedience makes history’. And 
that Laboffii "was told, in an email, by the curators that no 
interventions could be made against the museum's sponsors (which happen 
to be British Petroleum) [..] decided to use the email as the material 
for the workshop. Projecting it onto the wall they asked the 
participants whether the workshop should obey or disobey the curator’s 
orders."

What I find interesting regarding this episode is not just that a big 
institution would take the risk in bringing in art and activist culture 
within their usually, protected environment whilst being sponsored by 
British Petroleum; But, what intrigues me is the different forms of 
controversies reaching the public from such situations. I am surprised 
that Laboffii would even consider doing such a project in the Tate 
Modern in the first place, but also pleased, because of the resulting 
dialogue that has come out of the clash of different political contexts. 
So, isn't it the case that we need these big institutions as platforms 
to explore issues of corporate corruption further, so that those who may 
not even consider such things are suddenly faced with considering them?

GG: I'm sure JJ has plenty to say about this. But more generally, it 
depends *how* they function as a platform. An art gallery or a 
university can be a great discursive space to explore issues, but the 
bounds of that debate are also strictly limited in lots of ways. This is 
a problem with the idea of a bourgeois public sphere. Most often, that 
boundary is that you can debate whatever you like but questioning the 
basic systemic assumptions on which such spaces rest isn't possible, at 
least not in a practical way. The lab's workshop at the Tate tried to 
question exactly that kind of assumption about what culture is for, and 
who it benefits. But for many activists from social movements, who have 
less faith in the public sphere and its institutions to resolve issues 
by discussion, that neutered debate is more of a problem than a 
benevolent gift to the public, and they have to take a different 
approach. Its not necessarily opposed to those institutions as a whole, 
but just asks them to make good on what they claim to be.

JJ: It's a long story, but the key is to be able to put one foot inside 
these institutions and to be not frightened to KICK. But not to KICK 
symbolically, to really kick, to really shake them up and to be able to 
let go of one's cultural capital. The Labofii will NEVER be re-invited 
to do anything at the TATE, bang goes all our chances of a retrospective 
in the fashionable art activism world !!! ;) But, what we gain is that 
we were free ! When the curators told us that we could not do anything, 
could not take action against BP and we refused to obey them, we were 
free, we could do what we wanted because they could not give us anything 
in return. The Zapatistas say, "we are already dead so we are free" - 
when power can give you nothing you want, you can do anything.. this is 
a very powerful moment. To see the faces of the curators, the head of 
public, the head of security etc during the meeting where they tried to 
censor the lab, was priceless - they had always had power over artists, 
because artists will normally do ANYTHING to get their work in the Tate, 
but we did not care, we cared about the politics, about the actions, 
about climate change and social injustice - we were more powerful than 
the institution in that moment because we were no longer dependent on 
them.. it was one of the most beautiful moments... and now the movement 
against oil sponsorship is spreading everywhere. The message is simple, 
give up your cultural capital throw away your dependence on these 
institutions and be free...

MG: I come from a background of hacking, social hacking and D.I.Y 
culture, and instead of going to University I chose to be self-educated, 
creating alternative groups for self discovery and art with dedication 
to social change. And even though, many are fighting the education cuts 
right now, what are your own ideas around self-education, do students 
really need to go to college now that there are so many different forms 
of information and ways in creating one's own place in the world 'with 
others'?

GG: A lot of experiments with autonomous self-education have sprung up 
recently which ask just this question, like the Really Free School 
(http://reallyfreeschool.org/), there are even some more institutional 
business-model experiments online with peer-to-peer education. But at 
the same time the catchment of both of these is relatively narrow at the 
moment, so I think there's still a place for these kind of education 
institutions, and there are interesting radical experiments going on all 
over, either by individuals or whole departments, although the cuts to 
institutional funding for education by the government changes the 
playing field again, so there's an opportunity for something like this 
to become less marginal, both inside and outside the university.

MG: JJ, In 2005 you wrote, Notes Whilst Walking on “How to Break the 
Heart of Empire”, in it you write "Radicals are often vulnerable souls. 
Most of us become politically active because we felt something 
profoundly such as injustice or ecological devastation. It is this 
emotion that triggers a change in our behaviour and gets us politicised. 
It is our ability to transform our feelings about the world into actions 
that propels us to radical struggle. But what seems to often happen, is 
that the more we learn about the issues that concern us, the more images 
of war we see, the more we experience climate chaos, poverty and the 
every day violence of capitalism, the more we seem to have to harden 
ourselves from feeling too much, because although feeling can lead to 
action we also know that feeling too much can lead to depression and 
paralysis..." How the hell do you remain positive when you know how much 
horrible and disgusting things are being done to decent folks and the 
planet all of the time?

Unfortunately there are no magic recipes that can protect us from such 
feelings, a lot depends on context on our particular situations etc. But 
here are a few tips that have helped me keep the despair of capitalism 
at bay:

1) Resist the spell of individualism that capitalism tries to weave 
around us, a spell that chains us to the fantasy of autonomy and keep us 
in a state of sadness and paralysis. Break this spell and its toxic 
chains by realising that you are part of a greater whole, that working 
with others gives us strength, that seven minutes making real 
friendships (face to face) is more political than seven days glued to a 
computer browsing social networks in a trance, that inevitably fails to 
shake the loneliness of modern life.

2) Build a gang, a group, a collective, a crew - remember the joy of 
plotting things together, the power and possibilities when work and 
imagination is shared. In fact, imagination finds it's insurrectionary 
potential when we share it, when it's freed from the privatised ego, 
escapes from shackles of copyright and the prison's of the art world.

3) Learn the skills to work together with others, consensus decision 
making, group facilitation, conflict resolution etc. We need to re learn 
collective working methods, capitalism has destroyed all our tools of 
conviviality and we need to reclaim them back, recreate new forms of 
being together.

4) Redefine Hope. Not as something that will come and save us, like a 
saviour, but as something that comes from not knowing what will happen 
next, something that takes place when we act in the immediate moment and 
don't know what will happen and trust that history is made from acts of 
disobedience that did not necessarily have any idea of what the next 
step was...

5) Remember that victory is not always what happens, but what did not 
happen. Social movements tend to forget this. Look at all the nuclear 
power stations that WERE not built, all the wars that did not happen, 
the laws that were never passed, the free trade agreements that were 
never agreed on, the repressions that the state could not get away with, 
the gmo's that were never planted. One of my favourite books, what I 
call prozac on paper, is Rebecca Solnit's HOPE IN THE DARK 
(http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28048.Hope_in_the_Dark) - it's a 
lovely little book which redefines hope in the most beautifully 
optimistic way, recommended reading when capitalism seems irresistible.

6) When everything appears useless, try to change your conception of 
time... think deep time, not shallow modern now time, but think about 
the generations that went before you and those that will come after you. 
Try to imagine what the generations of the future will think about your 
actions, imagine those from the past that fought for the emancipation of 
slaves and yet never saw the results of their actions, those who died 
for the eight hour day, for the right to build a union, the right to 
vote or publish an independent magazine. Spend time imagining how those 
alive in 50, 100 years will view your life and work...

MG: In the publication, you mention Marx and Debord. "We can all be 
engineers of the imagination"..."that our “general intellect”, all the 
collective knowledge and skills we use in making things, are taken away 
from us and embodied instead in the machines of our work. What would 
happen if we somehow re-engineered these machines if we did what Guy 
Debord argued and started, “producing ourselves... not the things that 
enslave us." Do you see the recent cuts across the board as an example 
of how the powers that be are actively dis-empowering the working classes?

GG: Definitely. The cuts aren't just about an experience of 'austerity,' 
however long term, but constitute a historical attack on poor and 
working people. They're an attempt to technically recompose the material 
of the institutions, structures, ideas and habits people live through, 
in order to limit their ability to resist and remake them for 
themselves. In factory production, that involved the local restructuring 
of machine-labour, but later at a wider level Keynesian economic 
restructuring. This neoliberal restructuring of education is an 
extension of capitalist discipline into a new area, an attack on a 
social space which has historically been a base for social change. The 
government has made this pretty clear by, for example, David Willet's 
dictate amidst these massive cuts, to the Arts and Humanities Research 
Council, that the Tory party's vacuous advertising slogan "the big 
society" become a core research area, replacing the less ideologically 
narrow area of 'communities and civic values;' and the Department for 
Business and Innovation's concomitant rewriting of the 1918 Haldane 
principle, that research directions are best decided by researchers 
through peer review.

The optimistic take on this is not that it's an inevitable recuperation 
of resistance, which was the position Debord tended towards in the end, 
but that capital is always on the back foot - that its own developments 
are driven by and a response to social movements. That it's an open 
dialectic (or if you prefer, not a dialectic at all). There's a kind of 
neurosis to it, although rather than excluding the other to maintain its 
ego, the state is including everything to stave off other possibilities 
- you can see this in the language. The whole discourse of 
'participation' and networks in business (and since the 1990s, also in 
art), is as Boltanski and Chiapello observed in their book the New 
Spirit of Capitalism, a recuperation of the language and terms of 1960s 
social movements - movements which first properly gave birth on a mass 
scale to the kinds of self-consciously autonomous and creative politics, 
or art-activism, which we talk about in the guide. Likewise, the big 
society is focused on mutuality, and there's a strange recuperation of 
libertarian and radical thought by the thinkers behind it like Phillip 
Blonde. In this case, you're left with a stunted vision of the anarchist 
idea of mutual aid, without any institutional aid, and structurally 
limited mutuality. But rather than simply critique this, I'm interested 
to look at how we might otherwise structurally and materially embody 
other kinds of social relation. Obviously this starts on a much smaller 
scale, and is often more directly materially embodied. University 
departments' attempts to support radical philosophy within existing 
institutions and setting up new autonomous radical art institutions are 
two possible, but not mutually exclusive, directions here. As, of 
course, at the most local, accessible level, are the art-activist 
practices and objects we discuss in the guide.

Our new book-film is out "Les Sentiers de L'utopie" Free online (in 
french) : http://www.editions-zones.fr
Our blog: http://lessentiersdelutopie.wordpress.com/
our twitter: @nowtopia

Some info for A Users Guide to (Demanding) the Impossible.

3 different links to download the publication:
http://www.minorcompositions.info/usersguide.html
http://artsagainstcuts.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/a-users-guide-to-demanding-the-impossible
http://www.brokencitylab.org/notes/required-reading-a-users-guide-to-demanding-the-impossible

The Font used was Calvert is by Margaret Calvert, designer of UK road 
signs.
Words: Gavin Grindon & John Jordan Design: FLF Illustration: Richard 
Houguez Original Cover: The Drawing Shed Produced by the Laboratory of 
Insurrectionary Imagination, London, December 2010. www.labofii.net 
Anti-copyright, share and disseminate freely.

More about Minor Compositions - a series of interventions & provocations 
drawing from autonomous politics, avant-garde aesthetics, and the 
revolutions of everyday life. http://www.minorcompositions.info/

Other Info:
Crude awakening: BP and the Tate. The Tate is under fire for taking BP 
sponsorship money. Does corporate cash damage the arts — or is it a 
necessary compromise? We asked leading cultural figures their view. 
Interviews by Emine Saner and Homa Khaleeli. guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 
30 June 2010. 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jun/30/bp-tate-protests

--
Stevphen Shukaitis
Autonomedia Editorial Collective
http://www.autonomedia.org
http://www.minorcompositions.info

"Autonomy is not a fixed, essential state. Like gender, autonomy is created through its performance, by doing/becoming; it is a political practice. To become autonomous is to refuse authoritarian and compulsory cultures of separation and hierarchy through embodied practices of welcoming difference... Becoming autonomous is a political position for it thwarts the exclusions of proprietary knowledge and jealous hoarding of resources, and replaces the social and economic hierarchies on which these depend with a politics of skill exchange, welcome, and collaboration. Freely sharing these with others creates a common wealth of knowledge and power that subverts the domination and hegemony of the master’s rule." - subRosa Collective


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