Politics – Page 22 – Hannah Nicklin

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Hannah Nicklin — 6 Comments

#SOTAflash Needs You!

Hurrah! I can finally reveal one of the exciting things I’ve been frustratingly opaque about on Twitter for the past week or so. This Thursday alongside Andy Field and Laura McDermott I shall be convening a Flash Conference as part of the ACE/RSA State of the Arts conference. Here’s a taste of what that means:

The Flash Conference is an imaginative new project designed to create brief but electrifying bursts of thinking and conversation amidst the main State of the Arts programme. Harnessing the spontaneity and collective energy of a flash mob, we hope to bring people together to create a flood of brief but provocative responses to the following questions.

How can art of all kinds play a more meaningful role in mass protest and popular resistance?

What makes a good home for art (and for artists), and how can we ensure there are more of them?

In an environment in which success is too often only measured by perpetual growth, how do we ensure that small remains beautiful?

(How) Can art make more people’s lives better?

Whilst recognising the absolute importance of large scale events like State of the Arts, we also wanted to acknowledge the complex ecology of our sector, an in a space that much more resembles the way we communicate and collaborate in the contemporary world. Hence our conception of the Flash Conference, and, much credit to ACE and the RSA, their inclusion of it in the main conference programme. The Flash Conference (from flashmob) will centre around the above four question, we aim to create a buzz of provocation and debate in the body of the conference, and online, to in fact create a space for dialogue between the two for all those voices who might not have access to the opportunity to speak at, or even attend State of the Arts.

And because of this, we need you. If you have something to say in response to the above statements, now is the time to say it. If you’re on Twitter, you can use and follow the #SOTAflash hashtag, and anybody with an internet connection can access http://flashconference.co.uk where you can simply go to ‘submit’ and post any text, image, audio, or video (audio and video will have to be hosted elsewhere – i.e. Youtube or Audioboo) of anything you have to say. There’s also lots more information about our plans, and 3-4 potential people per question that we’re inviting to offer a one-minute response to get people’s ideas flowing.

We’re going to endeavour to post these provocations, if not live-streamed, minutes after they’re given, and we also intend to continually feed back online content into the room, and vice versa. And there’s absolutely no time limit on submissions, if you have something to say, a statement of intent, your own one minute manifesto in relation to one of the above questions, an image, a video, please do post it. Simply head over to flashconference.co.uk/submit and follow the instructions. Or if you’re coming to the conference, head up to the Thames Room where you’ll find a bank of laptops for you to post your on-the-day reactions, and three large screens following the #SOTAflash hashtag, and displaying content submitted by others.

Laura, Andy and I are really excited about the potential of this in opening up a trad conference format, so please, if you do have something to say about the state of the arts, follow the hashtag and the site, and do contribute.

(The Flash Conference was conceived by Andy Field, Hannah Nicklin and Laura McDermott in association with Arts Council England and the RSA.)

Posted on January 12, 2011January 12, 2011 by Hannah Nicklin — 4 Comments

Mashup

Image from the artsagainstcuts blog

“We live within networks of messages, signs, information, and knowledge which produce our experience of ourselves, society, and all that we consider real. And, as power produces its subjects, so it gives birth to antagonists and the forms of resistance with which it is irreducibly implicated.” p.119 Sadie Plant The Most Radical Gesture

I haven’t spoken much about the protests against the cuts on here, I have been at a few, which you will have seen if you follow me on Twitter or Audioboo. But I haven’t felt like I’ve quite been able to marshall my thoughts to communicate them to you. But I have been there; I have seen people beaten to the ground, I have see the police charge on me, I have thankfully thus far avoided being kettled due to a combination of being dressed smart, luck, and sense of when people are suddenly pelting in the opposite direction. I have walked dazed bleeding people to taxis with directions and a tenner to the nearest hospital because (apparently) Police medics are only technically there to look after police. I have seen cold, frightened young people, stand together with parents, with older people, with disabled people, and be driven back like animals, penned, and deprived of food, toilets, water, liberty. And I have seen those people burn things to keep warm, seen hands raised and voices cry ‘don’t push us back, we’ve nowhere else to go’. I have seen angry angry people, some of whom aren’t even old enough to vote, raise the only voice they know will be heard; in violent action. And then I see what the media sees, because kettling is such a brilliant way to make sure all the photographers and the protesters are in the same place. So they smash a window, poke a princess. Violence is decried, the protesters dismissed. Despite the fact that that violence was not against humans, but symbols of the blind privilege of the ruling elite.

And I believe in parliament, I do believe that the majority of people there are there because they want to fight for the world which they think is best, and that the best way they can do so in small, measured wades through sticky, muggy, heavy beaurocracy. But I also believe that the mainstream media has hamstrung our politicians and society to the point that only the thickest skins make it. And thick skins get used to not hearing things in order to exist. So they don’t hear the cries of the people trapped just metres from their workplace.

“[the kettle] is also a media strategy which seeks to concentrate the spectacle of violent protest into a defined space precisely for the media. Thus the physical terrain of the kettled site is marshalled to produce violent spectacle for media consumption. It is a type of siege that lets the police appear under attack. The kettle thus needs to be understood as a form of media strategy deployed by the police to delegitimize protests and re-symbolize legitimate protest as unlawful ‘riot’. The kettle attempts to cast opposition protests as such as radical, violent and in need of police repression, whose brutality is legitimated by this same spectacle of student violence that the kettle aims to facilitate.” Rory Rowan on the brilliant Critical Legal Thinking

And I also believe that the mainstream media has made us believe that politicians are not people, and politics is complicated; and made politicians believe that people don’t understand politics, and just aren’t interested.

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