Artistic Utopias of Revolt

Claremont Road, Reclaim the Streets, and the City of Sol

Julia Ramírez Blanco

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319714226
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This book analyses the aesthetic and utopian dimensions of various activist social movements in Western Europe since 1989. Through a series of case studies, it demonstrates how dreams of a better society have manifested themselves in contexts of political confrontation, and how artistic forms have provided a language to express the collective desire for social change.
The study begins with the 1993 occupation of Claremont Road in east London, an attempt to prevent the demolition of homes to make room for a new motorway. In a squatted row of houses, all available space was transformed and filled with elements that were both aesthetic and defensive – so when the authorities arrived to evict the protestors, sculptures were turned into barricades. At the end of the decade, this kind of performative celebration merged with the practices of the antiglobalisation movement, where activists staged spectacular parallel events alongside the global elite's international meetings. As this book shows, social movements try to erase the distance that separates reality and political desire, turning ordinary people into creators of utopias. Squatted houses, carnivalesque street parties, counter-summits, and camps in central squares, all create a physical place of these utopian visions

© The Author(s) 2018

Julia Ramírez BlancoArtistic Utopias of RevoltPalgrave Studies in Utopianismhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71422-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Art as Language, Utopia as Discourse

Julia Ramírez Blanco¹

(1)

University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Keywords

UtopianismSocial movementsAesthetics

End Abstract

Organize your enthusiasm.

History is made of flesh and bone. For me, the spring of 2011 marked the beginning of a period of commitment which transformed my way of reading historical narratives. I know now that at times of social change, the squares of towns and cities take on the colours of skin. And that political struggles, great ideals, and fiery speeches are made out of human passions. Hiding behind the events is the agitation of people who get excited, who compete and collaborate, who suffer, fear, and who make plans. Across their very bodies , the macro-economy evolves and power flexes its muscles.

With this book I try to tell history as a story.¹ In spite of the fact that events have many causes, writing tends to require the choice of a few threads within the whole weave: in these pages, through the narration of certain events, I investigate the artistic dimensions and the utopian meanings of certain social movements² of the extra-parliamentary left, mainly European,³ since the 1990s (Fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1

Artistic utopias of revolt are located between communitarian practice, artistic creativity, and activism itself

One of the issues I deal with is that which we could call ‘activist creativity’. Close to the ‘category’ of outsider art,⁴ which encompasses ‘art’⁵ produced by people who are not ‘artists’, the specific context here would be that of political struggle and social experimentation. Although activist creativity does not often try to be ‘art’, it nonetheless uses some of the tools that have traditionally belonged to the artistic domain. Over the years, people have used an artistic and performative language to affirm their desire for change. The matter goes beyond the mere deployment of a visual vocabulary. In the words of writer Rebecca Solnit , in activism, ‘the terrain of […] action is usually immaterial, the realm of the symbolic, political discourse, collective imagination’.⁶ If the meaning of many actions is symbolic, an aesthetic analysis could prove useful.

Artistic Utopias of Revolt is a first attempt to apply my disciplinary training as an art historian:⁷ an initial hypothesis is methodological, and concerns a form of iconographical reading of history linked to what has been called political iconography . The question of tools is once again relevant: while this book deals with people who use ‘artistic’ means to conduct politics, I, for my part, adopt the methods of art history to approach the ‘artistic’ forms of social movements. Thus, the abundance of illustrations complements the words, tracing a kind of parallel path that enables a visual reading.⁸

Throughout these pages, the aesthetic analysis enables us to enter into the dimensions of social thought, the utopian subtext of activism. If social movements are motivated by the search for collective change, their ‘artistic’ expressions can often be related to the fantasy of a better world.

This book is not intended to be a compilation of the complex theories that, over the centuries, have sought the formula for a happy society. Rather, it seeks to narrate certain specific activist moments, where the concept of utopia is employed in a double sense: on the one hand, as a reference within political action, which is translated into forms of organizing and acting; on the other hand, as a physical place which acts as a catalyst for the forces of confrontation and collective hope.

In this book, I study various cases that belong to what some theoreticians have called ‘utopian practice’,⁹ with examples where participants try to implement, in a real way, their ideals about how to live together communally. In the activities that I describe here, protests are not necessarily linked to the demands of labour or of class, and political struggle is intrinsically tied to certain forms of alternative lifestyle ,¹⁰ which in themselves entail an ideological discourse. Unveiling the social thinking implicit in these activities could be particularly useful when it concerns movements that rarely have a programme or a list of proposals. In that respect, utopia plays the role of political discourse.

One of the things which interests me in analysing activist creativity is to see how it contributes to the creation of a dissident spatiality. From the field of utopian studies, the book sketches a possible genealogy and definition of those sites of communitarian protest that I call ‘utopias of revolt’. In the face of the agitation and risks of political struggle, utopia often implies a kind of rest, inventing a society where confrontation is not necessary. But here the dreamed-of world is inserted into the struggle itself and becomes a weapon in the conflict. Proposal and protest are inseparable, and together shape the same settlements.

These paradoxical places can provide activist creativity a home in which it can develop. The profuse symbolism that is produced in the environments covered by this text invites consideration of their aesthetic possibilities. Thus, I pose the following questions: Might one speak of an art of the liberated space ?¹¹ In what way would it function politically? In terms of the places themselves, it is also worth asking: What are the characteristics of these ‘utopias of revolt’ and how could we consider their political ‘effectiveness’?

This book traverses various places and communitarian practices in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall , between 1992 and 2011. Although the new global capitalism had been shaping itself since much earlier, the fall of the Berlin Wall represents a symbolic moment. With the disintegration of what had been known as the Second World, capitalism underwent a radicalization process and its expansion accelerated. Meanwhile, dissident movements developed simultaneously with the self-reorganization and consolidation of economic power.

The text begins with a kind of ‘British school of protest’. This opening relates to the fact that, in the early 1990s, forms of taking over the street started to develop in the United Kingdom, which would later be echoed loudly in some very different places. In the area of economic politics, the United Kingdom was the first European country to introduce a system where privatizations and incentives to big companies were accompanied by cuts in social spending and increased powers for the police to control dissent.¹²

The first chapter is dedicated the British anti-roads movement, focusing on the production of spatiality in the occupied street of Claremont Road, where activists tried to obstruct the demolition of buildings by the Department of Transport which wanted to build a motorway in the area. It concerns a campaign which was developed in various neighbouring districts and where activities were connected with other initiatives of an equally local character.

The second and third chapters analyse what could be called the ‘aesthetics of protest’ or the forms taken by political protest in the street. The specific examples allow a reflection on how such aesthetics serve to configure spaces of utopian practice. This is the case of the British collective Reclaim the Streets which, during the second half of the 1990s, organized illegal anti-capitalist raves in the street, holding up traffic and commercial activity and thereby creating ephemeral worlds. Its activity sought to turn the protest event into a festival, where countercultural entertainment and political action are brought together. The fourth chapter deals with social movements which, at the end of the decade, adopted an international coordination that had not been seen before outside of bloc politics: this concerns what many have called the ‘alter-globalization movement’, the ‘anti-globalization movement’, or the ‘movement of movements’. Focusing briefly on a few events, the chapter analyses the codification and dissemination of the repertoire of a new vocabulary of protest that was subsequently applied in very different contexts. The account then moves into a kind of ‘fade to black’, given the impossibility of covering everything.

There is an implicit line of continuity between the form of resistance in the United Kingdom of the Thatcher and post-Thatcher years and the recent opposition across Europe to ‘austerity politics’ that were introduced following the financial crisis of 2008. Although the supposed causes are different, the same politics, which minimizes the role of the providing State while in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Art as Language, Utopia as Discourse
• 2. Activism as a Place: The British Anti-Roads Movement and the Squatted Street of Claremont Road
• 3. The Reclaim the Streets Protest Parties in London
• 4. Interlude: The Globalization of the Aesthetics of Protest
• 5. Disobedience as an Urban Form: The Acampadasol in Madrid
• 6. Notes Towards a Conclusion
• Back Matter