This proposal is still unfinished! Feel free to add to it. This should be finalised at the IMC Oceania meet in Melbourne.
creative resistance to the global hegemony
"The empire is global. There is nowhere to go to escape its corrosive barrenness. Frederic Jameson reminded us that we live in the most standardized society that has ever existed. In Global Soul, the peripatetic Pico Iyer ups the ante, meditating on how the whole world now tends towards a universal sameness. A global unity of alienness, of disorientation and disconnection, destined to resemble a mall or an airport. People now dress alike in every major city in the world. They drink Coca-Cola, and watch many of the same TV shows." John Zerzan,
The imperialism of everyday life
Proposal:
To create a collaborative documentary about creative and radical interventions upon urban space around Oceania. This includes activities from performance and public art to graffiti and billboard redecoration; activities which blur and cross boundaries between artistic and political action.
There are two basic premises behind this documentary; one is that is that urban spaces are not neutral containers or voids within which social interactions take place, but are instead ideological products and instruments in themselves.
Urban spaces continue to be homogenised, gentrified and commodified in order to better accommodate and expand to forces of capitalism. Our streets are filled with corporate advertising and surveillance; giant billboards and cameras (both private and state) watch down on our movements. These so-called public spaces are not only spaces for surveillance but very limited as to what you can actually do there; shop, drive your car around. They are spaces of and for consumption. Many cities now have by-laws against 'vagrants' and require people for get permission before they can hold protests, give out leaflets etc.
Community areas and creative spaces are increasingly being privatised or converted into multinational chain stores and expensive inner city apartments where only the rich can afford to live. These processes exacerbate conditions of alienation and placelessness.
The second premis is that it is predominantly voices of big business, the rich and governments that are represented in the mass media. This leaves the streets as an important medium for resistance and communication for the rest of us.
The documentary will focus on art/interventions which takes back the public spaces that belong to us - the people. The world, the streets and the walls are ours . We are the public and this is our space. We have all the rights in the world to make whatever we want of it.
Ideas for footage:
Theory/info:
What's happening to public spaces around Oceania, and what people are doing about it. No need to get academic, but there should be some good background info that ties the documentary together.
Art:
Footage of radical artistic interventions on the urban landscape that:
- reclaim space [from the corporate elites and upper class]
- use public spaces as mediums for creative resistance
- erodes boundaries between artist and audience, art and activism
This could include footage of Reclaim The Streets actions, the creation of Empty Shows, billboard redecoration, the Surveillance Camera Players, performances, graffiti and generally situationist actions. Ideally a lot of footage would be of the artwork as it is being created, not just the end products. (That is the great thing about urban art – there often isn't really any final product, it is continually being added to and modified by other people).
Interviews:
Gentrification; urban spaces; why the street is important space for art; why they choose the street/urban spaces as opposed to traditional art spaces. The interviews will hopefully slip in between the artistic and the political.
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FinN - 12 Apr 2004
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