Small guide for a creative resistance
Isa Frémeaux and Jay Jordan founded The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii), a collective bringing together artists and activists to devise new forms of creative resistance. Labofii has launched a regatta of rebel rafts to block a coal-fired power plant, transformed hundreds of bicycles into disobedient machines and refused to be censored by the Tate Modern.
In this lecture (in French) given during the Urban Academy "Imaginaries of Ecology" (2019), Isa and Jay share about twenty principles and tactics that serve as a guide for their artivist practice. From body disobedience to prefigurative politics, from direct action to invisible theater, from hypercentralized territories to the "Zones à Défendre", it's an abundant sharing of experimentation and situated experience. It's also a broader account of artivist research that, over the years and in different territorial contexts, has attempted to operate outside the extractivist logics forging our "capitalocene" era. Quite inspiring for anyone wishing to put their own strategies and imaginative forces at the service of the struggle for life...
Isa Frémeaux (she) was Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College-University of London (UK) for 10 years before leaving the institution to breathe in the winds of freedom and collective action. She now lends her skills to various collectives, associations and institutions as a trainer and consultant. She is co-author with Jay of the book- film Les sentiers de l'utopie (La Découverte, 2008) and We are nature "Defending" Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones (Pluto, 2021).
Described as an "Domestic Extremist" by the police and a "magician of rebellion" by the press, part-time author, witch, sex worker and full time trouble maker, Jay Jordan (they/them) is a lover of edges, especially between art and activism. They have worked in a variety of contexts, from museums to squatted social centres, from international theatre festivals to climate action camps. They co-founded Reclaim the Streets and The Clown Army, and co-edited We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism (Verso, 2003) and worked as cameraman with Naomi Klein on The Take (2004).
To dig deeper:
And in the Cifasotheque:
- "Cultures of rebellion: Notes against extractivist art and for the art of life", Jay Jordan & Isabelle Fremeaux dans Taking action with the Living, Klaxon n°13, 2020.
- " Try to Imagine (Letter to a corps)", Jay Jordan in Political City, Klaxon n°2, 2014.