Permanent Ignition (Turin, Stuttgart and Erfurt, 2001-2007), a set of speculative, discursive counter-monuments seeking to explore connections between the commemoration of specific historical instances of dissent, the current political situation and the conditions that make possible creative acts of ethico-aesthetic dissention. The historical moments referenced were local and specific to the sites in which the different installments of the projects were situated and included the occupation of the FIAT factory in Turin in 1969, the 1977 burial of the bodies of Jan-Carl Raspe, Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader in Stuttgart, and the 1991 passing of the Stasi Records Act and the subsequent making public of the records the Stasi had kept on dissentious citizens of the former GDR. While engaging with these particular historical moments, and involving collaborations with people involved in different capacities, the counter-monuments functioned as wider frameworks for a series of multifaceted, interwoven conversations, interviews, symposia and discussions around the notion of commemoration as a cultural, social and political act in relation to the historical events referenced and the construction, in light of these histories and their legacies, of contemporary spaces and practices of dissent.

Counter/Cartographies (on-line and various physical places, 2003-2007), a nomadic, physical, platform for symposia and conversations on the link between artistic practice and social and political activism, primarily taking three interrelated forms: a.) collective peregrinations (by foot), a kind of peripatetic, site-specific approach where improvised walks to and between specific sites significant to the local terrains in which the project was realized were used as the basis for semi-spontaneous dialogues connecting the local terrain traversed with specific, overarching themes related to the relation between artistic practice, ethico-aesthetics and activism; b.) a physical and on-line cartography, archive and resource consistent of lists of and links to participating artists, artist collectives and activist groups and their respective networks, and recordings, photographs, text, notes, sketches and maps gathered as the peripatetic, nomadic project progressed; and, c.) a structure or laboratory of sorts for the collaborative production of documentary presentations, part-fictions, myths, “travelling literatures”, manifestos and other forms of documentation in different media and intermedial assemblages making use of the archives generated at exhibitions, in publications, and during presentations, performances and other instantiations of the project.

C.CRED / Collective CREative Dissent

alt.SPACE (London and various places, 2005-2008), an alternative “free university” focusing on artistic research, the relation between artistic practice, critical theory and ethico-aesthetic and political engagement and activism. As part of the project, regular events were organized in temporarily occupied public spaces, squats and sometimes “regular” domestic spaces, and hosted by venues such as galleries, museums and other art venues, colleges and universities, pubs, bars and clubs. These events, often several each week, foregrounded self-organization, experimental, non-hierarchical pedagogies, conviviality, transversal collaboration and the construction of a sense of collective learning / learning through collectivity. They included: a.) seminars, symposia, reading groups and lecture series (including web-based ones connecting groups and collectives internationally); b.) performances, screenings, and presentations of artistic projects; c.) regular study retreats; d.) experimental reading and writing workshops; and e.) an annual artist research festival.

(1999-2008)

a UK-based but very nomadic artist collective exploring an expanded understanding of aesthetics, discursive art, critical dialogue, self-organized and collaborative learning and reading, purposeless writing and various forms of interventions and activism.