Perhaps the best measure of the significance of Democracy Village as a tent city is to contrast it with what followed in the space of an year. The Arab Spring and the huge encampment at Midan Tahrir Cairo in February 2011 and in the coming spring the Occupy tent cities ..
In the so-called “peaceful revolution” of the German unification or die Wende, the transfer from system to system, whether of People’s Palaces or vast housing complexes or even political parties, has selective processes of de- and re-memorialisation.
the unrequited quest for a transparency of power also leads perversely to the One, a spectacular enactment of the Leader. As the inevitabilities of liberal democracy and viral technology produce more Trumps, the louder the carnival laughter must become
In the unfolding drama of work in the digital age, new circumstance demands new language. Gig economy, on-demand work, sharing economy, precarious work, automation, zero-hour contracts, outsourcing, workfare. Whilst the entire stage set changes…
Anti-psychiatry drove at the foundations of both institutions – the family and the asylum. But in the process the asylum in its idea form, providing caring sanctuary from violence, inner and outer, has waned dangerously in the collective imagination.
Here labour (of the artist) exists in the knowledge that it is transient, it serves the purpose of the time. A wageless labour that may be redeemed as labour if frozen by Capital as Art. Then it can stay – for as long as it wants.
