research and exhibition at MIT 2011
December 9th, 2011

disobedience – an ongoing video archive

Disobedience Archive brings together a series of practices and forms of individual self-representation just as they are finding the key to their strength in an alliance of art and activism: a transformation in the languages that society produces as a political subject and as a media object. What matters in Disobedience is not so much an ‘alliance’ between activist demands and artistic practices in order to achieve common goals: it is more that of a common space or a common base that is emerging. This space is not clearly defined, thus making it impossible to draw a precise line between forces and signs, between language and labor, between intellectual production and political action. It functions through a display of the archive format, in which all the materials on show share the same level of equivalence – without hierarchies and without exhibiting any preordained set of institutional rules. It is up to the public to choose and to organize their vision of the available material: turning the archive into a toolkit ready for use.

 

The Disobedience Archive has been organized and exhibited in many different venues across the World since 2005. In the installation at the Lobby of the Media Lab Complex at MIT the Disobedience expands to include cases of political and artistic action that have manifested in the geographic and historical terrain of Boston. In addition to this, new student works that critically interrogate concepts of Disobedience are exhibited in conversation with the pre-existing body of works that comprise the archive.

 

Here, the archive itself takes the form of a garden “corridor” arranged on an axis that disrupts the traditional logic of the existing space and makes an allusion to the spatial and urban politics, from community gardens to self-reliant tent cities, that have characterized many instances of activism in the Boston area.

 

Material provided to the archive by:

16beaver group, Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA), Gianfranco Baruchello, Bernardette Corporation, Black Audio Film Collective, Copenhagen Free University, Critical Art Ensemble, Dodo Brothers (Andrea Ruggeri and Giancarlo Vitali Ambrogio), Etcètera, Marcelo Exposito, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC), Alberto Grifi, Ashley Hunt, Kanal B, Margit Czencki/Park Fiction, Radio Alice, Oliver Ressler with Zanny Begg, Joanne Richardson, Eyal Sivan, Hito Steyerl, The Department of Space and Land Reclamation (with StreetRec., The Institute for Applied Autonomy, Las Agencias and AffectTech/BikeWriters), Mariette Schiltz and Bert Theis, Ultra Red, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, James Wentzy, Dmitry Vilensky and

Chto delat / What is to be done?

 

Additional contributions and material from:

Hans Guggenheim, Mel King, Richard Leacock, Sylvère Lotringer, MIT Museum, Juliet Stone, Paul Summit, Urbano platform, ACT UP and Food not Bombs amongst others.
The Disobedience Archive research and exhibition project is produced in collaboration with the students from the ACT courses Art, Architecture and Urbanism in Dialogue (TA: Sung Woo Jang) and Introduction to Networked Cultures and Participatory Media (TA: Slobodon Radoman):

Alex Auriema, Sofia Berinstein, Giacomo Bruno Castagnola Chaparro, Sumona Chakravarty, Joan Chen, Caleb Benjamin Harper, Ali Khalid Qureshi, Summer Stephanie Sutton, Hailong Wu
As well as with the assistance of Sarah Witt, Emily Katrencik, Cris and technical support of Martin Seymour, Chris Clepper, David Constanza, Craig Boney.
Curated by: Marco Scotini together with Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas

Assistant curator: Andris Brinkmanis

Display System by US: Urbonas Studio in dialogue with Julian Bonder

Exhibition team: Anna Caterina Bleuler, Sung Woo Jang, Anastasia Yakovleva, Catherine McMahon, Slobodon Radoman

 

This exhibition would not have been possible without the help of many dedicated individuals and with the generous support from:

The Office of the Dean at MIT SA+P

Council for the Arts at MIT

MIT’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology

NABA Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milano

Deborah Douglas and the MIT Museum

 

Special thanks to: Julian Bonder, Mel King, Juliet K Stone, Paul Summit

Glorianna Davenport, Hans Guggenheim, Farming Turtles, Vladas Lasas and UPS Lietuva

 

Funded by a Director’s Grant from the Council for the Arts at MIT.

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