Recruitment Tour 2005
CIRCA, as part of the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, will be visiting 9 different cities in England and Scotland from May through to June 05, for the G8 Summit.
What will it be like?
“The more imagination is liberated and shared, the more useful the medium.” — Hakim Bey
People have been seen praying to products in the shopping mall, prostrating themselves to perfume counters and genuflecting in front of godly brands in the great cathedrals of consumption…
Evening falls, a tiny caravan pulls up in the town centre and explodes, out tumble members of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army who begin a ridiculous recruitment show ending with the kidnapping of a preachers from the Church of The Immaculate Consumption… Cushions and rugs are thrown to the waiting crowd, who settle down to watch … the rebel clown show is followed by lecture (involving egg boxes and strawberries) on the history of civil disobedience, film’s about culture jamming are screened, tales are told about the joys of resistance, whilst a deliciously strange feast is prepared and served in preparation for dancing …
… The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination Tour has come to town
In the lead up to the anticapitalist protests against the G8 summit, to be held in Scotland in July, The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, a combination of live art and cultural resistance training camp, is touring the UK. Combining street interventions, a nomadic information centre and two day intensive Rebel Clown trainings the lab brings artists and activists together to apply creativity to radical social and ecological change.
Watch a taster promo video of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army:
The lab will create a kind of “tool box” of cultural resistance, which will include:
- Interventionist street actions/performances exploring issues of consumerism and militarism in local public spaces. This will include works from the Church of Immaculate Consumption - an ironic extension of the logic of shopping as a religious act and new pieces such as The Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army’s “Ridiculous Recruitment Show” and “Operation T.A.K.E” a toy amnesty project involving the transformation and infiltration of children’s war toys into systems of consumption.
- An event/happening involving food, performance, readings, film, music and participatory actions, centred around the theme of cultural resistance, taking place around a mobile caravan encampment. This will be created and performed by the core members of the Lab, as well as visiting artists in each location. Performances will include “Power: an introductory lecture on the history & practice of civil disobedience as taught by Dr. Skip Justice Tallahassee” and films of the vacuum cleaners interventions. The evening will climax with a giant feast cooked and served by the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army.
- Trickster Training: A two day intensive training/workshop in interventionist performance, buffoonery, guerrilla gardening and culture jamming. Unfortunately places for this will be limited.
- A Lab of ii DVD for further dissemination of our practices.
Do you have something that you think would fit in with what we are planning? We'd love to here from you.
e-mail john@labofii.net or james@labofii.net