Launch of the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination

RampART, European Social Forum, London

2004

The Lab’s first experiment took place during the European Social Forum (ESF), held in London in October 2004. We chose to work as one of the many autonomous spaces, distancing ourselves from the main event feeling that its hierarchical, party-base and corporate nature was no longer in keeping with the spirit of the alter-globalisation movements. We based ourselves in the squatted Creative Social Centre rampART and invited art activists from across Europe to attend. For four days and nights several hundred people participated in radical forms of cultural resistance across London, disrupting and disobeying the everyday rules and behaviours of a city that thrives on the humdrum of money and consumption. Actions ranged from a baffling games of Bingo in MacDonald’s to urban climbing in the financial district, mass prayers to shopping in Selfridge’s, to Hexing (pagan curse) the headquarters of multinationals, games of street tag via department store makeup counters and an unexpected battle between the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army and the CRAP (Capitalism Represents Acceptable Policy)  which accidentally interrupted the premiere of a Johnny Depp film.

The Lab’s first experiment took place during the European Social Forum (ESF), held in London in October 2004. We chose to work as one of the many autonomous spaces, distancing ourselves from the main event feeling that its hierarchical, party-base and corporate nature was no longer in keeping with the spirit of the alter-globalisation movements. We based ourselves in the squatted Creative Social Centre rampART and invited art activists from across Europe to attend. For four days and nights several hundred people participated in radical forms of cultural resistance across London, disrupting and disobeying the everyday rules and behaviours of a city that thrives on the humdrum of money and consumption. Actions ranged from a baffling games of Bingo in MacDonald’s to urban climbing in the financial district, mass prayers to shopping in Selfridge’s, to Hexing (pagan curse) the headquarters of multinationals, games of street tag via department store makeup counters and an unexpected battle between the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army and the CRAP (Capitalism Represents Acceptable Policy)  which accidentally interrupted the premiere of a Johnny Depp film.