This is my full paper given as a lecture at Northumbria University in Newcastle on Wednesday 27th April 2016. It is the beginnings of an attempt to free radical social practice and activist art interventions from the ragwort-like sprouting of institutionalised and depoliciticised “socially engaged art”. My research considers radical social practice: as praxis as theory and practice. … READ MORE
A repetitive, cyclical dance around a plant upon which mulberries don’t really grow whilst mimicking of everyday actions and chanting ‘This is the way…’ and a response to a blog post on the #culturalvalue initiative website by Daniel Allington entitled Intrinsically cultural value: a sociological perspective.
Walter Crane, Here we go round the mulberry bush, colour printed wood engraving, 1878
The art business, a trade in things that have no price, belongs to the class of practices in which the logic of the pre-capitalist economy lives on… These practices, functioning as practical negations, can only work by pretending not to be doing what they are doing.… READ MORE