e Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at HomeT e (ir)resistible rise of T

I f rst met all f ve founders of T e Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home at the annual Performance Studies international conference in June 2006, organized that year by Queen Mary, University of London. PSi12: Performing Rights was themed around the complex relationships between performance and human rights, and LADA had curated, with Lois Weaver, a programme of performances, debates, f lms, and installations by UK and international artists, including many of the new breed of artist-activists. I’d known Lena Simic and her politically engaged solo performance work for a few years, but I didn’t meet the whole family until our paths crossed outside the Gallery of Utopias in Mile End Park, the venue for various Performing Rights installations, where the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination were ‘redistributing’ their £500 artists’ fee to the public as a mountain of pennies.

Although they were already making mischief as the collective twoaddthree in 2006, it wasn’t until the foundation of T e Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home in 2007 that Lena, Gary and the boys really made their mark as one of the most original, inventive, playful and instrumental artist led operations in the UK.

T e Lab of ii’s simple but audacious critique of f nancial transparency at PSi12 helped set the tone for the ways a new generation of artists were responding to the growing debates about the relationships between art and commerce, culture and ethics, and was a kind of gesture of def ance that the Institute have taken to whole new levels over the last f ve years with their groundbreaking economic models and collaborative approaches.

LADA and the Institute’s paths have crossed many times since that gorgeous summer’s day in 2006 and we have had the pleasure of collaborating with the gang on countless LADA projects. T ey have led inspirational programmes for DIY, our annual scheme for unusual professional development projects conceived and run by artists for artists, with First Retreat then Advance!! in 2008 and ‘T e Committee’ of the Free University of Liverpool in 2010. In 2008 they were invited experts for Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge No 11: On Waste, our collaboration with the Bluecoat for the Liverpool Biennial 2008 (where, much to the joy of Blackmarket curator Hannah Hurtzig, they broke the strict Blackmarket rules of one to one expert-audience engagement by leaping onto their table to proclaim a manifesto of non cooperation with Liverpool Capital Of Culture 2008 to the whole room). T ey wrote the essay Look Out! Here Comes Uselessness: T e Institute On 22

Financial Transparency for a chapter on Economies of Live Art in Live Art UK’s In Time, A Collection of Live Art Case Studies, 2010 (including a Review of the Institute’s Income and Expenditure Statement for the Year Ending 31st December 2008). T ey were guest artists for the vacuum cleaner’s residency for our Louder T an Bombs season on art, action and activism with Stanley Picker Gallery in 2010. T ere are publications by them on the actual shelves of our Study Room and virtual shelves of our online shop. T eir presence is everywhere in LADA’s work, and that in itself is testament to the breadth and depth of their impact in research, action and art.

Artist led initiatives are the lifeblood of Live Art. Working beyond the restrictions of the museum, the gallery or the theatre they are not dependent on the permissions of others and do what they want, how they want, when they want, and where they want. Driven by passion, generosity and energy, and responsible only to themselves, their collaborators and their constituents, they are the spaces where dif erent kinds of questions about the role of art and artists are asked, and where new ways of working are tried and tested. T ey are critical and essential catalysts for action and for change, and the Institute has, since 2007, been one of the most critical and essential we have.