IAPDH

Malcolm Miles1

Conventionally, dissent has two forms: it is identif ed with public expressions of refusal in public statements or demonstrations (in most cases, refusal of a regime or an institution such as a church, a professional association or an academy); and it can be aligned with more covert expressions of refusal under a regime which permits no open disagreement, through written and other material passed between those who know and trust each other (although this kind of dissent might more often be called dissidence, as in the East Bloc before 1989). T e site of the f rst kind of dissent tends to be public space, such as when a monument is defaced, or the equally public but immaterial spaces of autonomous media. T e site of the second kind tends to be in transitional spaces (such as the café or the bar) or, at times, in domestic spaces (because they are less likely to be under surveillance than public spaces, although not always). Taking these two kinds of dissent together suggests, nonetheless, that power is questioned in a public realm – whether claiming visibility or evading it. T e idea of dissent at home challenges this. T ere are, of course, histories of identity struggles – notably for women and servants – in domestic settings; but these address specif c inequalities (such as those of gender within domestic life). As I read it, T e Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home addresses wider social, economic, political and cultural questions. But it does this within the family - in the family house – in ways which cross over into the most public domains. T e implication is at least a redef nition, and probably a dismantling, of the conventional boundary between public and private realms. T is follows the dismantling of boundaries between art forms since the 1960s (especially in conceptualism) and the extension of academic f elds into more politicised areas (such as cultural and human geographies in Britain after their readings of Henri Lefebvre’s work in English in the early 1990s). It also follows the abandonment of much of the public realm to capital, as exemplif ed by the replacement of Liverpool’s open shopping centre by L1, a privatised mall. As Zygmunt Bauman has written,2 in the new world order most of us are at sea, either clutching at life buoys or drowning. An easy response is to feel helpless. IAPDH refuses that helplessness as a beginning of a refusal of the whole new world order. It does this in terms which do not hark back nostalgically to an old world order but which instead begin to imagine and to build an alternative, working within the f ux which is the unavoidable condition of the present, uncompromisingly against the vile regime.

Since the rise of neoliberalism (or neo-conservatism) in the 1980s, large areas of political life have been actively de-politicised. In Britain, New Labour pursued this by adopting a market style of presentation (Cool Britannia) as well as market values. Neoliberalism is allied to fantasies that donating the world’s wealth (previously held in 24

part by the state as constructor and protector of the common wealth) to the super-rich will somehow lead to benef ts for the poor (trickle-down); and that the markets will create their own equilibrium if left to their own devices, as if a perfect system or perpetual motion machine. Trickle-down might better describe an unfortunate by-product of human ageing - perhaps foreseen by Reagan and T atcher – while the 2008 crash demonstrates the market’s inbuilt chaos. T e intentional outcome of neoliberalism is, meanwhile, that the poor become abject and all except the rich are disenfranchised. It is not surprising that the unfolding of neoliberalism is accompanied by widespread tax evasion, and by urban policies of post-code clearance carried out by the regeneration industry. To walk around the streets of terraced houses behind Liverpool Football Club’s ground is to see one example of the new urbanism introduced by neoliberalism. But, as this disgusting narrative has unfolded, there have been new kinds of resistance. Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre both argued that power is never totally in control, or leaks, but as well as the side-ef ects thus produced there has been a new, direct democracy in action. It has a pre-history in the acts of the Levellers and the Diggers in the English Revolution of the 1640s; in factory occupations organised in France in 1934 by the Popular Front against fascism; in the actions of workers and students in various European cities in 1968; and in anti-roads protest in the 1990s. Most recently, there was Occupy. Occupy was criticised in the media for not having a programme, but it was not a political party seeking election in a representative system. Instead, it used direct democracy to enact (not represent) the values in which participants believed - calling a daily general assembly in New York, for instance – and in some cases organised social and health services (as factory occupiers did in France in 1934). T e importance of the latter is that Occupy occupied not only public space but also the vacated site of the state. In these new political conditions, where daily life is negatively politicised, the home is a political site, making it appropriate that the art and practice of dissent is enacted there. IAPDH goes further, too, in its educational activities, working in the vacated site of free access to learning in a period of marketization in higher education, when the current unelected UK regime (T e Coalition) has increased undergraduate student fees to a level which is equivalent, for those at the bottom end of the income scale, to a year’s money or more. T e Free University of Liverpool may be marginal, and it is unlikely to be approved by the Privy Council as a degree-awarding body, yet every new action of this kind, however marginal, extends the visible horizon. T is gives hope.

Marx, Darwin and Freud were grand theorists. Marx explained the world, especially in terms of economics; Darwin explained that the origin of species was unknown, but evolution was a process of mutation, proliferation and adaptation; Freud explained that we do not know why we do things, but remember everything. T ese elderly white men could be dismissed now, their theories overtaken by more recent research amid concerns for gender equality in multi-ethnic societies. Still, looking to Marxism, the two basic ideas of alienation and immiseration remain valid. T at is, by selling labour-time, workers are alienated from the things they make just as they are eliminated from the potential to make prof t from those things. T is produces new, quasi-biological 25

needs, as for leisure as release from and compensation for toil, which in turn, in a vicious circle, require more work-hours to pay the price of such activities. Equally, with credit cards and mortgages, those who are not themselves wealthy see the trappings of wealth paraded in the media, which encourages them to spend their meagre incomes on consumer goods and services which they cannot af ord and which are designed never to satisfy and to become obsolete soon. Debts increase. Real wealth declines. T e poor and aspirant become poorer. A simplistic response to this assault against the commonwealth would be to take back the wealth which has been, and daily is, stolen by the owners of the means of production. But there will be no crowds marching with banners and torches to storm the palaces of the rich, any more than another storming of the Winter Palace will occur (except as historical re-enactment for tourists). As suggested above, there is a new politics in direct action, and this operates across public-private boundaries. T is is, obliquely, a revision of the revolutionary theory which began in, say, 1789, which Marx attempted to make into a political-economic science. Lefebvre revised Marxism in another way, relevant here, by introducing the concept of the Everyday. In particular, Lefebvre said that anyone, at any time, might experience a moment of sudden clarity – I see! T at is how it is! Or how it could be!!! – which, although ephemeral, indeed entirely f eeting and seeming to be insignif cant (which might also mean not standing for something else), is lingering and transformative. He called these interludes moments of liberation. Marxism grew rather than being overtaken by this. Similarly, Herbert Marcuse’s idea of a promise of joy - in times when the prospect of real political change is absent, the study of aesthetics is justif ed because, in art, in poetry, in a literature of feelings of love (he cites Charles Baudelaire, Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon), there is a promise of joy which is a remaining image of utopia – extends rather than replaces Marxism. T e work of IAPDH also extends Marxism, by citing Marxist tracts but also by re-interpreting and re-applying Marxist thought in ways which emerge in the conditions of a de-industrialised society. T e means of production are less identif ed now with factories, more with media and education; but, as Walter Benjamin argues,3 the task of the writer – or other professional – is to insert her/himself in those means; which may mean, again, in the production of knowledge; or in the production of a city’s idea of itself; or in the creation of relations within a family, in the family home.

Which (all of these) is where IAPDH comes in …

Endnotes

1 Malcolm Miles is Professor of Cultural T eory in the School of Architecture, Design and Environment at the University of Plymouth, and author of

Herbert Marcuse: an aesthetics of liberation, Pluto, 2011 2 For instance in Globalisatioon: the human consequences, Polity, 1998 3 ‘T e Author as Producer’, a lecture to a meeting of Communist writers, Paris, April 1934

Lena and I decided that I am probably the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home’s top audience member, since I have seen six live performances in their f rst f ve years of work. My understanding of what they’re about is based almost entirely on these performances, which have been mostly presented by the whole family, sometimes just 2 or 3 of them, and once as an ‘outsourced’ performance by a completely dif erent artist. I’ve seen them perform and hold their own in galleries, courtyards, lecture theatres and cafes. I’ve seen them reuse and recycle f ags, banners and bits of script from piece to piece. I’ve seen them throw food, cut holes in blankets and tear up train tickets. I’ve seen artist the vacuum cleaner empty out a box of all of the rubbish they had collected from going to COP15 in Copenhagen. I’ve seen them give away their performance fee to the audience, read out emails sent to them by the person who asked them to perform and generally reject the traditional position of artist in relation to institution and audience. When I f rst saw them in London in 2009, I saw half the audience getting totally distracted by watching Sid toddle around, looking a bit unsteady on his feet, still getting used to walking.

I’ve asked them to do performances in every one of Artsadmin’s Two Degrees festivals, a programme of live art work about climate change, (and all of the other issues that we should be thinking about when we think about climate change). To be honest I never really know what they’re going to turn up and do, but I trust them to do something interesting. What I often say about Two Degrees is that we do the festival because we want to be part of a bigger movement for change, and I can imagine the Institute saying a similar thing. When they make art about climate or political issues, they are not trying to say that they have a def nite single solution and that everyone else is wrong. T ey are representing themselves honestly and with humour as a family who are torn between their utopian ideals and the practicalities of living as a family of artists, lecturers, schoolchildren, Brits, Croatians, activists and consumers in the 21st century. T is is what makes their work interesting to me, it’s based in our modern reality, and looking backwards and forwards to how we can sort out our societies, our education, our art, but def nitely always about keeping it fun, playing and making trouble.