Disobedient Objects - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1851777970 ISBN 13: 9781851777976

Publisher: V&A Publishing, 2014

Synopsis

Disobedient Objects is about out-designing authority. It explores the material culture of radical change and protest - from objects familiar to many, such as banners or posters, to the more militant, cunning or technologically cutting-edge, including lock-ons, book-blocs and activist robots. Where previous social movement histories have focused on large-scale events, strategies or biographies, this book - and the exhibition it accompanies - shows how objects themselves can be revolutionary. Focusing on social movements since 1980, the book features an introductory essay by the curators examining the history of objects in protest and activism, followed by six essays that look at particular objects, and the contexts in which they are used. Interspersed throughout are images of the objects at work, along with a selection of how-tos covering specific objects from a design perspective. This is a manifesto for experimental alternative design, showing how objects can define encounters and inspire activists. Accompanies the V&A exhibition Disobedient Objects, 26 July 2014 to 1 February 2015

About this title

About the Author

Catherine Flood is a Prints Curator in the Word and Image Department at the V&A. and author of British Posters: Advertising, Art & Activism (V&A, 2012). She has curated exhibitions and displays at the V&A on subjects including propaganda, Victorian sentimentality, and satire in fashion. In 2009, she coordinated Designing Democracy, a research project on posters produced during the collapse of communism in Europe. Gavin Grindon is Visiting Research Fellow at the V&A and Postdoctoral Fellow in Visual and Material Culture at Kingston University. He has published in the Oxford Art Journal, Third Text, Art History and Radical Philosophy; co-authored A User's Guide to Demanding the Impossible (2011); and is currently preparing a monograph on art and activism.

From the Back Cover

From political activism comes the art of protest, symbols, and designs that defy standard definitions. This timely book shows how objects can change the world by out-designing authority. Included are arts of rebellion from around the globe: banners, defaced currency, designs for barricades and blockades, political video games, an inflatable general assembly to facilitate consensus decision-making, experimental activist-bicycles, and textiles bearing witness to political murders-along with earlier inspirational objects of protest such as a suffragette tea set and the barricades and balloons of the Paris Commune. Disobedient Objects focuses on the period from 1980 to the present, a time that brought new technologies and political challenges to protest movements. Provocative and engaging, this book showcases how artists have produced work within the context of social movements, which become the vibrant engines for ingenuity and collective creativity.

Edition details

• Publisher: V&A Publishing
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1851777970
• ISBN 13: 9781851777976
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144
• Editor: Flood Catherine, Grindon Gavin