Warming Up to the Pluriverse #8: On making the yes and the no

In Search of the Pluriverse

Warming Up to the Pluriverse #8: On making the yes and the no
With Jay Jordan & Isa Frémaux

In this last – but much more to come, stay tuned! – Warming Up talk we meet Jay Jordan and Isa Frémeaux, co-founders of Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii). This lab brings artists and activists together to design tools and acts of disobedience and resistance. Unhappy with the world of performance and art (Jay) and institutional education (Isa), they created their own practice and approach in which there is always a ‘no’ and a ‘yes’ present, after the zapatista movement. Since 2015 Jay and Isa are residents of the zad (zone à défendre, zone to defend) in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, close to Nantes. From a reserved area for an airport, these 4000 acres evolved over the last 50 years in a beautiful life experiment. A place where the gaps between art, politics and daily life are dissolved. Listen to an electric talk about ‘a world that exists today, because it wasn’t allowed to exist to start with’. And if it is up to us, this is only part 1…

References

• Paths Through Utopias (112 min)
  vimeo.com/218495549
• Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination
  labofii.wordpress.com/
  www.labo.zone (as of April 2021)
• ZAD Forever Blog
  zadforever.blog/
• Read about the insurgent roadworker here: Jordan John & Fremeaux Isabelle, “Cultures of Rebellion. Notes against extractivist art and for the art of life”, in: Klaxon 13 – Taking action with the living, 2019 accessible online: www.cifas.be/sites/default/file…living_-_pdf_1.pdf
  “Dead Man”, Chris Burden, 1972
• Notes from Nowhere (Ainger Katharine, Chesters Graeme, Credland Tony, Jordan John, Stern Andrew and Whitney Jennifer, eds). We are everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anticapitalism. London/New York: Verso Books, 2003
  artactivism.gn.apc.org/home.htm
• The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination. A user’s guide to demanding the impossible. London/New York: Minor Compositions/Port Watson, 2010. Accessible online at: demandingimpossible.wordpress.com/
• “As we speak a zad just got evicted against the construction of a high speed train in Gonesse near Paris”, March 4 2021.
  reporterre.net/A-Gonesse-la-Zad-…a-lutte-renforcee
• ‘Remembrement’ (French denomination using the metaphor of body parts for land consolidation processes aimed at scaling up agricultural land)
  fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrement
• Naturalistes en lutte. (Amateur and professional collective of naturalists mapping the ZAD to assess its ecological value. In French)
  naturalistesenlutte.wordpress.com/
• “1974 is when the zad started. It started out as a movement by farmers for nourishing land.” See: Lambert Bernard, Les Paysans dans la Lutte des classes, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, Collections Politiques, 1970
• Letter from the inhabitants who resist (2008) in: Defending the Zad, Mauvaise Troupe Collective, Éditions de l’Éclat, 2015, p.5
  mauvaisetroupe.org/spip.php?article143
• Brian Eno, Axis Thinking
  www.servinglibrary.org/journal/6/axis-thinking
• ZAD ritual on 17.01.2021 for the anniversary of the abandonment of the airport project, with the collective La CAR - Cellule d’Actions Rituelles of the ZAD
  www.youtube.com/watch?v=zABCfKb3y…&feature=youtu.be

More digging material:

• Two small documentaries on the ZAD
  www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDj5WY01o08
  www.youtube.com/watch?v=InUtCdDQlCY
• John Jordan and Isabelle Frémeaux in conversation with Rob Hopkins
  transitionnetwork.org/news-and-blog/…y-imagination/
• The future of protest (Dutch spoken, 40 min)
  www.vpro.nl/programmas/tegenlic…st-van-protest.html
• Faire des Cabanes (making huts, French spoken, 9 min 31)
  vimeo.com/291501146

For more information about In Search of the Pluriverse visit hnix.nl/pluriverse and follow @insearchofthepluriverse on Instagram.