Revolt

The phrase ‘The revolution will be live’ can be heard in the intro of every episode of season 6 of the popular, current events-based television series Homeland. As part of the international art exhibition Documenta, there is a ‘Monument to Revolution’ on Avdi Square, in the centre of Athens. A collective speech by antifascist action groups from around the world reverberates from loudspeakers. Recently there were mass protests against corruption in 90 cities in Russia. Is it a coincidence that the V&A in London recently organized a blockbuster exhibition on the impact of the art, music, design and political activism? Or that Homeland lets Gil Scott-Heron have his say, the seventies rap artist avant la lettre? Has there been a return of the revolutionary spirit, 100 years after the Russian Revolution?

These are turbulent times. Society is strongly divided about the right way to tackle problems. The democratic system is under pressure. Energy sources are running out and the environment is in a state of crisis. There is an increasingly loud call from more and more sides to rise up against the state of the world and against current ideologies. As early as 1951, the French writer and philosopher Albert Camus wrote in L’Homme Révolté that uprising or revolution is ‘existential’ and that it is the ‘breath of life force’. But it is also dangerous, because although revolutions mean renewal, in the end they result in new rulers killing new opponents – when things do not go their way.

On 9 November, ArtEZ studium generale will explore the desire to change the world in a fundamental way. But what do you change and how do you do that? Do you do that by going to the barricades, wearing a mohawk and a leather jacket, like people did in the eighties? Do you do that as an individual or can a revolution only be started by a large majority? The question is also whether art and design can play just as large a part as they did 100 years ago during the Russian Revolution. Can a book, a theatre play or a song provoke a revolution? And what have we learned from the Arab Spring, which was meant to be a revolution 2.0, but which many people feel proved to be a failure? We explore which conditions form the basis of a successful revolution, which tools can be used and which challenges must be faced.

How to start a revolution: is the revolution inside of you?

*Gil Scott-Heron used the phrase ‘The revolution will be live’ in his popular protest song ˚The Revolution will not be Televised˚, referring to a much heard slogan used by the Black Power movement in the sixties.

With guests: Eelke Blokker, Ruben Jacobs, Mr. Weazley, Nadja Tolokonnikova, Renée Frissen, Henry Alles, Lana Čoporda, Sharon Stewart, Lara Staal, Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, Jaromil, Chris Keulemans, Rob Schröder, Jonas Staal, Nat Muller, Otto Boele, Anik Fournier, Erik Viskil, Noam Toran, Kalib Batta, Sigrid Merx, Urok Shirhan, Michael Viega, Max Urai.