Artistic Utopias of Revolt

199 Pages·2018·8.452 MB·English

by  Julia Ramírez Blanco

ARTISTIC UTOPIAS
OF REVOLT
Claremont Road, Reclaim the
Streets, and the City of Sol
JULIA RAMÍREZ BLANCO
palgrave studies in utopianism
Palgrave Studies in Utopianism
Series Editor
Gregory Claeys
Royal Holloway, University of London
London, UK
Utopianism is an interdisciplinary concept which covers philosophy, soci-
ology, literature, history of ideas, art and architecture, religion, futurology
and other fields. While literary utopianism is usually dated from Thomas
More’sUtopia (1516), communitarian movements and ideologies propos-
ing utopian ends have existed in most societies through history. They
imagine varied ideal beginnings of the species, like golden ages or para-
dises, potential futures akin to the millennium, and also ways of attaining
similar states within real time. Utopianism, in the sense of striving for a
much improved world, is also present in many trends in contemporary
popular movements, and in phenomena as diverse as films, video games,
environmental and medical projections. Increasingly utopia shares the
limelight with dystopia, its negative inversion, and with projections of the
degeneration of humanity and nature alike. This series will aim to publish
the best new scholarship across these varied fields. It will focus on original
studies of interest to a broad readership, including, but not limited to,
historical and theoretical narratives as well as accounts of contemporary
utopian thought, interpretation and action.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15242
Julia Ramírez Blanco
Artistic Utopias of
Revolt
Claremont Road, Reclaim the Streets, and
the City of Sol
Julia Ramírez Blanco
University of Barcelona
Barcelona, Spain
Translated by Paul E. Davies
Palgrave Studies in Utopianism
ISBN 978-3-319-71421-9 ISBN 978-3-319-71422-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71422-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933135
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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To my parents, to their good places
A
cknowledgements
In one way or another, every book has a collective authorship. We rely on
precedents, we gather ideas, we see films, we talk, discuss, participate in
demonstrations. While it is impossible to list here all the people who,
directly or indirectly, have played a role in a process such as this, I do not
wish to leave unmentioned those who have been particularly important.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to Gregory Claeys and Anette
Giescke for making possible the English edition of this book and to Raúl
García for showing such faith in the project for its Spanish edition in 2014.
I thank Anna Maria Guash for her continuous support and stimulus, and
Delfín Rodríguez Ruiz for directing the wider project of which this book
forms a part. Thanks too to Estrella de Diego, whose suggestions helped
me to improve the original, and to Luis Fernández Galiano, for giving me
a framework in which I could develop various ideas in the pages of the
magazine Arquitectura Viva.
My thanks must also be extended to Miguel Martínez for sharing his
experience and understanding of social movements, to Archivo 15M for
taking such good care of the incredible popular legacy of banners and
posters, and to the many people whom I have interviewed and who have
collaborated by writing definitions for the glossary. I also cannot fail to
express my gratitude for the grants I have received from the Ministry of
Education and the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, where I had the
opportunity of living and learning in an exceptional environment.
This book would certainly not have been possible without the inspira-
tion of John Jordan’s words, both written and spoken. I would also like to
pay tribute to the help I received from Stephen Duncombe, with whom I
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
was able to work on the final phase of the text during a research stay at
New York University. I am indebted to Julio Albarrán, Oriana Eliçabe,
Kate Evans, Marcelo Expósito, Marco Godoy, John Jordan, Immo Klink,
Alex McNaughton, Maureen Measure, Santiago Ochoa Marcos, Sole
Parody, Ian Teh, and Toben Wilworth for providing photographs that
speak so clearly of the events described and which do so much to contrib-
ute to the book’s polyphony.
Friends end up becoming an extension of the family. I will mention
Sole Parody, Ibis Albizu, Olivia and Constanza Nieto, Eduardo Camarena,
Leticia Fernández Fontecha, Miriam de Miguel or Miriam Basilio among
many others. And this book would not have been born without the enthu-
siasm shared with other voices and other bodies in the street. I would like
to recall Paz Vega, ‘the muse of the revolution’, who in Madrid in May
2011 seemed to observe the multitude, reclined up there above, in that
corporate poster that people had turned into a gigantic banner.
c
ontents
1 Introduction: Art as Language, Utopia as Discourse 1
Bibliography 7
2 Activism as a Place: The British Anti-Roads Movement
and the Squatted Street of Claremont Road 9
The First Camps: From Greenham Common to Twyford Down 10
The Campaign Against the M11 Motorway 16
The Utopian Creativity of Claremont Road 19
The Spectacle of Eviction 28
Bibliography 39
3 The Reclaim the Streets Protest Parties in London 41
Radicalizing Rave 43
Protest Dances: The Carnival Method 50
Utopia and Celebration 56
Bibliography 62
4 Interlude: The Globalization of the Aesthetics of Protest 65
Globalizing Resistance 66
The Counter-Summit Model (Seattle, 1999) 70
‘Rebel Colors’ (Prague, 2000) 74
Utopia and Dystopia 80
ix
x CONTENTS
‘Creative Activism’ 87
Bibliography 111
5 Disobedience as an Urban Form: The Acampadasol
in Madrid 117
Where Shall We Live? 118
Constructive Processes 120
DIY Architecture 123
The ‘City of Sol’ 125
A Regime of Gleaning and an Aesthetics of Precariousness 131
Political Heterogeneity and the Principle of Collage 133
Crowds in Assembly; Banners and Posters 135
The ‘Silent Scream’: After Utopia 139
Bibliography 156
6 Notes Towards a Conclusion 159
‘A’ is for ‘Art’: Towards an Aesthetics of the Liberated Space 159
‘B’ is for the ‘Better Place’: Towards a Utopianism of the
Liberated Space 163
‘C’ is for ‘Commune’: From the Camp to the Countryside 166
Bibliography 169
Chronology of Events 171
Glossary 175
Index 181