Hey Guys!
Please see below the press release for AGORA. All the artists involved are designing posters. Me and my friend Elle are designing the publication for the exhibition. We will be involved in the events over the next 2 weeks.
AGORA.
Tooting Market 14th-24th March 2012
Laurence Price, Oscars Cass-Darweish, Matt Welch, Aoife Flynn, Elle Donlon, Stephanie Conboye, Lucy Lopez, Roseena Hussain, Josh Whitaker, Dan Auluk, Nita Walters, Maddy Dickerson, Martina Topia, Amy Pitt, Nat Carey, Oli Boulton- Fisher, Rosie Gibson, Will Slater, Marianne Forest, Maria Almena, Vlada Maria, Samantha Penn , Teri Bruno, Anna Reading, Alex Wilson, Henry Mackay-Bull, Marisha Green, Benn Webb, Lucinda-Ellen-Brain, Jess Hill, Emma Sywyj, Cluster Bomb
Collective, David Smith, Phil Tompson, Joshua Spring, Tomas Kemp, Laurence Ferguson, Chris Kazolides, Luchia Stamati.
AGORA is an organisation of over 40 Artists, Filmmakers, Curators, Graphic designers and Musicians holding a residency at The Brick Box, Tooting market. Over the course of 12 days, we will undertake a series of ventures prepared each day. Each project will respond to the physical space within the market; through our virtual spaces online and collated into our publication which will be developed on site and launched at Brick Box’sUnorthabox event on the 24th
of March.
We will collaborate each day to create a narrative in flux, documenting the process; a formation of a voice within the forum, visualising co-operation and discussion. Historically the Agora ( Ἀγορά, Agorá) was a central spot in ancient Greek city-states, a place that literally means “Gathering place” or “Assembly”. Based in an open plan fortuitous square in the market we will convene every morning for a gathering of ideas. We will set up our residency each day in the nature of the Agora, comprising of some chairs arranged into a circle, a printer, photocopier and scanner, we will stage each day as a conversation. We will supply the narrative of what occurs within this conversation, bringing a new
voice a new territory for ideas, a forum free from institutional usury. Working together with these simple tools of production we aim to compose collaborative yet diverse voices.
‘AGORA’ is being provided to explore the possibility of collectively within the ubiquitous globalised market of today. Collectivism is something when attained cannot be ignored, with voluntary human action, a narrative can be developed.Today we use social marketplaces and networking sites to project ourselves, within these environments, opinions and instant narrations within this format often can become made redundant and avoided. We become coerced into a controlled environment that makes up the recent documented history of a globalised society online. But more often than not, our opinions are treated as statistics. Local market halls are fast becoming considered as working museums, full of archaic selling practices nuances and languages. The face-to-face, buyer seller relationship is something missing from the corporate capitalist markets that subscribe the commodities we are sold, this prescribed fetishisation and insistence of want in our society has produced a wave of extremist human action, the riots of 2011 are an example of how far we will go
to get the products we cannot afford. In this period of austerity where community schools and libraries are being closed in a new wave of governmental reform, we must organise to vocalise. In an age where there are so many versions of one reality how do we make art that relates to our simulated response hyper-real? “It is possible, practical, and even profitable to entrepreneur large collections of
humanity from statist society to the agora. This is, in the deepest sense, true revolutionary activity”
New Libertarian Manifesto http://agora.tootingmarket.info/
