The Long 1980s. Constellations of Art, Politics and Identities

Edited by Nick Aikens, Teresa Grandas, Nav Haq, Beatriz Herráez, and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez

Graphic Design: George & Harrison

Published by L'Internationale and Valiz

2018
ISBN 978-94-92095-49-7

Contents

  1. 1.
    The Long 1980s. Constellations of Art, Politics and Identities – An Introduction
  2. 2.
    ‘It will have been the best of times: thinking back to the 1980s’
  3. 3.
    From Anti-Social-Liberal Punk to Intersectional Aids Activism (Sub-)Culture and Politics in Eighties Europe
  4. 4.
    PART 1: NO ALTERNATIVE? – Introduction
  5. 5.
    Dissent and the Neoliberal Condition
  6. 6.
    The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism
  7. 7.
    Squatters
  8. 8.
    Premature Architecture Isidoro Valcárcel Medina
  9. 9.
    Rave
  10. 10.
    Montevideo
  11. 11.
    Neue Slowenische Kunst
  12. 12.
    The Phlegm of Taller Llunàtic
  13. 13.
    BİLAR Corporation
  14. 14.
    Autonomy, Revolt and the Imagination to Leave the Stage Reading Bluf! (Amsterdam) and Radikal (Berlin)
  15. 16.
    ‘A political poster must be like a blow into an open wound’
  16. 17.
    Club Moral Moral and Mental in Antwerp
  17. 18.
    1984: The Adventures of the Alternative
  18. 19.
    Black Film Workshops
  19. 20.
    ‘Talking Back to the Media’
  20. 21.
    ‘La imagen sublime’ Video Art Practices in Spain
  21. 22.
    Jef Cornelis' The Longest Day
  22. 23.
    PART 2: KNOW YOUR RIGHTS – Introduction
  23. 24.
    Environmental Protest in Europe in the Eighties
  24. 25.
    Orbanist Manifesto
  25. 26.
    Greenham Common
  26. 27.
    Radical Democrats in Turkey Political Icebreakers in the Mid-Eighties
  27. 28.
    Razmerja and Ecology
  28. 29.
    El Viejo Topo
  29. 30.
    Insubordination in Spain Authoritarian Socialist Modernity and Widespread Antagonistic Disobedience
  30. 31.
    ‘No to Compulsory Military Service’
  31. 32.
    ‘Know Your Rights’
  32. 33.
    Contradictions of the Socialist Civil Society in Nineteen-Eighties Yugoslavia
  33. 34.
    Verbal Delict
  34. 35.
    ‘Petition of Intellectuals’
  35. 36.
    Rocío, 88 minutes, Tangana Films A Film by Fernando Ruiz and Ana Vila
  36. 37.
    Policing the Crisis, The People’s Account and Handsworth Songs
  37. 38.
    The Feminist Movement in Nineteen-Eighties Spain Emergence and Fragmentation
  38. 39.
    The Danger to Society and Social Rehabilitation Law
  39. 40.
    AIDS, Sexual Dissidence and Biopolitical Activism
  40. 41.
    The Birth of the Gay Scene in Slovenia
  41. 42.
    ‘Pretended’ Family Relationships, Sunil Gupta
  42. 43.
    ‘100%’
  43. 44.
    PART 3: PROCESSES OF IDENTIFICATION – Introduction
  44. 45.
    Unity in Difference Artistic Practices Across Class, Sex and Race in Black British Art
  45. 46.
    Black Phoenix
  46. 47.
    ‘5 Black Women’, ‘Black Woman Time Now’ and ‘The Thin Black Line’
  47. 48.
    Black Women’s Movement (ZMV)
  48. 49.
    ‘Double Dutch’
  49. 50.
    J. Lambrecht & The Belgian Institute for World Affairs in the Eighties
  50. 51.
    Nation, Democracy and Gender
  51. 52.
    From ‘Personal is Political’ to ‘Women in Black’
  52. 53.
    Istanbul Kurdish. To Be a Kurd and a Woman in the City
  53. 54.
    ‘Irritating’ New Feminism of the NineteenEighties in Ljubljana
  54. 55.
    Being There A Very Partial Traverse of European Exhibitions and AIDS Activism at the end of the Twentieth Century
  55. 56.
    Pepe Espaliú, Carrying, 1992, Performance
  56. 57.
    Being Called a Lunatic Should Become a Compliment! The Antipsychiatry Movement in Slovenia
  57. 58.
    Hugo Roelandt
  58. 59.
    143.353 (the eyes do not want to be always shut)
  59. 60.
    PART 4: NEW ORDER – Introduction
  60. 61.
    When History Was Gone
  61. 62.
    Numax presenta
  62. 63.
    Docklands Community Poster Project, London
  63. 64.
    Genuine ‘KOT’ or ‘Muhteşem’ Copies
  64. 65.
    Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin
  65. 66.
    Freedom for What? The Uses of Freedom, between Dictatorship and Democracy in Portugal
  66. 67.
    The Formation of the Slovenian Lacanian School
  67. 68.
    Declension
  68. 69.
    Artists’ Initiatives in the Netherlands
  69. 70.
    Culture, That Government Invention
  70. 71.
    ‘Terror in Prisons We Won’t Let You Kill Them’
  71. 72.
    Mass Dancing and the Political (Un)Conscious
  72. 73.
    ‘Yugoslav Documents ’89’
  73. 74.
    Novie Khudozhniki (New Artists Group) St. Petersburg in the Eighties
  74. 75.
    Absolute Majority Syndrome
  75. 76.
    Sin ir más lejos
  76. 77.
    ‘The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain’
  77. 78.
    1989—The Second Summer of Love
  78. 79.
    Contributors
  79. 80.
    Index of Names
  80. 81.
    Index of Works, Exhibitions, Projects, Events, Organizations
  81. 82.
    Acknowledgements
  82. 83.
    Colophon

The Long 1980s considers the significance of the 1980s for culture and society today. It revisits this pivotal decade via a collection of microhistories from across Europe that span the fields of art, culture, and politics. Central to the stories in this book is the changing relationship between ideologies, governments, and their publics, the effects of which have come to shape the contemporary condition of Europe and beyond. Artists, writers, and activists were responding to and articulating these changes in myriad ways: in the streets, through words, images, objects, and actions. At the same time, new subjectivities were emerging at the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality, all voices that were demanding to be heard.

The publication is divided into four thematic chapters: 1. No Alternative? (on counter cultures, alternative forms of self-organization and art as activism); 2. Know Your Rights (on civil liberties, the rising planetary consciousness and new ecologies); 3. Processes of Identification (on anti-colonial positions and the drive for sexual and gender equality through culture); 4. New Order (on the far-reaching effects of the neoliberal regime and, finally, the significance of the year 1989). Comprising newly commissioned essays by leading thinkers alongside seventy case studies, including images and archival material published for the first time, this reader offers an invaluable and alternative reading of the recent past. A constellation of over seventy micro-histories, ranging from significant exhibitions or events to publications or key essays are presented across the four sections, spanning the different contexts out of which the research developed: Belgium, Catalonia, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey and the UK. These case studies are presented through a rich combination of archival material, reproductions or reprinted texts with introductions by curators, historians, and theorists.

Editors: Nick Aikens (Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven), Teresa Grandas (MACBA, Barcelona), Nav Haq (M HKA, Antwerp), Beatriz Herráez (independent curator, San Sebastián), and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez (L'Internationale Online).

Contributors: Nick Aikens, Henry Andersen, Zdenka Badovinac, Barış Gençer Baykan, Cristina Cámara Bello, Hakim Bey, Manuel Borja-Villel, Rosi Braidotti, Boris Buden, Jesús Carrillo, Bojana Cvejić, Luc Deleu, Ayşe Düzkan, Diedrich Diederichsen, Nazım Hikmet Richard Dikbaş, Corinne Diserens, Merve Elveren, Charles Esche, Marcelo Expósito, Božidar Flajšman, Annie Fletcher, Diana Franssen, June Givanni, Lisa Godson, Teresa Grandas, Nav Haq, Beatriz Herráez, Lubaina Himid, Lola Hinojosa, Antony Hudek, Tea Hvala, Gal Kirn, Neža Kogovšek Šalamon, Anders Kreuger, Elisabeth Lebovici, Rogelio López Cuenca, Geert Lovink, Amna Malik, Pablo Martínez, Lourdes Méndez, Aleš Mendiževec, Ana Mizerit, Alexei Monroe, Meriç Öner, Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, Bojana Piškur, Marta Popivoda, Carlos Prieto del Campo, Pedro G. Romero, Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Igor Španjol, Chris Straetling, Luis Trindade, Erman Ata Uncu, Jelena Vesić, Mar Villaespesa, Vladimir Jerić Vlidi, and Ana Vujanović.

2018, Valiz with L'internationale | supported by the Culture Programme of the European Union | partner: KASK School of Arts, University College Ghent | paperback | 416 pp. | English | ISBN 978-94-92095-49-7 | Design by George & Harrison. To purchase the book, please follow this link to the website of our publisher, Valiz.