Minor Compositions

Stop the City… Revisited
Organized as part of The Substation’s “Discipline the City” series
23 August – 23 November 2017

Born out of the anarcho-punk scene, Stop the City demonstrations of 1983-84 were a series of actions and interventions to blockade and disrupt ‘The City’ (the financial district of London). Protesters and activists coalesced around artists like Crass, Subhumans and Poison Girls. Punk was not only a music and subculture, but a serious proposition of alternative politics built upon Do-It-Yourself practices connected through social centres, performance venues, and independent media.

During the past decades, the power of financial flows and markets have become all the more intense, between the imposition of austerity to service all kinds of debt to the financialization of daily life. Even after the repeated financial crises there seems to be little chance of disciplining, let alone stopping the city.

This exhibition brings together images and materials from this anarcho-punk forerunner to other large scale protests like Occupy Wall Street and the movement of the squares. They are presented not out of nostalgia or purely historical interest but rather to ask what these experiences might mean today. What lessons can be learned the politics and protest of the anarcho-punk scene? How do these histories speak to the present in Singapore? What today could Stop the City? Continue reading →

There is no authority but yourself… and there is no self
19 August – 7PM – The Substation, Singapore

Punk is often narrated as a kind of year zero, a total break with the past. But this is far from the case. Nowhere is that clearer through the anarcho-punk punk Crass, who taking the phrase “there is no authority but yourself” made connections with a range of countercultures and arts, from the beats to the hippies, existentialism to surrealism.

Crass emerged from Dial House, an open house and arts space in rural Essex. Co-founder Penny Rimbaud describes its ethos creating a space where people “could get together to work and Live in a creative atmosphere rather than the stifling, inward looking environments in which we had all been brought up.” It is from here that innumerable projects and collaborations have been launched, from artistic ventures to political campaigns, from the planning of the first free festivals during the 1970s to the Stop the City protests.

This evening will explore these overlaps of punk, performance, radical arts and culture through a curator’s preview. Continue reading →

Gee Vaucher. Introspective
Edited by Stevphen Shukaitis

Gee Vaucher is an internationally renowned political artist, known for her ‘radical creativity’, montages, and iconic record sleeve artwork for the famous anarchist-pacifist band Crass. Vaucher has always seen her work as a tool for social change, using surrealist styles and methods, and a DIY aesthetic to create powerful images exploring political and personal issues.

Gee Vaucher has been working as an artist in the UK since the 1960’s but is yet to have a major retrospective of her work in a UK public institution. In Autumn 2016 Firstsite, located in Colchester (UK), will host a retrospective her work, co-curated by Marie-France Kittler and Stevphen Shukaitis. This exhibition will re-affirm her position as a counter-cultural artistic force whose influence on local, national and international visual art and cross-disciplinary contexts deserves to be explored. Gee Vaucher: Introspective will celebrate the rich history of art and activism both on a local and national level. It will not only look back to the radical spirit of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, but is also an opportunity to engage audiences in important social debates taking place today.

This catalog will be the first in-depth publication examining the vast range of her work including painting, collage, video, performance art, design, and installation works.

Contributors: Gee Vaucher, Penny Rimbaud, Patricia Allmer, John Sears, Rebecca Binns, George McKay, Yuval Etgar, Martina Groß, and Stevphen Shukaitis.

Continue reading →