
From Anarchism Across the Arts
Acknowledgements
Anarchism Across the Arts is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Jeffrey Rubinoff Foundation/Faculty of Fine Arts partnership, with additional funding from the Anarchist Archive, Special Collections, McPherson Library, University of Victoria. We also wish to acknowledge the assistance of Ph.D. candidate Wil Sahar Patrick and Sophie Ladd, Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park Project Coordinator, Faculty of Fine Arts.
The conference has been organized by Allan Antliff, Jeffrey Rubinoff Legacy Chair in Art as a Source of Knowledge, Department of Art History and Visual Studies, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria.
Allan Antliff on sculptor Jeffrey Rubinoff (1945-2017)
I first met Jeffrey Rubinoff in summer 2015 and we quickly forged a personal friendship based on shared intellectual interests and ethical concerns related to the arts. The scope of his critical interests encompassed the entirety of the arts, and he felt artistic endeavours are vital for advancing knowledge, both culturally and politically. Reflecting on our relationship with the world we are a part of, Rubinoff observed, “we fragile humans are the only fully cognizant witnesses. With this capacity comes the great responsibility of this knowledge. This responsibility is a priori in those who are born artists … This is the highest of human values – the recognition of the value of life itself. Therein resides the mature conscience. This is the essence of our being. Art is the map of the human soul.”
For more on the Jeffrey Rubinoff Foundation/Faculty of Fine Arts partnership: https://www.uvic.ca/finearts/donors/rubinoff-endowment/
Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park: https://www.rubinoffsculpturepark.org/
Program
Saturday March 1, 2025
9:30 AM – Doors Open
10:00 AM – Welcoming Ceremony
Graphic Agitators 10:30 – 11:50 AM
Patricia Leighten – Art Historian, Duke University, Professor Emeritus
Anarchist Satire and Censorship in Early 20th-Century Paris
Visual satire played a more important role in early 20th-century Parisian culture and politics than is recognized. This talk explores a number of anarchist journals, including Les Hommes du jour [Today’s People], a weekly magazine of commentary and drawings, and L’assiette au beurre [The Plate of Butter], a leading satirical magazine. Manifesting a crossroads of anarchism and visual activism during a period of rising censorship leading to the First World War, these journals’ artists employed a compelling variety of strategies in their cartoons allowing for humour, pointed commentary, and protection from prosecution.
Gord Hill – graphic artist, carver, painter, and author (Kwakwaka’wakw nation)
Art as Resistance
Graphic arts play an important role in mobilizing resistance movements and building cultures of resistance. They can inform as well as inspire. Today, there are a wide variety of mediums in which graphic arts can be produced, from posters to t-shirts, from memes to banners. I will discuss how I have mobilized these mediums over the years to further militant resistance movements.
N.O. Bonzo – graphic artist, muralist, book illustrator, print maker
Anarchist Art: A Common Treasury for All
Since the start of our movement, Anarchists have been prolific as artists, with a focus on practical craftsmanship that could both contribute tangibly to our struggles and make the beauty of our “beautiful idea” accessible in daily life. I will be discussing this lineage and its continuation in our modern DIY ethos.
Discussion: 11:30 – 11:50 AM
Literary Imaginaries 12:00 – 1:20 PM
James Gifford – Professor, School of Humanities, Farleigh Dickinson University
The Anarchist Fantastic: Genre, Disappointment, and Radical Nostalgia
It is commonplace to assume the fantasy genre is inherently conservative or even reactionary, inscribing a yearning for past worlds and defunct social norms where true kings rule. Yet, anarchist voices have deeply shaped the genre, presenting it less as a plea for the restoration of authoritarianism and more as an agitational medium fomenting insurrectionary dissatisfaction with our contemporary world. My talk discusses this influential stream in the fantasy literary genre, highlighting anarchist influences on form and stylistic tropes in the work of Henry Treece, Ursula K. Le Guin and others.
Orion Kidder – Clinical Assistant Professor, School of Humanities, Farleigh Dickinson University
‘The Game’s the Thing’: Star Trek’s Liberal Limits and Culture’s Anarchist Possibilities
My talk focusses on Star Trek’s return to television, Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 – 1994), and Iain M. Banks’ first proper “culture” novel, The Player of Games (1988). These are parallel works of science fiction that offer social critiques through ideologically distinct utopian futures. I argue Star Trek‘s is liberal American while Player of Games pushes well past the limits of liberalism by dramatizing an anarchist rejection of both state and empire.
Layla AbdelRahim, PhD. – Independent scholar, Comparative Literature and Anthropology
The Treacherous Imaginary of Literature: Where Science and Fiction Meet
The fundamental premises about creation and human nature provide the schemata with which we approach the world. These premises explain to us the meaning of life, shape how we see the world, and rationalise our actions. All culture and social institutions stand firmly on the foundation of these existential premises. Hence, whether they are scientific, religious, media, or fictional, narratives are usually built on taken-for-granted assumptions that are rarely questioned. Thus, insidiously, they inform our subconscious and imagination.
In this presentation, I shall discuss genesis in evolutionary and religious narratives from both the civilised and wild perspectives. I shall then explore how they inform the socio-economic relationships in three imaginary worlds: the capitalist kingdom of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, the anarcho-socialist world of Nikolai Nosov’s Dunno and Friends, and the anarcho-primitivist universe of Tove Jansson’s Moomintrolls.
Discussion: 1:00 – 1:20 PM
Lunch Break: 1:30 – 2:20 PM
Visual Arts 2:30 – 3:50 PM
Kika Thorne – artist, filmmaker
From the singularity to the sun
Tension between global catastrophe and local actions are animated by magnetism — from electron spin to the sun’s magnetic field, we are held together and pulled apart. My slow practice merges holistic hunch and scientific inquiry. Through a deep ecology lens, I’ll reflect on Singularity (2006 – 2014), medicine (2012), The Question of a Hunch (2015), and The Sun (2019 – ongoing); four immersive sculptures which range from physical to conceptual proposition.
Heather Harvey – cross-disciplinary artist, Associate Professor of Studio Art, Washington College
Unbounded: generativity, freedom, and the unconscious in contemporary art
The motivations and strategies of contemporary artists have natural, if sometimes under-acknowledged, overlap with anarchism and the anarchist imagination. Both function as unconventional bulwarks against reductive, coercive, or unimaginative socio-political-familial systems. Both offer the promise of living in the here and now as if it already was the more ideal, just, and inspired world we wish for; and in so doing, creating a present that is just a little more free, mysterious, and expansive than it might otherwise be. In this talk I speak from my perspective as an artist working within speculative, contemplative, poetic, and lateral-thinking traditions that allow for greater play and possibility.
Luis Jacob – artist, Assistant Professor, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, University of Toronto
The shadow has no feet: Censorship, silencing and erasure in Toronto
Can we ever ‘see’ erasure? How could we ‘hear’ silencing? During the past year, I have witnessed and experienced forms of violence in the arts community that I never imagined possible. As the Canadian Artists’ Representation organization recently noted, “we are deeply concerned about the recent experiences of artists and arts administrators who have faced losses of opportunity, employment and other consequences for demonstrating their perspectives on the violence in Gaza.” How can artistic practices document moments of backlash? How can art make erasure a matter of perception? These are the questions I will address.
Discussion: 3:30 – 3:50 PM
Built Environments 4:00 – 5:20 PM
Mark Davenport – musician, Professor, Fine and Performing Arts, Regis University
Paul Williams’ Building Collective at the Gate Hill Cooperative
In 1954, architect and philanthropist Paul Williams spearheaded the development of a remarkable intentional community of artists, educators and social activists, all former faculty and students from the legendary Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Drawing on his studies with American inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, urban planner Le Corbusier, and social critic Paul Goodman, Williams designed and built a complex of homes and studios on the side of a wooded mountain, 30 miles north of Manhattan. Reacting to the alienating effects of a Cold War consumerist culture, and influenced by contemporary anarchism, Williams helped cultivate one of the most active and progressive communities in contemporary art and living. They called their social experiment the Gate Hill Cooperative.
Adrian Blackwell – artist, Associate Professor, School of Architecture, University of Waterloo
How can we turn alienated property back into home?
In Canada today, it’s understood that land can be exchanged as a commodity, but this is a relatively new idea. It was only through the violence of settler-colonialism that modern property was formed. Yet fee-simple is not a fixed idea, it is constantly changing. Its alienation has accelerated through innovations like strata ownership, mortgage-backed securities, real estate investment trusts, and proptech, while social housing, housing cooperatives, land trusts, and collective ownership have emerged to offer potentials for decommodified housing. This talk examines a number of recent projects in which I address land dispossession and housing alienation while pointing to alternatives.
Naomi Shields, M.A. – Independent scholar, art historian
Playing with Garbage in Lima, Peru: Social Transformation through Participatory Public Art
According to many scholars, artistic experiences in public spaces invigorate communities, promote democratic discourse, and encourage collective reimagining. My talk explores the socially transformative potential of participatory public art, with a special focus on the capacity of playful interaction to promote themes of freedom and autonomy within the context of twenty-first century neoliberal Peru.
Discussion and Closing Remarks: 5:00 – 5:30 PM
Sunday March 2, 2025
10:00 AM – Welcome
Performance 10:30 – 11:50 AM
Sooran Choi, Assistant Professor, contemporary East Asian art, Art and Art History, University of Vermont
From Phenomenon to Trace: Anarcho-Daoism in South Korean Art Activism
In 1970, Chan-seung Chung’s Neutral Space used 2,000 balloons to critique institutional control, leaving glue marks as a lasting disruption. Rejected by the Seoul Museum of Contemporary Art, it embodied the Fourth Group’s “muche [incorporeal] art,” which dismantled art-society-politics divisions. Rooted in Anarcho-Daoist ideals, Chung, Kang-ja Jung, and Ku-lim Kim transformed process-based avant-garde practices into disruptive interventions. Jung’s mirrors critiqued societal norms through broken shards, while Kim’s From Phenomenon to Trace wrapped the museum in fabric, leaving indelible traces. These artists redefined Western avant-garde art as acts of sabotage, challenging institutional frameworks and reshaping art as activism in Cold War-era South Korea.
Allana Lindgren – Professor, Theatre History/Dance History, Dean, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria
Choreographing Subversion: Françoise Sullivan’s Activist Use of Spontaneity in “La danse et l’espoir” and “Dédale”
In 1948, the Montréal Automatists published Refus global, a manifesto that critiqued the artistic and social conservatism that dominated Québec at the time. Françoise Sullivan – a visual artist, choreographer, and dancer – was one of the manifesto’s signatories. Her essay “La danse et l’espoir,” was the only contribution by a woman included in Refus global and the only article to address the potential of dance to further the Automatist agenda. Examining “La danse et l’espoir” within the context of Sullivan’s early choreography, especially “Dédale” (1948), I will consider spontaneity as an activist strategy that promotes the subversive power of dance.
Hilary Lazar – Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh
Revolutionary Erotics of the Electric Slide: On the Emancipatory Potential of Joyful Street Protest
One of the more personally profound aspects of street protest is what classical sociologist Emile Durkheim refers to as “collective effervescence”—a feeling, albeit fleeting, of ecstatic euphoria, deep affinity with others, and a sense of limitless possibility. Movement theories, including George Katsiaficas’ “Eros Effect” and Mohammed Bamyeh’s “anarchist enlightenment,” point to the liberatory role this politically erotic connection plays in subjective and socio-cultural transformation. Although typically associated with the early phase of mobilizations, activists may also experience this during other liminal “moments of rupture” through ritualized performance and collective action. Roving dance parties, carnivalesque protest camps, and other anarchistic “temporary autonomous zones” can be especially powerful for producing an effervescent effect with lasting emancipatory potential. Yes, even flash mobs of the electric slide.
Discussion: 11:30 – 11:50 AM
Film/Video 12:00 – 1:20 PM
Frank Lopez – Documentary/activist filmmaker
Smash the Gatekeepers: The “Release and Share” Approach to Radical Filmmaking
In this talk, I’ll explore my “release and share” philosophy of instantaneously publishing frontline footage for movements in struggle. Drawing on over two decades of DIY filmmaking and publishing videos online—from documenting Wet’suwet’en resistance camps to supporting anti-fracking blockades—I’ll show how bypassing festival circuits and gatekeepers empowers communities to control their own narratives. This approach fosters collaboration, sparks direct action, and aligns with anarchist principles by decentralizing media production and sharing resources freely: the camera becomes a powerful tool of solidarity and collective liberation.
Clifton Ariwakehte Nicholas – Documentary/activist filmmaker (Kanyen’kehà:ka nation)
From Turtle Island to Palestine
My presentation concentrates on my current film project on Palestine. I will speak about the similarities between Canada, the U.S. and other State colonies vis-à-vis Israel and the genocide of indigenous peoples. My discussion encompasses various indigenous struggles in North America and how film has been used to bring these struggles into mainstream discourses. Furthermore, I will explore how grassroots media creators are a vital element in modern activism, bringing authentic information about various issues to the public consciousness.
Kimberly Croswell, PhD. — Independent scholar, Leadership Studies (Adult Education)
Subversive Media: Video Activism, Direct Action, and the Politics of Affect
The anarchist video collective sub.Media, formed in 1997, plays a leading role in the propagation of direct action through its subversive programming of news, social commentary, interviews, and documentaries. A distinctive feature of sub.Media is its deployment of radical hip hop music and video montages blended with original footage arranged in sequences of rapid jump cuts that build focused moments of action. Underlining much of the collective’s work is a militant anarchist discourse that celebrates and sharpens the politics of direct action, highlighting and reinforcing solidarity across diverse sites of global resistance. My talk will discuss how sub.Media educates and inspires public discourses surrounding direct action through the politics of affect, and how their radical aesthetics relate to their collective promotion of anarchism.
Discussion: 1:00 – 1:20 PM
Lunch: 1:30 – 2:20 PM
Critical Paradigms 2:30 – 4:20 PM
Mark Antliff, Art Historian, Duke University, Professor Emeritus
Joyous Egoism: André Colomer’s Insurrectionary Micro-Politics
My talk will focus on a pioneering anarchist activist, André Colomer (1886-1931), whose unique synthesis of Max Stirner’s egoism with the philosophy of Henri Bergson gave birth to a now forgotten international movement known as action d’art. Additionally, as I will demonstrate, Colomer’s ideas anticipate many important paradigms in the contemporary anarchist movement.
Rosalia Romero, Assistant Professor, Art History, Pomona College
Anarchism, Art, and Revolution at the U.S.–Mexico Border
During the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), the anarcho-individualist painter Dr. Atl and anarcho-communist leader Ricardo Flores Magón were both exiled to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In this talk, I discuss the work of these two figures during a pivotal period in Mexican history: the landscapes of Atl, which were created while the artist worked with a development company surveying land and water in Baja California; and the visual culture of Magón’s newspaper Regeneración when the Magonista movement launched rebellions to take over Tijuana and Mexicali. I will close with reflections on how disrupting the imaginary politics of the border was, and is, integral to transnational anarchism and art.
Nina Gourianova, Professor, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Northwestern University
From Anarchism to Marxism: Two models of Russian Avant-Gardism
I explore the aftermath of the collaboration of Russian avant-garde artists Aleksei Gan, Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Olga Rozanova, and others in Anarkhiia (1917–18), the daily newspaper of the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups. This was a short-lived phase (by July 1918 Anarkhiia was shut down by Lenin’s Communist government) but nonetheless extremely productive; retrospectively, it can be said to mark the eclipse of the avant-garde’s aesthetic anarchism. My analysis tracks the internal and external processes at work in the relationship between this early stage and the rise of its Marxist antithesis as the Communists consolidated their power during the Russian civil war (1917-21) and its aftermath. I focus on the ideological systems of avant-gardism generated by subservience to a Communist state dictatorship (the Soviet Union), which, in 1920s Russia, resulted in a “politicization of aesthetics” akin to Walter Benjamin’s concept of that phenomenon.
Josh McPhee — Graphic artist, designer, curator
Building (Counter) Institutions Through Material Culture
I will be sharing my conception of “(Counter) Institutions” and discuss how they constitute a rich and fruitful antiauthoritarian frame for arts-galvanizing social organization. I will draw on my personal experiences in co-founding Brooklyn’s Interference Archive (2011, on-going), initiating the international Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative (1998, on-going), and founding the Celebrate People’s History Poster Series (1998, on-going).
Discussion and Closing Remarks: 3:50 – 4:30 PM
Radical Hip Hop Fundraiser: 8:00 – 10:00 PM
Doors: 7:30 PM
Venue: Paul Philips Hall, 1923 Fernwood Road, Victoria
Anarchists in Exile – all donations go to Egalité, a collective of Russian anarchists in exile (Georgia)
Lee Reed, Tarek Funk, Pindian (Kwakwaka’wakw & Nuu-Cha-Nulth nations)
Directions
Conference Location:
Harry Hickman Building, Rm. 105, University of Victoria
Public Transit
Numerous buses go to the University of Victoria, notably the #15 (express); #14, #7, and #4, which all leave from downtown Victoria. Walking from the University of Victoria Transit Exchange (1) to the Harry Hickman Building (2) takes about 15 minutes.
By Car
Closest parking lots to the Harry Hickman Building:
Fine Arts Parking Lot (6)
MacLaurin Building Parking Lot (E)
Comments
Keep academics out of our…
anon (not verified) Thu, 02/20/2025 - 11:17
Keep academics out of our shit
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