THE CHICAGO SURREALIST FRANKLIN ROSEMONT TAPPED THE SUBVERSIVE ENERGY OF POPULAR CULTURE ~ Ryan Bunnell ~ Since its inception, Surrealism has been attractive to anarchists. Its methods and principles speak to us. In surrealism, many anarchists recognise our own hatred of boredom, disdain for the tyranny of positivist rationalism, and our desire to merge art and everyday life, work and play, reason and madness, our dreams with reality. Though surrealism was never an explicitly anarchist movement – a fact made obvious by the alliances of some of its leaders, albeit short-lived and contentious, with various authoritarian communist organisations – its spirit of radical imagination has made it a natural ally. It’s no surprise, then, that the Chicago Surrealist Group, founded in 1966, was born from the efforts of anarchists active in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, aka the Wobblies). The group’s co-founder, Franklin Rosemont (1943-2009), in what seems to be a challenge he oriented his life around, took André Breton at his word regarding the relationship between art and liberation. In this collection, he engages heavily in the surrealist tradition of self-electing predecessors and fellow travellers – unwitting surrealists throughout history as well as in his own time. Rosemont is impressively well read, and he gives the surrealist treatment, in ways I found engaging and fascinating, to an incredibly broad range of works. For Rosemont, the primary locus of art’s liberatory potential was not to be discovered in the vaunted literary canon, some bourgeois museum, or university lecture hall, but in comic strips, dime-store novels, record stores, television shows, and the silver screen. In other words: popular art – which for him meant proletarian art. When Rosemont talks about popular art, he very much does not mean Pop Art, which he calls a misunderstanding and mistranslation of surrealist ideas. From the introduction: “Pop, as well as these other art trends subscribed to a reactionary ‘High Culture’ elitism, as opposed to surrealism’s durational homage to popular culture against the grain of dominant culture itself”. It’s this willingness to distinguish between popular culture and dominant culture that sustains Rosemont’s belief in the subversive and revolutionary potential of not just overtly radical art like Wobbly cartoons, but of mainstream, mass-produced consumer media like television, music, and Hollywood movies. This enthusiastic optimism is what I found most charming and compelling about his work. Rosemont’s synthesis of Old Left and New Left ideas gave him a means of engaging with mass media in a way far less bleak than his contemporaries in the Situationist International. The Chicago group collaborated with the Situationist International on publishing projects, and Rosemont was well aware of, and interested in, their notions of détournement (the appropriation and repurposing of images from dominant culture turned against it). But the SI’s inverse notion of récupération (the idea that once something is incorporated into the Spectacle, it becomes complicit in its nefarious project of commodification, fetishisation, and the reification of power structures, or at least becomes neutralized and rendered inert) was clearly not a view Rosemont shared. In fact, it appears he believed this process could actually work against the interests of the dominant power structure. In the introduction, Abigail Susik says that for Rosemont the premise of détournement, the “rerouting of mass culture by everyday individuals”, implied the inevitability of “…the infiltration of mainstream culture by subversive currents”. In the essay A Bomb-Toting, Long-Haired Wild-Eyed Fiend: The Image of the Anarchist in Popular Culture, Rosemont offers a fascinating illustration of this process. Through an exhaustive survey of the appearances of this stereotype in various media from the late 19th through the early/mid 20th century, he shows how it morphed from a reviled figure used as a foil to valorise the state, into a quasi-heroic one, employed by humorists to mock police and other authority figures—an embodiment of “humor in the service of revolution!” More so than this figure, however, Rosemont saw the greatest possible manifestation of humor in the service of revolution in none other than Bugs Bunny. And it is presumably through this same cultural mechanism of infiltration that a monkey wrench like Bugs Bunny found itself tossed into the gears of capital. Franklin Rosemont in Chicago, 2007. Photo: Thomas Good Rosemont declares that for him, a single Bugs Bunny comic book (The Magic Sneeze) will always be “worth more – in terms of freedom and human dignity – than all the novels of Proust, Sartre, Faulkner, Hemingway”. To understand the degree to which he valorises this outlaw trickster who is “categorically opposed to wage slavery in all its forms”, one must understand Rosemont’s conception of Bugs’ nemesis, Elmer Fudd. Fudd is the “perfect characterization of a specifically modern type: the petty bureaucrat, the authoritarian mediocrity, nephew or grandson of Pa Ubu. If the Ubus (Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin) dominated the period between the two wars, for the last thirty years it has been the Fudds who have directed our misery”. (He even ridicules disgraced former surrealist-turned-fascist Salvador Dalí for having once been an anti-Fudd before becoming the worst kind of Fudd.) And as everyone familiar with the cartoons knows, Bugs’ favourite activities revolve around robbing and humiliating Fudd. Rosemont boldly claims: “The very appearance on the stage of history of a character such as Bugs Bunny is proof that someday the Fudds will be vanquished, that someday all the carrots of the world will be ours”. A cynical reader could dismiss such a claim as naïveté or rhetorical excess—and I’m often a cynical reader. How could some commercial artefact of mass culture, whose main purpose is getting kids to watch advertisements, be in service of anything but the status quo? However, if I allow for a version of my own personal history in which, long before I encountered Emma Goldman or Mikhail Bakunin, it was actually Bart Simpson who made me an anarchist, I can sympathise with and thoroughly enjoy this idea – even find it inspirational. For Rosemont, surrealism represented a means of rejecting the world as it was given: a world shaped by institutions in the service of capital, where life is reduced to production and consumption, and imagination is dominated by rationalism. Throughout the collection, he explores a diverse array of art in which he finds articulations of this same impulse: Gothic literature, IWW art, blues music, rock ‘n’ roll, 19th-century utopian sci-fi, even the writings of early Puritans in colonial America. In much of this work—where I might have seen something compelling, repellent, or simply entertaining—Rosemont saw subversive energy and revolutionary potential. Surrealism, Bugs Bunny, and the Blues: Selected Writings on Popular Culture by Franklin Rosemont, edited by Paul Buhle and Abigail Susik. PM Press, 2025, 348pp. The post Book review: Surrealism, Bugs Bunny, and the Blues appeared first on Freedom News.

THE POET AND PERFORMER IS A VETERAN OF THE DUTCH GRASSROOTS MOVEMENT ~ Christiaan Verwey, Buiten de Orde ~ Last night you were with your band Your Local Pirates in Burgers in Eindhoven. How was that? It was a successful evening with a mixed audience: from young punks to old regulars. Everyone was equally enthusiastic. Also during our more radical numbers. That was surprising. We played together with the dirty folk band Per Verse Vis. Very nice music that is good to dance to. In terms of content it did not really connect to our political message, but it was a nice party. What would you most like to be called for? A poetry recital, a performance, or an action? As long as it can be combined with an action, I don’t mind. Together with Peter Storm I am part of Your Local Pirates. We use music as part of the fight. That is what we like to do most. As a motivator, encouragement and possibly to stir things up a bit. If this works I will be very happy. People can certainly approach us for this. And of course also for a poetry recital or an action to participate in. What role does anarchism play in your life? It is a guideline for how I live. Helping each other, supporting each other, making decisions together. We make music very clearly from an anarchist point of view. For example, we do not want to make a profit and we believe that our texts and music belong to everyone and can be used by the movement. In fact, anyone who wants to use it for a demonstration does not even have to ask. That is also anarchism for me. We are still far from an anarchist society. We have the climate crisis, Israeli colonialism and the global rise of the far right. Where do you start and where do you prioritise? A very difficult question. For years I have been committed to the No Border struggle. I increasingly experienced this as heavy and difficult. At a certain point I didn’t know anymore. Eventually I stopped and focused on actions against foie gras and against the closure of an wildlife corridor at the Hoge Veluwe. And so I remain a bit searching. There are so many important struggles. I am non-binary myself and active in the queer struggle. And I also see this as part of the struggle against the rise of the extreme right. The policy of the extreme right has an influence on society as a whole. Also how the agro-industry is treated, with refugees and how Palestine actions are responded to. I would prefer to be active on all fronts at the same time. But unfortunately we only have 24 hours a day and I also have a private life that deserves my attention. In fact, it is always a balancing act between the different priorities. Lately I have mainly tried to seek out the struggle closer to home. I think this is the most effective. You know your surroundings best, your fellow activists and the advantage is that you don’t have to travel far. Among other things, I am active for the Zaankanters for Palestine. With this group we also try to connect locally with as many other clubs as possible, such as squatters and Extinction Rebellion. If you compare the current action movement with that of the 80s you see big differences. How do you experience that? In the 80s I experienced a lot of intense things. For example, I was one of the co-detainees of Hans Kok who died in a police cell in 1985. If you are in a cell and you hear that one of your fellow comrades has died in a similar cell, it does something to you. And if someone then screams or cries out of anger or sadness and is addressed by the guards with the threatening words ‘do we have to come in for a moment’, that is of course traumatic. And also after an incredibly violent eviction of a squat. That is unprecedentedly intense. In those days we had no support and recovery , which we now know within the anarchist movement. You were released, you drank a pot of beer in the squat café in the evening, told tall tales, soaked in a lot of grief and anger, and you kept on pounding. Before you knew it, another big event was already on the horizon. You sometimes join XR actions. How does that feel for you? Well, I got involved with XR in a rather special way. Last year I was arrested for sedition because I called online for an A12 blockade. At that moment, five other people were also dragged from their beds. And I was the only one who was not involved in the organisation at all. Together we prepared ourselves to come up with a coherent story for the lawsuit. Which I think went well. Through all the talking we got to know each other well. And despite the fact that I had a much more radical attitude, I had very good contact with my co-defendants. I felt welcome and appreciated by them. However, I do have difficulty with XR’s consensus on action, especially the far-reaching pacifism. I myself believe that you are allowed to resist police violence and attacking fascists. And no, I have never followed one of their action training courses. Why would I? I have enough experience. The nice thing about XR is that they also spend a lot of time on wellbeing. More and more people dare to say that they are dissatisfied with the political system. The far right is cleverly exploiting this. Isn’t this the right time for the anarchist movement to stand up and make a counter-voice heard? Yes, we should definitely do that a lot more. I think it is important to show ourselves in demonstrations. For example, we participated in the last climate demonstration with an anarchist bloc. We handed out flyers with information about who we are and what we want. And of course with the call for people to join us. I would really like to see a lot more anarchist flags in demonstrations. Many people have no idea what the meaning is of the colours black-green, black-red or black-purple on a flag. A great way to start a conversation with people. This can also be done through other activities, such as handing out food or clothing on the street. Of course, it is also important to write about anarchism. But visibility on the street is what I think is most important. Music can certainly play a role in that. With our duo Your Local Pirates we express the anarchist idea. Our lyrics are anarchist and we tell all sorts of things between the songs. When we are playing on the street somewhere, that has an important function. Mutual help creates beautiful things. We also played at a food distribution activity in Utrecht. A lot of people came by to eat, pick out clothes and we were there with music and our political message. Really great. That’s how we were able to bring our musical message to Palestine camps. This is what we like to do best. Which performance do you look back on with the most pleasure? We wrote a song about squatting, which was picked up by the Woonstrijd. The song is called ‘What is not allowed, that is still possible’. We were asked to play this song at quite a few demonstrations and manifestations. Now that people are starting to sing this on the streets, I think: that is really spot on. We also wrote a song about the climate battle, which we played at the big climate march in 2019. When we participated in the big demonstration in The Hague, we had a megaphone and a guitar with us. We handed out flyers so that people could sing along. This was really great. Of course, we hope that more people will do that. And I also have the idea that more and more people are singing at actions and demonstrations. I am happy about that. What kind of music do you prefer to listen to at home when there is no action or demonstration planned and you want to relax? In the car I often put on the concert channel. This is a classical channel. When I am tense or stressed, I love to listen to this. For the rest I am an old rocker and I like to listen to bands and artists like Randy Newman, Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground, King Crimson and the Soft Machine. Of course it also depends on my mood. For example, I sometimes love to listen to free jazz. What song would you like to contribute to the soundtrack for the revolution? Because I saw that question coming, I prepared myself for it. I translated a song called L’estaca by Lluis Llach. He is a Catalan singer. It was written in the time of Franco. At that time, you could not openly oppose the dictator, because that would cost you your head. That is why he made a song around a metaphor, a stake that we are all tied to. And if we all pull hard on that stake on our side, it will eventually fall over. I translated it into Dutch, then it is called De staak. We play this with Your Local Pirates. I would like to add that song. But then in one of the many translated versions, namely that of the Klezmatics. Their performance is in Yiddish and is called Der Yokh . I think both the language and the music are incredibly beautiful. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine translation The post Joke Kaviaar: “We make music very clearly from an anarchist point of view” appeared first on Freedom News.

NOW ON SHOW AT WHITECHAPEL GALLERY, HIS WORK SINCE THE 1970S INCLUDES SOME OF BRITAIN’S MOST ICONIC IMAGES OF RESISTANCE ~ Becky Haghpanah-Shirwan ~ Since the 1970s, Peter Kennard has produced some of Britain’s most iconic and influential images of resistance and dissent. These have spanned his support for the movements against the Vietnam War, Apartheid and nuclear weapons; the alter-global and anti-war campaigns in the 2000s; and his ongoing commitment to environmental activism and position on the present wars in Ukraine and Gaza. His exhibition Archive of Dissent at Whitechapel Gallery, open until 19 January 2025, is repository of social and political history on its own. Showcasing five decades of his work, it also explores a way of making art that has continuously pushed against the status quo. In this interview, I talked to Peter about his uncompromising visual practise. You started painting at an early age. Can you explain what drew you to art in the early days and then what galvanised you into producing art that was politically engaged? I started painting when I was about thirteen. Coal was banned when smokeless fuel was introduced so the coal shed at the bottom of our flats was empty and I turned it into a studio. I painted on bits of wood, card, metal, anything I could find mainly from nearby bomb sites which were still there from the war. I painted and drew small mainly figurative work and rushed through influences, Bacon, Sutherland, Picasso, Kollwitz, Giacometti, Goya were all plundered for techniques, materials and subject matter. I left school at sixteen and got a scholarship to Byam Shaw School of Art, where I continued painting and in 1967 went on to the Slade School. Peter Kennard, Whitechapel Gallery, July 2024 I became politically conscious through the anti-Vietnam War movement. A crucial event for me in terms of my work was what’s become known as the Battle of Grosvenor Square in March 1968, this big anti-war demo ended up in a violent confrontation with the police in front of the American Embassy. I’d never experienced the police including police horses seemingly on a rampage against demonstrators. I suddenly wanted to find a way to make work that could relate to the war, the protesters against war and to other struggles around the world, the Civil rights movement in the US, the Anti-Apartheid movement etc. That’s when I started using photography by ripping photographs from magazines and newspapers which I copied onto 5X4 negatives and then sandwiched the negatives to create composite images showing the wars, uprisings, protests, state violence, picket lines etc. At the Slade the big thing at the time was colour-field painting so my degree show of work mainly showing violent protest and war was not appreciated by the powers that be and was placed in the basement next to the gents bog. Nor was my first street work much appreciated by the Slade. It was in 1970 consisting of large prints of one of the four students protesting the Vietnam War who were all shot dead by the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University. I fly posted big prints up around London with a group of fellow Slade students in solidarity with the US students. This image is the earliest placard in my new installation The People’s University of the East End on show at the Whitechapel gallery. It is this authenticity, in process and spirit, that is central to your work, which presents a truth. How does the artist fight through the recent onslaught of deep fakes and fake news to maintain this and remain a witness? I think art maintains its integrity if it comes from a passion deep inside the artist. Deep fakes, AI montages etc are more and more dangerous as they become more and more authentic. But don’t forget that a hundred years ago Stalin airbrushed Trotsky out of group photos of the Central Committee. The Stalin School of Falsification, as it’s become known, was a precursor of what’s happening now with AI. It’s always been possible for photos to be manipulated. It’s the basis of photomontage that photos can be joined up to get to the truth lurking behind the single image. But AI isn’t looking for a truth. You can cut a photo of the Pentagon and place it in a photo of a bomb crater in Gaza. AI can do that technically but the idea has to come from a human who is moved to create this as a symbol of the horrific reality pounding Gaza 24/24. In my own recent work ‘Boardroom’ I’ve tried to deconstruct the idea of photomontage by showing images of oil company logos or drones projected through glass onto human faces. This work is, in part, a response to our world of HD screens showing high-res images with everything smoothed out, and leaving us as passive consumers. In ‘Boardroom’ nothing is hidden, the means of image making is foregrounded to show the process which hopefully encourages critical thinking in the viewer.   Peter Kennard, Whitechapel Gallery, July 2024 In your new work, Double Exposure (2023) you integrated light via a Raspberry Pi computer to make your first dynamic work. Can you speak more about your move away from the ‘classic’ mode of photomontage in your later works? Evidently they are produced for a gallery setting instead of a media platform.  In my recent work in my Whitechapel exhibition, ‘Double Exposure’ and ‘Boardroom’ which were first supported in their making and shown at A/POLITICAL last year I’ve tried to make work that uses lights and three-dimensional structures to break down and expose the elements that were originally connected together in my photomontages. In ‘Double Exposure’ I’ve collaborated with the technologist Nigel Brown using Raspberry Pi computers to flash lights on and off behind the stocks and shares pages of the Financial Times. When a light flashes on the page of the FT it shows a montage of police violence, climate breakdown, war etc. It’s revealing what’s behind the serried ranks of numbers on the page, a conjunction of image and text that is never shown together in the press. It’s trying to create a form of photomontage in action, that connects obscene profit with its obscene result. The other work ‘Boardroom’, mentioned previously, contains studding of different lengths screwed into salvaged wooden boards with images of oil company logos, drones, crosshairs etc. attached to glass so that they project onto faces that have no mouths. The structures are all exposed so that you see the image and its projection. It’s deconstructing montage so that nothing is hidden, all elements are up for grabs. Both works are trying to go beyond the flat screen of computers that we all spend our days staring at to engage the viewer in a more physical way that changes perspective as you view it from different angles. In a sense both this work and ‘Double Exposure’ are attempts to make gallery-based work that can counteract our total reliance on the computer screen. They are both intentionally difficult to look at compared with the montages I’ve made in the past. By using crude metal supports that are not sleek and smooth I want people to engage with the work through its materiality and feel how the technology of war and the company logos of climate breakdown are projecting onto humanity. I’ve always thought in the past that galleries would rather turn a blind eye to political art which is why I’ve always made work that I feel can stand up to the scrutiny of the gallery setting and then fight to get it shown. In my current exhibition ‘Archive of Dissent’ at the Whitechapel Gallery, which is a remarkable gallery with a radical past and now a radical present, I’ve noticed a much more engaged response to my work than before. This is due to the times we live in, where the lies and power structures of the so-called land of the free are so blatantly obvious that they are in our minds all the time. We see everyday videos of some of the thousands of children dead under the rubble of Gaza and we know of the weekly arms shipments from the USA to Israel with the compliance of our Labour Party. Peter Kennard, Whitechapel Gallery, July 2024 Could you speak more about your personal politics? Your practice has spanned over 50 years and so you have seen governments come and go. Seeing that a large part of your artwork was produced as a critique of Conservative politics, do you find art-making more challenging when you’re not the opposition? I am a committed internationalist, concerned with inhumanity, poverty, racism and war wherever it is, so the fact we now have the Labour Party in power does not make a jot of difference to my art practise, I believe they will continue the Neo-Liberal onslaught on the poor. the working class and the climate protesters that the Tories brought in. That almost feels guaranteed with Starmer leading a party that will not call for a ceasefire in Gaza. I will just continue to express my outrage by all means possible. I produced some anti – nuclear weapons posters for the Labour Party for a short time in the early 1980’s when almost by mistake they were calling for unilateral disarmament, it didn’t last. I only ever joined the Labour Party when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. Suddenly there was a chink of light in the Labour wall of false promises. I left the party when he was shat on, both by the Labour Party and the establishment press, in the end being thrown out of the party.  Being so outspoken regarding the dire reality of UK politics, you have managed to achieve what many politically engaged artists have not been able to – a voice on the streets and also institutional recognition. How do you think your work has been able to transgress the more traditional nature of these cultural venues? Have you ever come under any pressure to conform to external pressures? I’ve always been concerned about getting my work out through as many channels as possible, be it postcards, badges, t-shirts, books, posters, newspapers, museums, art galleries. We’re living in times of great emergency, climate catastrophe, Gaza, Ukraine, the poverty created by neo-liberalism and on and on… For me that calls for an art that can communicate both inside and outside the structures created especially for showing art. The official art world has only recently opened up to showing artists of colour and women artists but if you cross an unspoken line there can be trouble. I’ve had work censored in the past for being too direct and that’s a good reason to try and show in art galleries, it pushes the institutions into stating their position on subjects they’d rather brush under the carpet, so they don’t offend their sponsors. As state money for the arts has been reduced or in some cases has dried up all together sponsorship has become key to survival for a number of arts institutions, but it always comes with strings attached in the sense that the artist’s work should not name names. I’ve only found a few institutions that would support the making of my work. In the 1980s it was the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone who supported the production of my posters against nuclear weapons and were then sent around the country. The Imperial War Museum supported new work for my Retrospective Unofficial War Artist in 1995. More recently, it is A/POLITICAL which is the first organisation I can think of in Britain that is actually committed to supporting and collecting work that is dissident to the status quo and is overtly political without being propagandist. It’s a vitally important organisation because it’s the only arts-based organisation where radical political ideas are central to its thinking and where artists and thinkers are encouraged to pursue projects that would be considered dangerous to the status quo of other arts institutions. Peter Kennard, Whitechapel Gallery, July 2024 Having the accolade of being the first Professor of Political Art in the country, lecturing at the Royal College of Arts from 1995, you have maintained and nurtured the younger generation of engaged artists for nearly three decades. How did you reconcile your life-long solidarity with the working class, with your teaching at a University that is prohibitive for many?  I’ve considered teaching to have been an important part of my practise as an artworker. Teaching art is a complex business especially as the art schools have been and are being under severe attack from the state. When I first began teaching the students didn’t have large fees to pay and also got small grants. It meant poorer students could come on courses and the social and class mix which resulted created a thriving experimental environment where the students could really let rip and go down alleyways of thought and making. Now it’s more difficult for students to work so freely as modular systems and marking projects have been imported onto art courses and the organic nature of making art is poured into a structure that is inherently against the free space that an art school should inhabit. Art schools are not just about nurturing the next generation of artists (as we know so much of the best rock music has come from ex-art students) they are places where young people who don’t feel they quite fit into the 9-5 job machine can find an alternative way of being in the world. That’s why the Tories have cut off so much funding to art from primary schools up to universities they’re shit scared of what they see as the incipient anarchy of art and artists that are not under their iron fisted control. Do you think this environment is still a useful and effective space for protest, and for artists who want to produce art that’s against the grain? While maintaining a half time job at the RCA I’ve always gone around the country giving talks and tutorials at all sorts of colleges and art schools. I still find that working class students are getting loans and becoming art students, often having to work evenings and weekends to keep going. It’s tough, but they are determined to find a voice through creating something, be it painting, sculpture, performance, music, writing etcetera, anything and everything that is against the grain of our corporate landscape.  Peter Kennard, Whitechapel Gallery, July 2024 I show my work to students but never foist on them the idea that their own work should be explicitly political. I introduce them to histories of political and social art that are not fashionable so often are not part of the curriculum but I’m totally against wanting to get students to make a certain kind of art. It’s more about them finding what it is they feel passionately about and then going for it. No-one gives a fuck about artists making work or not making work, it’s totally about the compulsion to do it and finding a way to continue after college. I always get shocked when people refer to my ‘career’, I’ve never thought of it as a career, it’s more a compulsion and teaching students is enriching when they themselves find ways to express their own compulsion. Peter Kennard: Archive of Dissent. Whitechapel Gallery. Closes 19 January 2025. The post Peter Kennard: “My art erupts from outrage” appeared first on Freedom News.