’12 Hour Action Group’ brings together leading artists, curators, poets and writers

Published On Thu 1 Dec 2016 by Grant Hill

Dozens of artists ranging from counterculture figures to the creators of modern day fairy tales will perform at an international symposium at the University of Dundee this weekend.

The University’s Cooper Gallery will host ’12 Hour Action Group’ from 11am-11pm on Saturday, 3^rd December. It has been organised as part of the two-chapter ‘Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event?’ exhibition. The exhibition and its wider programme of events take feminism as a starting point to explore self-organisation and alternative politics in culture, society and everyday life.

The ’12 Hour Action Group’ will feature keynote talks, collective readings, actions, performances, screenings and a round table discussion all determined by an ethos of dialogue and experimentation. Esteemed artists, writers, critics, curators and academics will take part in the event

Award-winning writer Kirsty Logan, whose books explore fairy tales and folklore, will read from her work, while other participants include Linder, the celebrated radical feminist whose involvement in the punk and post-punk scenes led to her creating cover artwork for the likes of Buzzcocks and Magazine as well as contributing photography to records made by her close friend Morrissey.

Cooper Gallery curator Sophia Hao said, “Inspired by ‘action groups’ in the 1970s and 80s that sought to achieve changes to a particular situation, 12-Hour Action Group foregrounds practices of resistance, collectivity and self-organisation. It was this seditiousness that enabled feminist thinking to become a volatile politics instigating urgent alternatives to the cultural, political and economic machinery of power. 

“The event is part of the wider exhibition programme that opens up how the inspiring revolutionary practice of feminist thinking on power is enacted through the body, institutional operations and systems of representation.”

‘Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event?’ takes place at the Cooper Gallery and off-site venues in Dundee and features work by seminal artists from the past four decades. Chapter Two will take place between January and March 2017.

More information about 12 Hour Action Group is available at: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/exhibitions/events/actiongroupsymposium/.

The event is expected to be at capacity so members of the public interested in attending must RSVP in advance via https://www.eventbrite.com/e/international-symposium-12-hour-action-group-tickets-28725250999.

For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
Press Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
Tel: +44 (0)1382 384768
Mobile: 07854 953277
Email: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk