Disobedient Objects

Product Information

They range from folk art, for example, signs made by people for protest marches to the very high-tech, such as mobile phone-powered drones for filming demonstrations or the police, which you can make yourself very cheaply.

When students in London saw videos of this online, they produced their own book shields and this spread to the US and all over Europe. None of these groups every met, but they felt like they were communicating with each other. The phrase “go the extra mile” comes from a biblical example of civil resistance. During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus advises oppressed Jews that if a Roman “forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles”. While this lesson is widely taken as advocating the meek acceptance of authority figures, theologian Walter Wink advocates an alternative interpretation: in first-century Judaea, Romans were legally entitled to demand Jews carry items for up to one mile, but any further than this and the Roman could be prosecuted. A Jew going that extra mile committed no crime themself, but turned the tables of power on the Roman, who had to wriggle out of a potentially humiliating scenario. Jesus, therefore, is not talking of cowed subservience but of finding sophisticated legal loopholes to destabilise power dynamics between oppressors and oppressed. This theme of legal subversion underpins many objects on show. Disobedient Objects goes beyond the political posters that usually represent social movement in museums, presenting high-tech objects such as drones for filming demonstrations as well as handcrafted items such as placards and textiles that reveal the stories behind protests. Icon spoke to the exhibition’s co-curator, Gavin Grindon. This banner opposes the idea of a mere financial crisis, identifying capitalism as the source of climate chaos and ongoing inequality and injustice Some exhibits employ the charm of something woven or crafted, such as the arpilleras, the appliqued textiles made first in Chile and then in other places, that commemorate people taken away by ruling regimes and other atrocities. With these, the labour and care taken in making them commands respect and disarms aggression.Museums often feel haunted because the objects they contain are relics, or what Elizabeth Wilson calls the ‘congealed memories’ of the people, now absent, that handled them. The V&A’s current exhibition Disobedient Objects invites us to think about this intimate relationship between things and the people who make and use them. It consists of 99 objects, made by people campaigning for social and political change, arranged according to different methods of protest. There is a focus on the ingenuity and craftsmanship in the design of the objects; even the exhibition space, designed by Jonathan Barnbrook, uses an aesthetic language of Do It Yourself manuals that emphasises the hand-made character of most of the objects.

The utilitarian aesthetic of the user manual finds its way into a series of how-to guides – illustrated instructions to make objects featured in the exhibition. These guides were applied to the invitations and are available as well as tear-off sheets in the exhibition itself.Grindon understand these complexities all too well, having been deeply immersed in the subject matter as a post-doctoral fellow in visual and material culture at Kingston University. The academic and author came to the V&A specifically to curate Disobedient Objects, and has spent the past two years carefully approaching global activists he already had relationships with, to convince them of this show's importance. The exhibit largely covers a period from the 70s to present day, from lo-fi banners and badges showing how solidarity has a part to play, to DIY opensource drones now used to help film demonstrations or the police. Structure: ceramic tiles on a corroding metal body, abundance of mixed media embellishments, including wooden components But is this yet another co-opting of the counter-culture by the establishment? As I arrived, my scepticism was challenged by two panels of ceramic collage flanking the museum’s entrance. Commissioned from the West London artist, Carrie Reichardt, they each depict a protestor holding up a shield decorated to look like a book cover against the baton-wielding figures of riot police with fifty pound notes collaged in their visors. The book-shields bear the slogans ‘History is a Weapon’, ‘Nothing is inevitable, Everything is Possible’ and ‘Power to the People’, ‘Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, Rather it is a hammer to shape it’, and seemed to announce that disobedience was not only possible, but also desirable. A set of stamps designed by artists Ivan Cash and Andy Dao to illustrate wealth disparity in America

Bavarian sociologist Max Weber defines a state as any community which effectively commands a monopoly on violence. For Weber, the so-called “grassroots” and “establishment” exist across a single spectrum of power struggles. Arguably the designs in this exhibition are neither objects of disobedience nor obedience, but simply objects of agency tuned to their creators’ circumstances. The curated shoe-slingshot is ultimately as much a designed object of social control as the un-curated tanks it is used against. The show is about existing design so it made sense to use a documentary approach to find examples of things that have actually been made," Grindon explained. "None of this stuff is professionally designed, it's just happening in the public sphere in various ways." L J Roberts, Gaybashers, Come and Get It, USA. Image courtesy of Blanca GarciaWeekly updates on the latest design and architecture vacancies advertised on Dezeen Jobs. Plus occasional news. Dezeen Awards If there is one, it’s about people’s power to remake objects and change the world. And also that art and design aren’t simply things made for commercial purposes, but are involved in your everyday life. As with all successful projects, time for comprehensive, collaborative planning is fundamental. Complex objects, second guessing the unknown and tight deadlines can add considerably to workloads. The lenders (some of whom needed to remain anonymous) and the object types were a little more unconventional than usual. For instance, we knew many of the objects had been produced in reaction to a particular event, made with materials at hand and, due to their use, were potentially quite fragile. Some of the challenges raised during early-stage group discussions included: The design uses the VirusFonts typeface Doctrine – itself a political critique of the North Korea dictatorship. Doctrine’s alternate character set provided a second voice in which to speak the words of activist, artist and maker, a voice which speaks alongside the more conventional museum narrative.

Isabel Hardingham is a part-time Gallery Assistant at the V&A, a role that she combines with being Senior Bookshop Associate at the Architectural Association Bookshop. Working inside the Disobedient Objects exhibition, she reflects on the impact that the Guerrilla Girls made on her as an art history student and on the ongoing relevance of their work Poster, Guerrilla Girls, 1989 Book Blocs’, shields painted to resemble book covers; a form of protest in themselves as well as a means of defenceThe Zapatista Dolls are of a similar size and weight so I decided to use a similar and minimal approach when mounting these, especially as they could just be supported underneath their arms to hold them in place when on display. Early stages of cutting the rod and shaping it so the dolls sit at the desired angle. My favourite exhibit is a tiny resistor from a Polish radio, turned into a Solidarnosc badge. A play on the word resistance, it’s also a nod to the radio they communicated with. As with several exhibits, I wondered if this resistor might be better presented in the Science Museum, or at least it would have been interesting to develop the ideas in contexts Occupy George” overprinted dollar bill, a symbol of the unfair distribution of wealth. (Photo courtesy Andy Dao and Ivan Cash) The identity is centred around the transformation of everyday objects into weapons of social change. Rather than placing the focus on the exhibition title, a call for social action takes centre stage: a silhouette of an ordinary object, superimposed with directions on how to transform it into an object for political activism. Disobedient objects were not made with a museum in mind. Nor do they rely on the museum to legitimate them – but this does not mean that they have nothing to gain from appearing here. Before we located them, some of these objects were retired from the street to rest in private lofts or social centre basements. Now they find themselves returned to visible public history. For other objects, their struggles are unfinished, and when this exhibition closes they will return to take their place within them. Whatever our emotional reaction or identification with these unfinished objects, we mostly encounter them for only a brief moment. Perhaps inches from our bodies in a crowd; held by (or holding up) our friends; in news footage of people who could be us; in photographs of days growing distant; or suddenly reappearing in a courtroom. The exhibition of these objects is, in fact, one moment when you might actually spend time with them, right in front of you, able to slowly examine them beside each other. How might this moment of exhibition relate to these other moments, of use by activists, newspaper photographers and so on?