Remember Revolution
Installation
Stills
In partnership with the Broadway Media Centre we traced the legacy of 1968, the year when the underground went overground, and mass protests erupted across Europe and the United States, many directed against the war in Vietnam. By May, the streets of Paris had been taken over by a million people. Their demands were nebulous and far-reaching – they called for a ‘Revolution of Everyday Life’. Slogans appeared on the streets - poetic, militant, jubilant and absurd: ‘Under the paving stones, the beach’, ‘commodities are the opium of the people’, ‘no forbidding allowed’, ‘never work’.
The influence of ’68 is inestimable: it reshaped the Left, radicalised French philosophy and inspired English Punk. Its spirit is evident in the G8 protests this century.
In May 2008, we remembered revolution by examining the relationship between filmmaking, recent art and political revolt. The films at Broadway were complemented by Disobedience, an ambitious and engrossing exhibition-cum-archive of films, graphic art and other ephemera curated by Marco Scotini and designed by artist Luca Frei. It drew a global picture of four decades of resistance, beginning with the tumultuous events of Italy in the 70s – the ‘Laboratory’ of what has been called the ‘Movement of Movements’ today.
