Lecture: Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination

About the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination

As part of our Protest in the City workshop, we invited Isa Fremeaux and Jay Jordan of the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination for a public lecture about their work in between performance and pedagogy, protest and poetics.

Born in a London squat in 2004, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination is committed to pushing boundaries of all kinds. Known for stirring up mass civil disobedience—like organising bicycle blockades during the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen, recruiting a rebel clown army across the UK, constructing an illegal lighthouse on an old airport control tower, launching a raft regatta to shut down a coal-fired power station and refusing to be censored by London's Tate Modern museum, the Laboratory brings together artists and activists to collaboratively design and carry out creative forms of direct action. Actions that are meant to be as joyful as they are politically impactful. At the core of their practice lies a fusion of creation and resistance, protest and proposal - interwoven like strands of DNA. They call their work "experiments" because outcomes are always unpredictable. But one thing is certain: in the age of the Capitalocene, art’s role is no longer just to reflect the world—it must help change it.

Isa Fremeaux (she/her) is an educator, facilitator and author. Engaged in social movements for almost 20 years, she has facilitated assemblies gathering several hundred people, co-organised international mobilisations and climate camps, trained thousands of people to reinvent modes of disobedience... Her passion is to explore collective dynamics and all the ways in which these can be made more fruitful and joyful, notably through popular education and rituals. She happily shares her skills to support and accompany various collectives, groups and associations in their flourishing.

Jay (formerly John) Jordan or JJ (she/they) is an author, art activist, part-time sex worker and full time trouble maker. They have been labelled a "Domestic Extremist" by the UK police, and “a magician of rebellion” by the French press. JJ has spent three decades applying what they learnt from theatre and performance art to direct action.
They like spaces betwixt and between of all sorts, especially between art and activism, culture and "nature", the masculine and feminine, protest and proposition. They have performed in museums and International Theater Festivals, trained people in squats, co-organised climate camps, choreographed carnivalesque riots, written a BBC radio play for today, and an opera-for-one.