Magick Desobedience

All battles are battles of imagination and storytelling.

As for magic, it happens when things stop being what they are and become what we want them to be.

At Labofii, there is little difference between magic, art and activism. These three practices consider that attention is what governs reality and that reality can be transformed through imagination.

As an introductory workshop to Feral, these two days will be dedicated to exploring the use of ritual and magic as tools for radical social movements fighting petro-patriarchal-colonial capitalism.

We will use somatic practices, learn the basics of sigilisation, discuss historical and contemporary case studies and share our experiences of fertile fringes, where the boundaries between fiction and reality dissolve and magic happens.

This workshop is open to artists, activists, witches and anyone else interested in exploring these ancient tools of social transformation, so necessary in these times of polycrisis, when our worlds and our struggles are in such need of re-enchantment.

Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii or L.I.I)

Isa Frémeaux (she) was Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College-University of London (UK) for 10 years before leaving the institution to breathe in the winds of freedom and collective action. She now lends her skills to various collectives, associations and institutions as a trainer and consultant. She is co-author with Jay of the book- film Les Sentiers de L'utopie (La Découverte, 2008) and We are Nature "Defending" Itself: Entangling art, activism and autonomous zones (Pluto, 2021).

Described as an 'Domestic Extremist' by the police and a 'magician of rebellion' by the press, Jay Jordan (they) has spent the last 30 years fusing art and activism. He has worked in a variety of contexts, from museums to squatted social centres, from international theatre festivals to climate action camps. He co-founded Reclaim the Streets and The Clown Army. Jay co-edited We Are Everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anti-capitalism" (Verso, 2003) and worked as cameraman with Naomi Klein on The Take (2004).

Together, Isa and Jay founded and run The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, a collective bringing together artists and activists to devise new forms of creative resistance. The L.I.I has launched a regatta of rebel rafts to block a coal-fired power station, transformed hundreds of bicycles into disobedient machines and refused to be censored by the Tate Modern.

The L.I.I now lives on the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, "a territory lost to the republic", according to the French government, where the project of building an international airport was abandoned after 40 years of struggle. They are now working with the Cellule Action Rituel to co-design care and struggle rituals on the ZAD.

Conditions

• Workshop is free, lunch included
• Workshop in French and English
• Duration: 2 days
• Participation to the whole workshop is required

Programme

• Tuesday 10 September

9:30 > 17:30

• Wednesday 11 September

9:30 > 17:30

To apply

Please fill in this online form attaching a motivation letter / video / audio explaining who you are and why you want to take part in the workshop, in French or English (max. 3.000 characters including space or max. 3 mins).

→ If your video or audio file is too big, please attach a PDF containing a link to an online storage space (Youtube, Viméo, Google Drive, Cloud...).

Deadline to apply : 1 September 2024, midnight CET.

For more information, get in touch at: cifas@cifas.be.