Andy Abbott
Andy Abbott is an artist, musician, writer and arts organiser living and working in West Yorkshire.
In 2012 Andy was awarded his practice-led PhD from the University of Leeds with a thesis on ‘art, self-organised cultural activity and the production of postcapitalist subjectivity’. Recent and forthcoming writing includes articles and book contributions on the creative case for Universal Basic Income for Bloomsbury and the Jennie Lee Institute.
His research, commissioned articles and catalogue texts have been published by Sanat Dünyamız, Istanbul; FAFA, Helsinki; and Castlefield Gallery, Manchester. Andy has presented his research at conferences across Europe as well as organising the Just Do(ing) It symposia on the politics of artist-led activity and underground music in Sheffield and Bradford. He was the editor of the publication The Mirrored Hammer and the presenter of its sister radio programme on BCB 106.6fm.
www.andyabbott.co.uk
Supervisors: Gail Day and Roger Palmer
In 2012 Andy was awarded his practice-led PhD from the University of Leeds with a thesis on ‘art, self-organised cultural activity and the production of postcapitalist subjectivity’. Recent and forthcoming writing includes articles and book contributions on the creative case for Universal Basic Income for Bloomsbury and the Jennie Lee Institute.
His research, commissioned articles and catalogue texts have been published by Sanat Dünyamız, Istanbul; FAFA, Helsinki; and Castlefield Gallery, Manchester. Andy has presented his research at conferences across Europe as well as organising the Just Do(ing) It symposia on the politics of artist-led activity and underground music in Sheffield and Bradford. He was the editor of the publication The Mirrored Hammer and the presenter of its sister radio programme on BCB 106.6fm.
www.andyabbott.co.uk
Supervisors: Gail Day and Roger Palmer
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Papers by Andy Abbott
the boredom of contemporary capitalist culture. Applying the theory of the Situationist
International, with particular focus on Raoul Vaneigem’s ‘The Revolution of Everyday
Life’ with a close reading of Hannah Arendt’s ‘The Human Condition’ and illustrating
those ideas with post-revolution Soviet art from 1900 to 1940’s and performance work
from the 1960’s Fluxus group. The argument develops from an illustration of Arendt’s
distinction between labour and work to attempt to provide new definitions of play and the
problems that arise when these actions and processes are documented. The essay
concludes with a discussion of productive play and what essential aspects of work and
labour can be employed to develop a new, more satisfying daily existence.
It explores how art contributes to a better world and the form such practice takes in an increasingly expanded, ‘precarious’ and interdisciplinary sphere. The varied nature of the work under question leads to the adoption of a structure that distinguishes practices by their operation in different spaces or ecologies: the individual, social and structural.
A further distinction is made between those practices that self-identify as art (and the
institutional, market-led and capitalist framework this can entail), and those that either
actively disavow or go unrecognised as art due to their distance from the signifying
apparatuses of the discipline. This ‘informal’ art practice is referred to as ‘self-organised cultural activity’ and opens up on to discussions of the relative merits of DIY practices including music, self-publishing, political activism and so on.
The thesis demonstrates how these often distanced and apparently contradictory practices find resonance and whose accumulative effect contributes to the conditions for a paradigmatic shift that would constitute ‘postcapitalism’. The connecting thread between these sites and practices is their potential for effecting change at the level of the individual via a subjectivising aesthetic rupture.
Contextualised by poststructuralist, postanarchist and Autonomist Marxist political
philosophy and debates in contemporary art criticism and theory, the thesis and dossier of practice contribute to a richer understanding of - and expanded language with which to discuss – the relation between art and politics. It draws links between normally unconnected practices, identifying the often overlooked or underplayed aesthetic experience within socially engaged art and the political resonances of aesthetic experience, attending to gaps in thought and practice around art and social change.
the boredom of contemporary capitalist culture. Applying the theory of the Situationist
International, with particular focus on Raoul Vaneigem’s ‘The Revolution of Everyday
Life’ with a close reading of Hannah Arendt’s ‘The Human Condition’ and illustrating
those ideas with post-revolution Soviet art from 1900 to 1940’s and performance work
from the 1960’s Fluxus group. The argument develops from an illustration of Arendt’s
distinction between labour and work to attempt to provide new definitions of play and the
problems that arise when these actions and processes are documented. The essay
concludes with a discussion of productive play and what essential aspects of work and
labour can be employed to develop a new, more satisfying daily existence.
It explores how art contributes to a better world and the form such practice takes in an increasingly expanded, ‘precarious’ and interdisciplinary sphere. The varied nature of the work under question leads to the adoption of a structure that distinguishes practices by their operation in different spaces or ecologies: the individual, social and structural.
A further distinction is made between those practices that self-identify as art (and the
institutional, market-led and capitalist framework this can entail), and those that either
actively disavow or go unrecognised as art due to their distance from the signifying
apparatuses of the discipline. This ‘informal’ art practice is referred to as ‘self-organised cultural activity’ and opens up on to discussions of the relative merits of DIY practices including music, self-publishing, political activism and so on.
The thesis demonstrates how these often distanced and apparently contradictory practices find resonance and whose accumulative effect contributes to the conditions for a paradigmatic shift that would constitute ‘postcapitalism’. The connecting thread between these sites and practices is their potential for effecting change at the level of the individual via a subjectivising aesthetic rupture.
Contextualised by poststructuralist, postanarchist and Autonomist Marxist political
philosophy and debates in contemporary art criticism and theory, the thesis and dossier of practice contribute to a richer understanding of - and expanded language with which to discuss – the relation between art and politics. It draws links between normally unconnected practices, identifying the often overlooked or underplayed aesthetic experience within socially engaged art and the political resonances of aesthetic experience, attending to gaps in thought and practice around art and social change.