When you set out to change the world, the world also changes you:

When you set out the change the world, The world also changes you... screen prints on cloth patches, interviews and a zine, National Centre for Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2006.

Project realised for the exhibition: Self Education - Self Organisation

Education is not something separate from what we do or who we are: our education is comprised of a patchwork of different experiences where we learn, unlearn, and learn again how to live in the world. For the exhibition Self Education - Self Organisation I have focused on how we learn through struggle as I believe the only way to fully understand the world is to try and change it. I have chosen a small group of people that have been active in an overlapping series of movements and campaigns in Sydney and asked them a series of questions about how they have approached their own self-education. The conversations that come out of these interviews form a dialogue which addresses the issues of both dissent and self-education.

In consultation with participant in the project I have made a series of patches and badges. Patches are popular in the autonomist and anti-capitalist movement, sewn into clothing as a marker of activism. They can range from slogans, images or symbols, to simple advertisements for upcoming actions. They both individualize and universalize the wearer as a “subject of dissent”. By drawing on the forms of activism I hope to also engage with its aesthetics.

Each of the participants in this project was involved in a wide-ranging discussion (in person or by email) which focused on the following four questions:

Part of learning is also un-learning an acquiescence to society that we are taught through school, work, family relations and so forth. What led you to a position of critique or opposition to existing social relations?

Did you disengage from formal or academic educational institutions and structures through this process or were they part of it? What other forms of education did you supplement or replace them with?

How did this alternative education reflect itself collectively? Did you find a community of other people through this process?

Can you describe how you learn from social struggles themselves, both ones you participated in and ones you have read or heard about.

Thanks to Sean, Vicki, Damien, Rahib, Jo, Nick, Karen, James and Sunil for being part of this project. Thanks to Dmitry Vilensky, Szarapow and Sergey Ogurtsov for helping with translation. Thanks to Legoman and other patch makers and Cassilda and Nancy for helping with the sewing. A version of this zine is also available in Russian.

A copy of this zine is available: email zanny.b[at]gmail.com.

Transcipts of interviews:

Click on the image to see a transcript of the relevant interview.