Biting the Hand, Art & Language Diaspora

A conversation at SAFI FAYE STAGE (HKW)

Edited, compiled and introduced by Paul Wood, "Biting the Hand: Traces of Resistance in the Art & Language Diaspora" tells the story of a dissident formation of artists active in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s. Influenced by Conceptual art, these radical artists tried to develop new forms of critical intervention just at the time when post-war social democracy went into crisis and neo-liberalism emerged as the dominant political formation.

Published by Rab-Rab Press, "Biting the Hand" is a 360-page book with 100 illustrations. It has three parts: a retrospective introduction setting the formation in its historical context, and two documentary sections presenting examples of the work as both text and image.

Paul Wood in conversation with Sezgin Boynik, will present the ideas behind making this book, and focus on a story of artists beginning with a critique of then contemporary modernist art education, who embarked on a series of theoretical investigations which became increasingly politicised under the pressures of an evolving social crisis.

Increased racism, unemployment and attacks on the organised working class all raised questions about how a critical art might respond.

By the late 1970s they were producing posters and leaflets for a wide range of left-wing causes, as well as analyses of the politics of art and design education and the role of cultural ideology in maintaining consensus.

In the 1980s, as Thatcherism tightened its grip, those involved went their separate ways into areas as diverse as media work, trade unionism, health and education.

What was left behind is a wide-ranging body of work testifying to an attempt to sustain a critical practice at the ragged edge of art and politics in a period—before the rise of contemporary identity theories—when class analysis provided the main resources for resistance.