Illuminate Collective: Trip to the V&A

In mid-January a group of Illuminate members popped to London for the day to visit the Disobedient Objects exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. We arrived bright and early for the journey down south, and waited in anticipation as to what ‘disobedience’ we would see. At the end of the year the Nottingham Castle are displaying a variety of protest posters in partnership with the V&A, hence a trip to the institution was necessary (and fun!) to gain ideas for a future Illuminate project.

We arrived around lunchtime and headed straight for the exhibition which seemed an odd layout – the rectangular room was set out in a figure of eight, with boards of text indicating to the visitor how certain objects related to protest movements. Initially I had a preconception that the exhibition would include large, well-known protests, such as the Civil Rights Movement, however it soon became clear that it would comprise of a wide variety of small, large, historical and contemporary movements.

The welcome board stated that “the objects made as part of these movements have played a key role in cultural and political changes” – they were all important historical artefacts made by people “collectively taking design into their own hands to make a change in the world”. By focusing on protest from the late seventies onwards, the exhibition managed to show how new technologies and social struggles have been portrayed through different creative media. Displaying lots of forms of media (such as posters, textiles, interactive maps, and even an app) made the Disobedient Objects extremely engaging and it took us all a long time to work our way around the space.

Being able to interact with the exhibition in diverse ways ensured that the information exhibited was easily digestible. We learnt that defacing money has been a common form of protest against politicians and society – after Muammar Gaddafi’s fall from power in 2011, many Libyans scrawled out his face on bank notes as an act of defiance. In the same year Occupy George, a movement started by artists Ivan Cash and Andy Dao, sought to reveal unfair pay in the USA by stamping $1 bills with infographics. There was an opportunity to create your own currency protest using a rubber stamp and ink (or by taking a copy home on paper if you didn’t want to void your pound notes!)

Occupy George bank note

News reports were also played on a TV. ‘The Barbie Liberation Organisation’ were a group of activists that made headlines in the early nineties for swapping the voice boxes in Barbie’s and G.I. Joe toys: this protest was to highlight gender stereotypes perpetuated by the toy industry, an argument that is still in headlines and discussion today. A hand-made necklace and letter from Kenny Zulu Whitmore to the visitors of the exhibition were also on display, stressing the longevity of protest - Whitmore is currently incarcerated at Angola Prison in the USA. After meeting the Angola 3 (a group of three black prison inmates who between them spent more than 100 years in solitary confinement), Whitmore joined the Black Panther Party. It was this act that Whitmore believes has kept him in jail for so long, after numerous charges have been brought (and dismissed) against him. He currently designs pendants which are made from materials within the prison and sells them to provide funds for his legal campaign.

Letter from Kenny Zulu Whitmore

We also had a chance to interact with new technologies: ‘Phone Story’ an app banned from the Apple store in 2011 was available to play which comprised of four ‘educational games’ which revealed the exploitation behind our western consumerism and gadgets. On the other hand there were traditional hand-made textiles pieces called Arpilleras, made by women in Chile to tell stories such as the violence of the Pinochet regime at the beginning of the 1980s and the Mampuján Massacre of 2010 in Columbia. Both these stories of protest were ones that many members of Illuminate were unaware of, and thus the trip served as a valuable learning opportunity.

Finally there was also the opportunity for visitors to leave their opinions and protests on the wall by the exit – an umbrella, possibly from the protests in Hong Kong, was placed simply in the corner to signify unity with their struggle. This opportunity for visitors to voice their opinions shows that the exhibition is always growing and changing – there are always protests historical and new that will change and adapt according to the political and social climate.