Art and Activism

For over twenty years, Laboratoire d'Imagination Insurrectionnelle, a variable-geometry collective of artists and activists, has been exploring how to escape hackneyed forms of protest in order to find spaces where the poetic and the pragmatic can merge to produce joyful, impactful moments of rebellion. The workshop will be an opportunity to discover and explore the principles of playing on the edge between art and activism. Based on playful, participatory methods, it is aimed at those who define themselves as artists, activists... or none of the above! Above all, it's for anyone who wants to put their imagination and creativity at the service of their desire to rebel.

Isa Fremeaux

Isa Fremeaux (she/her) is an educator, facilitator and author. She grew up in France before moving to London, where she worked as a freelance journalist, French teacher and administrator of a community arts company, while completing a PhD thesis on the concept of community. She became a Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College-University of London (UK) where she worked for 10 years, before leaving academia to embrace freedom and collective life.
Engaged in social movements for almost 20 years, she has facilitated assemblies gathering several hundred people, co-organised international mobilisations and climate camps, trained thousands of people to reinvent modes of disobedience...
Her passion is to explore collective dynamics and all the ways in which these can be made more fruitful and joyful, notably through popular education and rituals. She happily shares her skills to support and accompany various collectives, groups and associations in their flourishing. Isa lives on the zad in Notre-Dame-des Landes, with JJ, and co-facilitates the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination

Jay Jordan

Jay Jordan or JJ is labelled a "Domestic Extremist" by the UK police, and “a magician of rebellion” by the French press. JJ has spent three decades applying what they learnt from theatre and performance art to direct action. They like spaces betwixt and between of all sorts, especially between art and activism, culture and "nature", the masculine and feminine, protest and proposition. They have performed in museums and International Theater Festivals, trained people in squats, co-organised climate camps, choreographed carnivalesque riots, written a BBC radio play for today, and an opera-for-one. Author, art activist, part-time sex worker and full time trouble maker, JJ inhabits the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes, with Isa, and co facilitates the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination.