Insurrection in Liverpool

Catalyst media are presenting their second blend of radical art and politics from 31st March to 12th April, under the title 'Insurrection In Liverpool'. It takes place upstairs in Gallery 2 in the FACT building on Wood Street. This is nothing like a mainstream presentation, which would show art and culture as something to be passively viewed and maybe turned into a saleable commodity. This showcases work by local visual artists, writers, poets, and musicians that speaks to ordinary people's experience and invites audience participation.

Click on a thumbnail for a slideshow view

In addition to performances by artists and musicians, there is a discussion on a political theme every day. Many of these are facilitated by the Philosophy in Pubs group, on such subjects as, Can we say people in 2011 live in poverty? Should we pay for the bankers' crisis? Who makes the law and when should we break it? There are also two talks by a welfare rights activist on opposing the Coalition's cuts to the welfare state.

The series of talks by Nikolai on the history and use of open source software didn't sound very radical, until I went to his Sunday talk. He talked about how open source software was developed through collaboration and consensus, and represents a challenge to commercial software development. It was refreshingly free of techno-jargon and easy for a computer novice to follow. His subsequent talks will be about how to download and use open source software.

To give a flavour of the events, Tuesday has an internet activist workshop at 11am, followed by performances by Mike Field, an anarchist singer-songwriter, and Marc Gee, a poet and scriptwriter, and then a film by Ozgur Karaya about his experiences of being locked up and tortured in Turkey, followed by a discussion on how to set up an arts and culture centre.

To find out about the daily programme, look at the website www.catalystmedia.org.uk/index.htm and click on the links for 'website' and 'PDF of events'.