The space hijackers are a group of people who originate in the United Kingdom. Space Hijacking is mental graffiti, designed to change how the space is perceived and take some of the power away from the people who own or design the space. The aim is to ultimately prove to people that space isn’t used effectively and to show how restricted areas can really be unrestricted, you can boycott the rules right, then you’ll get away with stealing power from someone.

When they were formed in 1999, their first major action was the Circle Line Party – a party on London Underground’s Circle Line which attracted around 150 people armed with sound systems, disco lights and bars all disguised as luggage which attracted a lot of attention, but they were not being illegal. The Space Hijackers exist mainly to change the public’s perception of spaces it regularly uses, mainly by staging unexpected events. Their explicit objective is “to effect and change the physical space of architecture”, and, avoiding violent protest and other forms of transparent direct action, their methods aim “to invade and re-brand corporate space”. 

The Space Hijackers inspired me to try more ‘out of the box’  ideas for my final outcome as I want my work to have a wider range of ideas to show more diversity in my work. They’ve made me think of lots of ideas to use for more videos rather than photographs which is more my thing, I want to do something i’m not as comfortable with to do how I cope with it and to see how I do with it.

Whilst Tom Pope was here, he enlightened us about his personal influences. He stated that he was guided by the situationism movement and used it in his photography. He allows himself to be lead by his surroundings and let that guide him.

Definition:

This psycological theory suggests that our behavioral changes depend on the situation  that we’re in. Therefore, it implies that the environment may have control over our feelings and emotions. It isn’t concerned with personal opinions, personalities and ideologies. It also disregards any sort of innate thoughts.

For example, if you visit a park, you may be drawn to the aesthetically beautiful qualities in it. This is because, as a photographer, you may have trained yourself to only photograph the best things. Whereas, situationism allows you to expand this view and help you to try and explore something less ordinary. Likewise if you are in an unknown scenario and you feel uncomfortable, your behavior may be impacted.

Experiment:

The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted, to test the theory of Situationism. In this study, everyday people where selected to participate in hopes of proving the theory. They were instructed to act like ‘guards’. The remaining participants were assigned the ‘prisoners’ role. It was noted that the ‘guards’ began to adopt a stereotypical behavior. They were acting in a more aggressive and disciplinary fashion towards the ‘prisoners’. This shows that they may have based their mood on their roles and the fact that their in a prison building. Therefore, this experiment supports Situationism, as it indicates that people change their demeanor, depending on the situation.

Birth of the Concept:

This concept started in the late 1950’s and kept going until the early 1970’s and was influenced by Surrealism, Dadaism  and also Lettrism. in 1957,’Situationiste Internationale’, a very famous magazine was founded, which included various artistic things inside it. This movement began with many traditional artists. However, as time went on, the group started to include look at different ways of creating art, by looking at the theme of Anarchy.

Situationism included two main concepts. The first was ‘The Spectaceand it’s society’ and the second ‘Détournement’. The Spectacle is used a lot in Situationism; It looks at how society is ruled by certain commands by people with more power than them. Whereas, Détournement signifies hijacking. it’s all about changing expressions against themselves. This influentual movement was used for political pranks.

My Views:

Personally, I think that Situationism is a very interesting subject. It’s something new and exciting to challenge. The fact that you must hold back on your personal feelings and almost become aligned with external features. I think that this allows humans to explore the world from a different perspective.

Situationist International 

After listening to Tom Pope talk about his work at the Jersey Societe, I went and researched the ‘Space HI-Jackers’ which is a group of protesters that Tom talked about during his talk. The Space Hijackers is a group originating in the United Kingdom that defines itself as;

“an international band of anarchitects who battle to save our streets, towns and cities from the evils of urban planners, architects,multinationals and other hoodlums”

This group has done several projects which is testing authority. For example the government made a law against drinking on the subway so the Space Hijackers gathered together, wearing coats and carrying suitcases (in disguise)  and all got onto the subway. When the train had started moving all of the space hijackers took their coats off to reveal their party clothes underneath and had alcohol and speakers in their suitcases- creating a party on the train. When they arrived at the next platform they all redressed and picked up all the litter and left the subway, like nothing had happened.

After researching about the Space Hijackers, it got me thinking about people who do things against social norms, such as Jack Jones.  These people do things to gain a negative or positive reaction from the public for their own pleasure. This the type of things that we needed to do in our day trip to St Malo therefor we brain stormed idea’s within out group and came up with some idea’s to experiment with.

Tom Pope is the performance photographer that visited us at the Jersey Societe. A performance photographer means that he makes films from social content, for example whilst working with Andrew Lacon (a famous sculptor) they created a man made stage in which the public needed to walk over to get into an art museum. This was held in the Hockney Gallery in London in 2010 and was called ‘Enter Right Exit Left’. Pope and Lacon did this to examine audience participation within the space installed.

Tom studied photography in the arts in 2008 at Swanswa’s Metropolitan University then went on to do his masters at the Royal College of Art in 2011. During doing his masters he started to experiment with the idea of time through the use of film. His first project a video camera was set up on a tripod whilst Tom aimed an arrow from a bow and arrow towards the camera. The clip is 1.17 seconds long and ends with the arrow flying into the camera lens. This collection of work is called ‘Blinded By Amor’.

Another project of Tom Pope’s called ‘Kinsington Chalk’ whilst he was studying at the Royal Collage of Art was set up in the streets of Kensington and the video camera and tripod was set up on one side of the road facing this large black box which Tom was trying to write the numbers 1-60 in 60 seconds.
During the video, members of the public come up to Tom and question what he is doing and try to tell him what he is doing is unacceptable. Tom replied nothing to these people however when he was explaining his theory behind his project he explained that he was testing the social acceptance boundaries which run in a community, without breaking the Law. Tom said this project was inspired by ‘Eddris Khan’ who also tests Authority.

I really like Tom Pope’s work, as I believe that he injects creativity into it along side context. For example I really like the idea of going against social norms and pushing authority to gain a reaction from the public. There is an example of this in his project ‘Kensington Chalk’.

Whilst in St Malo I experienced gaining a reaction from the public whilst we gave out flowers to ‘randomers’ as a token of kindness. Most people’s reaction was hesitant yet very thankful- however some people refused the gesture. I thought this was very interesting to see a persons reaction, and concluded that most people reacted to the gesture in a similar way to how they saw a previous ‘flower receiver’ act. We captured images and video’s from this shoot.

Tom Pope is a British photographer and visual artist born in 1986 in Bristol, England.

 

Early Career and Education

• Tom began his career as a photographer studying Photography at Swansea Metropolitian University were he gained a 1st Class (BA) He then went on to achieve a Masters
• Degree in Photography at the pestigious Royal College of Art
• Between the ages of 21-23, Tom traveled extensively throughout Europe, working as a ‘Photograph in Residence’ in Finland (2007), and in  Wales and France (2009)
• In 2009, Tom made his first publication entitled, ‘The Centre for Lens Arts and Science Interaction’

Notable Series

• Fountain Bike – 1:40 Video (www.tompope.co.uk/fountainbikevideo.html)
• Weak Anarchy
• Time Bound
• Enter Right Exit Left

Tom’s Specialisation: Performance Photography

• Tom specialises in a type of photography known as performance photography. This type of photography is a very experimental method that involves the artist recording a certain performace, either subjectively or objectively. The ‘performance’ is then either made as an entire film (Tom argues that all film is technically photography), or individual moments of the performance captured as a still image
• Tom uses performance photography as a means of testing social barriers and understanding different behaviour patterns between the general public. An interpretation of Tom’s pieces could be that that the subject is the auddience and how they react, not exclusively the ‘performance
• A famous piece of perfomance photography that Tom has created is entitle ‘Fountain Bike’. In this short video, Tom records himself peddling a stationary bike attached to a water pump which squirts out water. In this satirical experiment, Tom creates a chaotic and unusual atmosphere in which the general public are completely unaware of how to respond. It is through creating these bizare scenorioes that Tom tests how people react to the bizare and unusual

Gareth Syvret – Archisle Project Leader

“Tom Pope is a great appointment for 2015 that reflects the diversity and fresh thinking in contemporary photography that drives Archisle”

Meaning:

“Dada”, written phonetically as (/ˈdɑːdɑː/), is commonly referred to as ‘baby talk’, since infants normally call their father figure that. This is a very simplistic utterance which has a lot of associations. Interestingly, Dada actually translates into ‘hobby horse’ in French.

Movement:

Dadaism (Dada), in itself, was an anti-art movement. The aim was create radical pieces that generated a big reaction from the audiences. Dadaists dispensed all of their artistic thinking and completely changed the way in which they depicted the world.

Many artists would get together and form clubs, such as Cabaret Voltaire. This particular club was started by Hugo Ball (born February 22, 1886) and his wife, Emmy Hemmings. Here, they were able to combine their adoration for poetry, dance, music and performance. Later, many artists joined from all different area’s of interest and added to the club’s knowledge.

Dadaism focuses on doing the opposite of what’s considered to be normal. It’s all about breaking the normal conventions and rules of society. This theme first started  as a reaction to World War One and the main aim was to surprise and shock people. Members of the group wanted to achieve a large audience reaction, therefore they thought of many ways to explore this and test the audiences responses. In turn, they began to receive great attention from doing their creative stunts and work. They did many exhibitions, which would vary from poetry to putting up posters and photo-montages. They would do ordinary things, but in different, more all spontaneous and free ways.

Between the year of 1974 and 1976, another movement called Punk Rock was formed. Jamie Reid were quite influential to this genre. Reid was also an anarchist and linked to the popular group ‘the Situationists’. They would cut-up newspapers and create photo-montages to represent this. This genre of music and art was common in at least three English-speaking countries at the time, including the UK. The movement were quite similar to Dada, in that they also went against the expected characteristics of art. They shook up society, since their views were quite extreme. Here are some examples from the Rock movement:

Name Selection:

The actual word Dada was chosen in a very crazy way. A man simply stabbed a knife into a dictionary and the first word that it pointed at was chosen.

Time Period:

This concept of Dadaism began

Dadaism came up when the first world war was in action, as a reaction towards it.

in 1916 by Hugo Ball and has majorly  influenced the way that artists work. Hugo Ball had many degree’s of creativity. He was a poet, author and of course dadaist. Examples of photo-montages in Dada form:

In this photograph above, there are three different characters which were all created by Ball. These were completed in the early and late 19th century. Each capture unique and outstanding performances, some done at Cabaret Voltaire, which captured the moment within a split-second of a frame. They all express Ball’s ideologies about the world. During that time period, he was probably trying to protest against the negative occurrences, in particular the world wars.

Hugo Ball quotes:

• The symbolic view of things is a consequence of long absorption in images. Is sign language the real language of Paradise? 
• We should burn all libraries and allow to remain only that which everyone knows by heart. A beautiful age of the legend would then begin.
• Everywhere, the ethical predicament of our time imposes itself with an urgency which suggests that even the question “Have we anything to eat?” will be answered not in material but in ethical terms.
• It’s inspiration that counts, not the drill.

The international Dada Fair was captured with this photograph:

“For us, art is not an end in itself,” Hugo Ball said, “but it is an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in”. The group was not so worried about the aesthetical qualities of their work. They just wanted to show their thought processes and ideas. The Dadaists used many modernised techniques. Their main methods of displaying work was in photomontages and collages. Famous examples include:

Tom Pope himself uses this concept, frequently, as an influence for his work. Nowadays, there are many new concepts, which have been previously influenced by Dadaism. Examples include: Situationism, Fluxus, Pop Art, Conceptual Art, Minimalism and Performance Art.

“DADA, as for it, it smells of nothing, it is nothing, nothing, nothing.” – Picabia.

“an international band of anarchitects who battle to save our streets, towns and cities from the evils of urban planners, architects,multinationals and other hoodlums”.

The Space Hijackers are one of the groups that inspired Tom Pope to do his work. They are a group from the UK, who ‘fight to save public spaces’. Their purpose is to change how spaces are perceived by the public and to take away some of the power from the people who built or own the space the reason behind this is because they think public spaces are becoming to politicised. They try to change the public’s perception by performing unexpected non violent events for example: they organised a ‘party’ at the London underground once the trains had left as form of protesting against Mayor Boris’ new law to ban drinking on public transports.

The Space hijacker’s work links in with one of our project themes challenge because they challenge the authorities by pushing boundaries in an expressive non violent way as well as challenging the public to change their perception of public spaces, this is also closely linked to what we were doing in St.Malo as we were testing what is and isn’t accepted in society.

1. Dada Art Movement

• The Dada Art Movement begin as  a protest movement agaisnt WWI and the horrors that it entailed
• The artists and writers involved, many of which whom were exiled at the time saw the concepts of Nationalism, Rationalism and Materialism as entirely repsonsible for the war. In repsonse these artists sought to breakaway from traiditional ‘establishment’ art and instead started to produce more contemporary and politically based pieces of art, known as ‘non- art by non-artists’
• The art produced although serious in its intentions is  witiful, comical and has a ‘ridiculus factor to it’. For example of famous piece of Dada Art is Marcel Duchamps sculpture ‘Fountain’, which literally is a public urinal with a signature scribbled on it
• Tom uses the obseen nature of the Dada movement as a key influence of his own work, espacially the element of comedy within art

2. Situationism

• The situationalist movement (1957-1971) was the artistic faction of the Socialist Internationalist (SI) Movement. This was a political movement which supported a democratic form of Marxism and rejected Capitalism as a result of the inequalities and suppression that resulted.
• The art involved was very satirical, consisting mostly of posters, painting and photographs alongside a small message which subtly criticized and brought attention to major issues in society
• Although Marxist the movement was heavily against the oppressive regime of the USSR, and the artists sought to actively condemn the regime through their messages.
• A key concept of the situationalist theory is the idea of the ‘spectacle’. This term is used to describe how society is controlled by material possession.
•  Tom’s work uses situationalist concepts in his own work. For example his ‘Time Bound’ experiment explores how material possession (e.g. clocks) control people’s behaviors, in that case the measurement of time.

3. Physco-Geography

• Another type of influence that Tom explores in his work is Phyco-Geography. In this method, the photographer will ‘drift’ spontaneously around the environment to wherever they choose either consciously or sub-consciously
• Tom spoke of an observational project he did based on creating a paper  areoplane and throwing it around an art gallery, and wherever the areoplane landed is where he would view the next image
• Drifting is a way of the photographer guiding what they shoot based on instinct. It is a random process that means that if done properly, the photographer’s work will always remain original and exciting, because they are not influenced by any external guidance or pressure, only by thoughts which are spontaneous.