BRISTOL.- This summer,
Arnolfini embraces the unstable, the volatile and the downright unpredictable.
In Punk’s 40th anniversary year, Moving Targets* draws on Bristol’s unique independent spirit and explores punk as an attitude with more than one history and meaning.
Arnolfini and the city of Bristol have a special relationship to punk. Delving into the city’s archives, Moving Targets uncovers a hidden history of anti-authoritarian creativity across music, visual art and political activity. New artist commissions and collaborations spill out of the gallery and explore how punk is articulated today, through provocation, broadcast, dialogue and a cyberpunk aesthetic.
Gillian Wylde created a frantic foyer installation, mimicking an internet browser with multiple windows open, exploring political agency, disobedient desires and new technologies. While in the gallery Young Arnolfini carefully construct InHabit, a safe space for citizens to engage in dialogue. Outside the building, artist Phoebe Davies is working with UWE graphic design students to create Apathy’s a Drag, a project exploring print as a form of protest.
As the season progresses, the space inside Arnolfini will gradually transform, and under the title Resist Psychic Death evidence and remnants of the programme’s activities will accumulate. Ephemera, photographs and traces of our punk past will collide with contributions from artists and participants, alongside a series of film screenings that celebrate the spiky edges of a subculture: from Afro-Punk to Skate Witches.
Resist Psychic Death invite audiences to question both the history and future of punk by participating in artist-led workshops, live radio shows and open discussions. Join zine-making instigated by Rachael House, creator of the autobiographical queerzine Red Hanky Panky, or help to build a cardboard speaker sound system, with Eleanor Vonne Brown, founder of X Marks the Bökship.
Associate Curator, Bryony Gillard said: "What draws these activities and ideas together is a fierce questioning of both the history and future — a celebration of lesser known stories and legacies that relate to, or resonate with, the idea of punk. Moving Targets allows us to think about the margins of a subculture that aren’t as easily described or historicized as the dominant narratives associated with ‘punk’."
