Domesticating Conflicts

Laboratory of Dissent
Week 2
During the Laboratory of Dissent the Winchester Gallery becomes a site for investigation rather than a showcase of finished work. Using Chantal Mouffe’s essay ‘Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces’ as a starting point for collaboration this experimental exhibition explores dissent as a working methodology. 


Chantal Mouffe argues that "the task of democracy is not to exclude or deny a conflict which cannot be eradicated, but rather to “domesticate” it."



Resident artists Susan Francis, Laurence Dube-Rushby, Yonat Nitzan-Green, Clarisse Wisser




Chantal Mouffe, in her essay Agonistic Spaces argues that the task of democracy is not to exclude or deny a conflict which cannot be eradicated, but rather to “domesticate” it.’ 
(Diaz Alvarez,2010).
Week 2 artists identified themselves as Mothers/Artists/Foreigners.
The domestic space, a place where work and life develops and unfolds, is an agonistic space where conflicts emerge and become visible.
Some are resolved whereas others remains unresolved and are often underlying.

In ‘The Laboratory of Dissent’ the artists  positioned themselves as ‘agitators’ in order to bring a potentially suppressed conflict to the surface of visibility and consciousness.
The gallery space became a Domestic Laboratory where artists and participants were invited to invent stratagems to negociate the arising conflicts.




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