Reading Group #12 | Improvise to Resist

Join us to discuss the potential of improvisation and makeshift inventions in the art classroom.

This conversation will be facilitated by multidisciplinary artist Louise Ashcroft, who uses humour, playfulness, performance and comedy techniques within their practice as a tool to enable imagination to thrive and embrace difference through the creative process.

Louise will guide us in exploring how ‘anti-design’ can be used to enhance anti-normative intelligence, to empower those with no access to means of production and, ultimately, to enact political resistance.

Together, we will draw from a range of resources such as the 90s TV CBBC arts and crafts show Bitsa and examples of ‘improvised design’ across different cultures, such as Japanese Chindogu. Excerpts from The Whole Earth Catalogue (1968) and The Interventionists (2024) will inspire our thinking with artists’ interventions and unusual learning tools. 

• Michael Richey, “Chindogu: The Unuseless Inventions of Kenji Kawakami”, published online on Tofugo, March 2016. Available at: https://www.tofugu.com/japan/chindogu-japanese-inventions/ 
• Excerpt from Nato Thompson and Gregory Sholette (eds.), The Interventionists, Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life, The MIT Press, 2024. PP. 21-22.
• Excerpt from Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Catalogue, 1968. PP. 52-62. 
  Available online on Monoskop at: https://monoskop.org/images/0/09/Brand_Stewart_Whole_Earth_Catalog_Fall_1968.pdf
• Bitsa, 1992, last episode, part 1. Available to watch on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfyp5JVrKBo

Louise teaches Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London and is an Artist in Residence at Wysing Arts Centre. They are a co-founder of AltMFA, London’s first peer-led alternative art school, and were a Tate Schools Visits Artist in Residence (2015-16). 

Watch Louise Ashcroft’s contribution to our SHIFT film series, where they explore four comedy methodologies key to their practice.

This event is free and open to all, but capacity is limited, and places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. If you are interested in joining, please email [email protected] by Tuesday 2 December and you will receive confirmation of your place.  
 
The readings will be shared with all those interested in joining. Reading the materials in advance is encouraged however not mandatory. 

^{Image: Louise Ashcroft & Farmer Glitch (Stephen Ives), Storm Machine, workshop 2025. A creative writing and experimental sound workshop using materials from Devon’s waste and recycling infrastructure to evoke extreme weather. Curated by Paula Crutchlow, Volkhardt Müller and Stuart Crewes for Pile Up! an exhibition at Custom House Exeter.}