30.9 – 1.10.2025
Horror and Utopia
or what to do when the world around you is f****d.
Dear Ruperto, Martyna, Marijn, Tereza, Sophie, Janos, Zoia, Donatas, Monika, Agata, Valentina, Daniel, Javier, Gezim, Camille, Alessandro, Nafissa, Stefano, Jules, Rita, Boris, Marvin, Yolane, Livia, Nica, and Giovanni!
We are deeply looking forward to taking-off with you all for the 2024/2025 Dirty Art Department trip. As we wrote to you in July, yes the times are grim and it certainly makes you want to scream, but we will endeavour to find some glimmer in the raging darkness that surrounds us.
This year we take off under the aegis of Horror and Utopia, both to recognise the terrible events that surround us – Palestine, the rise of the global far right, the destruction of the environment , the incarceration of climate justice activists, the violence of social inequality and the neo colonial tech-bro extractivist feudalism that drive them….. and to find some darkness, lightness and humour, even if in the most sardonic of ways, by the methods of Horror, from HP Lovecrafts cosmic insignificance to cheap B-Movie diy punk fake blood splatter tactics, your methods, our methods, any method necessary into dealing with the real life horror and into finding better strategies for inhabiting this planet.
Operating within the frame of contemporary art, radical design, and activism and beyond, the Dirty Art Department has always referred to the Situationist International maxim of ‘the only valid form of art is the revolution’. However the terms of the revolution are not as simple as going to the Piazza, overthrowing the power, taking over and it will be ok. So there is the question, what should an art be doing today? Your dirty art, our dirty art, everybodies dirty art?
Looking forward to a great year with you,
Florence, Anna, Kirtis, Henrica, Jerszy.