CensorSHIP
Desearch Repartment

Exhibition runs 17 May – 27 June 2016

EXHIBITION IMAGES | EXHIBITION BOOKLET

arebyte Gallery and creative think-tank Desearch Repartment hosted the UK iParty for Human Rights, a floating workshop and tour with a party atmosphere, on the Thames, on the summer solstice (Wednesday 21 June 2017). Taking place aboard the CensorSHIP, the UK iParty for Human Rights guided participants through a series of playful and satirical activities designed to provoke a re-evaluation of human rights and contemporary global politics.

Participants engaged in numerous activities like interactive pedagogical games to test their mettle – such as ‘Human Rights Against Humanity’, YAGA (a ‘new ancient spiritual exercise tradition’) and editing the Geneva Convention with permanent markers.

A drastic shift in perception and a permanent suspension of disbelief is now required to exist in today’s perpetual ‘State of Exceptional’. Desearch Repartment’s methods aimed to give attendees a leg-up on learning perceptual skills and strategies to survive in the post-truth hyper neoliberal world, or what DR terms "Neo-Lived Realism".

The captivating three-hour boat tour of the city revealed the Neo-Lived Realism embedded in London’s architecture and history and what that means for the UK’s durational futures. The tour will interpreted London’s artistic monuments and historical sites through the lens of Desearch, revealing the unknown unknowns hiding in plain sight. With fascinating and edifying discoveries into the political and social fabric of the city, the tour promised surprising insights for the longtime Londoner and tourist alike.

The absurdly playful environment of the UK iParty for Human Rights aboard the CensorSHIP was enhanced with signature cocktails (“Reverse Titanic” and “Blood on Your Hands”), a logo wall perfect for taking selfies, a melting iceberg sculpture and a karaoke sing-along to all the hits from the Guantanamo playlist. The party also featured a guest lecture by post-media savant Blaise Otium who will conduct a process of rapid guessing which offered clues on how to flourish in the ever-changing political and geophysical landscape of our current world.

Desearch Repartment came out of a political shift in the early 2000s that coincided with the invention of relational aesthetics and the birth of the Internet. When the walls fell on 9/11 identity politics also fell away, opening up a new sense of cultural, political, and social relativity where artistic colonization could flourish. Through the combined genesis of social media and social practices, the commodification of human relations became a stepping stone on which DR built its foundation, laying the groundwork for the Institute for Durational Futures and the ESSENTIALHAPPINESSPOSSIBILITY.

Recent activities: Motivate – Stop Torturing Your Selfie, Innovate – Creative Prison Solutions, and Captivate – Art Fairs for Life workshops; Conventions in Geneva, Cologne, Cleveland, and London; the Ein Rand/One Border: Defining Community through Neo-Lived Realism conference and Neo-Lived Realism and the City: New Artistic Strategies of the DR bus tour; State of Exceptional Webnation (a new social media nation-state); and curation of the forthcoming Guantanamo Art Fair in Cuba.