Category: Political Lego
10 years ago, the drama of international trade began to unfold on a Devon beach…
In January 2007, the drama of the MSC Napoli container shipwreck was unfolding on the East Devon coast. Our CEO Ian wrote a book chapter about this with Divya Tolia Kelly. This wreck provided vivid insights into the hidden geographies of international trade. It was published in 2010, and made available freely online without the photographs. In 2013, we re-created these photos in LEGO, although the pieces we had available meant that 100% faithful re-creations were impossible. Here’s the chapter and below are the re-creations, adapted for the 10th anniversary. What can they add to our understanding of what happened? That’s the question for those who practice Political LEGO.
See here for the original set on Flickr, with links to the photos re-created.
Blueprint for a revolution: incl. LEGO
While we’re on the subject of favourite books, another one is Srdja Popovic’s Blueprint for revolution: how to use rice pudding, LEGO men, and other non-violent techniques to galvanise communities, overthrow dictators or simply change the world. Here’s a summary:
“Through examples of using laughter and music (e.g., Pussy Riot) to disarm the opposition and gather supporters, to staging a protest of Lego Men in Siberia (when flesh-and-blood people would have been shot) … Popovic uses true and sometimes outrageously clever examples of the ways in which non-violent resistance has achieved its means” http://www.blueprintforrevolution.com/
And here’s what he’s talking about. What’s called elsewhere – Political LEGO. Watch this.
Political LEGO: an interview with Legofesto
Sri Lanka: Bombing a refugee camp 4 (Legofesto 2009).
We re-create scenes from the trade justice documentaries, art and activist work in LEGO. We photograph them, put them online and embed them on our site’s pages. You can see what we’ve done here. This work was inspired by LEGO scenes from the ‘War on Terror’ produced by a person calling herself Legofesto. We read interviews with and articles about her that were published in 2009, but hadn’t found anything since. This year, after teaching Political LEGO on the MRes Critical Human Geographies at Exeter University, one student – Julia Zielke – emailed Legofesto to interview her for an essay. What questions hadn’t been asked in those 2009 pieces? What had Legofesto been doing since then? Can we expect any new Legofesto work? This is what she said… Continue reading
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