David Bell - Playing the Future: Improvisation and Nomadic Utopia
David Bell is a writer, musician and artist based in Notting- ham whose work revolves around the concept of utopia. Draw- ing on a wide variety of political philosophy, social movement praxis, literature, contemporary art and musicology, he argues in favour of a ‘nomadic utopianism’: a nonhierarehical politi- cal movement which immanently creates prefigurative, utopian spaces. However, he argues that these spaces can only be con- sidered utopian to the extent that they remain nonhierarchical and open to the future. In so doing, he seeks to create a concept of utopia which resonates with a variety of contemporary po- litical movements in both the global north and the global south. He is studying for a PhD in the Centre for the Study of Social and Global justice at the University of Nottingham and contributes to Ceasefire Magazine and The Quietus. He is currently writing The Shape qf Utopia to Come: Improvis- ing Music and Nomadic Politics for Zero Books and is part of the Islanders art collective and the global Wasteland Twinning network, with whom he explores the imagined histories and potential futures of a large area of wasteland in Nottingham. He makes music (at var- ious points along the improvisation-composition spectrum) as part of the groups Surfacing, L.H.O.O.Q, and The Exploits of Elaine. This pamphlet has been published as part of the exhibition Thinking Ourselves in Existence, curated by Psykick Dancehall and Jon Marshall, at CCA, Glasgow, February 2015 Publisher: CCA/Psykick Dancehall Pages: 12 Binding: staple Dimensions: 240 x 158 mm
Price: £3.00
