At Home and Abroad: The Study Room in Exile

Abstract

This chapter will introduce The Study Room in Exile—a collaborative practice between the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home (The Institute) and the Live Art Development Agency (LADA). The Study Room in Exile is a radical resource centre, performance venue and Live Art library situated in the family home of The Institute in Liverpool, UK. The chapter draws out practical ways for realising cultural agency within domestic and international neoliberal contexts and, in doing so, poses a tentative answer to the question ‘what’s to be done—at home and abroad—given the overwhelming neoliberal consensus which actively and explicitly undermines any ability to generate cultural and political agency and effect radical social change?’ Šimić provides a domestic perspective on the Study Room in Exile via a project titled The Women of Europe and Anderson speaks about the digital audio project The Study Room in Exile at Green Park, Athens, Greece a project organised in collaboration with Greek anarchist-activists and artists, both of which took place simultaneously in June 2016.