Treehouses, Sipson, Heathrow. Photo: Nick Ferguson, 2017

Tents under glasshouse. Sipson, Heathrow. Photo: Nick Ferguson 2017

Caravan with lookout terrace, Sipson, Heathrow. Photo: Nick Ferguson, 2017

Waste-house with geodesic dome, Sipson, Heathrow. Photo: Nick Ferguson

Lookout platform with box lashing; walk lines, Sipson, Heathrow. Photo: Nick Ferguson

Lawn mowing on roof of waste-house, Sipson, Heathrow. Photo: Nick Ferguson

Dwelling as Resistance is a documentary style photo essay that takes the reader on a tour of an activist camp at London Heathrow. The lens of art history is used to draw up an inventory of the camp’s built forms and to dissect the activity resistance. Established to oppose airport expansion, the camp synthesises art forms that foreground civic engagement, collective action, and a re-imagined world order.  Objects and architecture take on a critical role, assuming agency in political struggle and prompting speculation on the futurology of the airport landscape. Each built form contributes specific capabilities to the construction of oppositional space and this, rather than provisionality or lack of protocol, explains their diversity. The act of dwelling itself is constituted as a radically disruptive art that, as a mode of being (rather than doing), is not readily opposed. Accordingly, the camp solicits the question of whether it might be regarded as a socially-engaged art practice.

Keywords:  Spatial politics; Socially engaged art; Activism; Architecture; Craft; Protest Camp; Heathrow

Project Development.

The output responds to questions prompted by a series of visits to the camp over a two year period. First, how in one of London’s most partitioned, apportioned, and regulated of locations, had oppositional space been created and sustained? Second, how does the camp’s production — physical things, cultural values, political positions — compare to what has been produced by sanctioned cultural arenas, or suffused through the civic realm in the name of community relations? Third, how might an art project represent this enquiry in a way that was true to the public mission of the camp?

Link to published article: https://placesjournal.org/article/dwelling-as-resistance/

‘Dwelling as Resistance was given as a talk with 36 slides at the conference: Geographies of Inequalities. 7th Nordic Geographers Meeting, Department of Human Geography, Stockholm University, 18 – 21st June 2017.