course description

Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?

A Workshop on Agitation and Informal Publics

On November 22, 1968, five years to the day after the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, The Beatles released their self-titled triple album, commonly referred to as The White Album. The recording sessions began on May 30, 1968, twenty-eight days after a student strike in France led to sweeping general strikes across the country that now stand as an emblem for a global moment during which left-wing factions prominently espoused their ideals and dissatisfaction with the administrators of power through creative physical and intellectual protest. 

While the song Why Don’t We Do It In The Road represents a flippant contribution to The White Album (it is rumored that Paul McCartney was testing new recording equipment with the composition) we will consider the title as having special meaning in examining what was a new sensibility through which, in the case of Paris 1968, the spaces of the city, the roads, and all else public was appropriated, transformed and utilized in proposing new gestures through which popular participation could yield progressive social change. 

The charged era of the 1960s begat the interventionist strategies of public artists that have evolved since the 1970s. In this practice-based workshop, we will begin by discussing a set of broad-based historical examples of this type of work, focusing specifically on agitation, which was central to the production of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia before and after October 1917. Together we will analyze the way in which this methodology is recouped in contemporary street art and affiliated political movements. As a class, we will then move on to researching public spaces in St. Petersburg that will serve as sites for temporary interventions or experiments. Students may work in groups or individually on projects that will bridge the individual range of interests of each student and simultaneously reflect the situations and circumstances of the city and its citizens. Please note that this informal and organic learning environment will be guided by the dynamic of the group and therefore a larger project that involves the entire group may also be possible should that be of interest to participants. 

No one will be watching us. Why don’t we do it in the road?