Icons. // Information.

In December 2011, members of ‘Occupy Justice’, a faction of ‘Occupy London’ took over a disused historical court building in London’s East End - Old Street Magistrates’ Court, where they held a series of “trials of the 1%”.

Tsafrir photographed, filmed and recorded the activists in the courtrooms and detention cells of the derelict building, and after their departure, continued to document them in other private and public buildings across London.

The resulting work presents an iconography and alternative aesthetic of ‘Occupy’, challenging public perception of the protest movement and testing the idea of the ‘aestheticization of politics’ - coined by Walter Benjamin - in the current socio-political environment.



Icons. is part of diG.shaKe.riSeandblEEed,myloVe.

Icons. on show at 'Urban Dialogues', October 2013

Images from the Icons. series were on show at  'Urban Dialogues', 'Red Gallery', 3 Rivington Street, London, between 2-14 October 2013. 

Flyer

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'Bread and Circuses' - a sneak preview

Sketches of images from the Icons. series were on show in June 2012 at an occupied five-storey house owned by artist Anish Kapoor, who designed the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower for the London 2012 Olympic Games. 

The house,  located in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, central London, was taken over by a group associated with the Occupy movement who called itself ‘Bread and Circuses’ – a reference to its argument that the Olympic Games were a means of distracting the public from pressing economic and social issues at times of austerity. 




"A photograph itself can never be an icon, because it is literally a snapshot of one moment. The icon attempts to distill the essence."
Dr Rowan Williams

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