TAA very much

Gosh it’s 2017 already, big up the people doing the TAA this year! 

As my contribution I thought I’d make a zine about me and TAA...

EDIT well now it's 2021 and TAA is 20 years old woop wopp I tried to make this into a zine and failed

EDIT 2025 what have I been doing with my LIFE, the people need this online right now

TAA VERY MUCH

I first got involved with Temporary Autonomous Art in 2001 when I turned up at the old Smithfields club in East London (a long-term empty building I'd always wanted to squat) and saw a strange assortment of beautiful people making weird art … some were my friends hehehe. A had drilled lots of circular holes in a bar table. I remember looking at that and thinking errrr...For his graduation show he made a room you couldn't enter!

TAA LONDON

Overall, I thought the whole thing was great and really enjoyed the way creativity was being unleashed from the free party scene (ie the squatters doing massive tekno parties every Saturday night all over London taking time out to do a free cultural event). Sure, I loved the parties and found them really inspiring pockets of freedom, but yes I could also agree they were quite nihilistic and I did sometimes wonder what all these interesting people were doing wrecking their heads every weekend (and also why I needed to do that too). So it was cool to see an open access art event with minimal curation, where everyone could put up stuff and also anyone could stumble in of the street if they dared and have a look around. 

The www.randomartists.org website has lots of good stuff on it and an archive with photos of all the events up to 2007 at least. Random Artists was originally a useful anonymous multi-use moniker for people who were associated with Headfuk, Hekate and Pitchless sound systems. It has since become a sprawling empire of underground talent!

Back in 2001, the next month the Liquid Spiral Collective did a party/exhibition in south London and invited us along. Suddenly, we were recognized artists! D drew all over a wall and fell asleep on K, the pen still in his hand as he slumped to the ground. We really meant it! Actually all I can really recall of this event is that it was supposed to be alcohol free, which made for quite a good atmosphere apart from the occasional radge person moaning about their human rights being restricted after walking round the whole building twice looking for a bar. In 2021 this sort of dickhead would have totally been moaning about masks and freedom. 

An unstoppable art juggernaut was now in motion. TAA 2 had to happen. Somehow our squat ended up being the venue locators. We were living in Clapton at that time and Hackney was our whole world, so we didn't look around that far. Me and V found a building set back from the main road near the cemetery in Stoke Newington, which was empty on the first floor with a car mechanics underneath. Crash bang one night and we fell through the door into an empty artist atelier. Perfect! Things came together really well, we went down to New Covent Garden market and skipped a shitload of veggies for food, then people turned up and put up their art. There was sculpture, photographs, painting, a really good mix.

We experienced a bit of the tension inherent in putting on an event which wasn't a party when we kicked people out at midnight but it was really important for TAA not to be a party, to be something else since we could go to a wicked party every weekend, so that wasn't a problem or a need to be fulfilled. One drunk guy got really aggro and was chucked out, but came back the next time in a suit and a mask, this was accepted as fair play and he was let back in. The three days of the exhibition flew by, then we tatted down and all went out to a festival in the park. When I came back, my key didn't work in the door any more and it really was all over. Right then a guy turned up saying “Is this where the art event is happening? Am I too late?”

Then came TAA 3, in Clapton Square, in dilapidated Council buildings I'd wanted to squat for a while, since I used to cycle past them twice a day. We'd planned it from the nursery in Leyton where some of Headfuk were living, but as the time to crack got closer I got itchy feet, so I bought a truck and moved to Europe. Thus I missed the next few TAAs, first back at Smithfields again (and you know last time I went past in 2012 the building was STILL fucking empty), then Commercial Street, Flowers East and Hampstead.

Next, in summer 2003, some Random Artists made it out to Czech Republic where I was then living. It was mainly people from Hekate and Headfuk, combining art exhibitions in CZ and Poland with doing teknivals. We put on a wicked art event at squat Milada in Prague (now sadly evicted) with a night of electronic music. The electricity came from a streetlight so the music only came on when it got dark. There was also an excellent short film night. E made some intricate stuff out of the crap in Milada's garden and as an intense art action I managed to drop this really heavy bit of scrapmetal which he'd put on a pedestal directly onto my foot.

I thought I'd visit the next TAA back in London, which ended up taking place in October 2003. I turned up at the venue in Goswell Road, Farringdon, to find everyone really stressed since the original venue in Aldgate had been evicted literally just as people started putting stuff up on the walls! Despite teething problems like having no leccy or water in the new place, everything got sorted out superfast and I think in many ways it was the ideal TAA building - central so people could stumble across it, an office block which meant lots of rooms for installations etc, lots of floors (maybe eight?) so the art could expand ever upwards and outwards rhizomatically, a big basement for a party (although i think we didn't party it since we had grief from snooty neighbours - they called noise abatement at midnight not because we were making noise but because we wouldn't let them in since we had just closed the building, the bastards!).

Again I can't really remember that much apart from Czech friends being there and J's band playing. M had kittens, that must have been really stressful moving around twice in one week. I put my A0 photocopied BW sheets of kunst in a toilets which flooded so I don't think anyone saw them. Oh yeah and there was a bit of kinetic sculpture which featured ping pong balls being popped out of a wooden vagina.

Then the virus started spreading in even more directions. Bristol did a TAA, so did Manchester. Later on so did Sheffield and Edinburgh, as did Brighton, which I'll get onto below. I was still living in Europe so I missed these. I didn't go to the next London one near Old Street (2007) which ended being a weird lockdown situation for a few days with security posted on the street trying to stop people getting in.

Some Random Artists went back to CZ in 2007 but I didn't end up joining them because I was living in the Netherlands by then. I do remember there was at some stage a full-on handbags fight about whether the walls should be painted white or not. For me it was always more about making art to fit the environment, plus a dirty warehouse is way more interesting than a white cube. But yeah if you came from a fine art background it must I guess be really liberating to make your own gallery space. Anyhoo I just enjoyed putting up my photographs exactly where I felt like putting them, whether that was on the stairs or outside the building.

BRIGHTON INTERLUDE

The first Brighton TAA was 2008, Subterranean Art in a squatted warehouse in Portslade. There's a good little short film on youtube showing the construction of it. I liked the urban minigolf. There was a good mix of stuff, graffiti, workshops, cabaret, kids stuff, films and also snow in April on my last day there.

The second Brighton TAA in 2009 was a long time in the planning and ended up being in Moulsecoomb, which personally I thought was a shame since we had floated the idea of clashing with the Brighton Festival Fringe and one of the things I find amazing about TAA is the way new people can just wander in and get involved, but being up a hill in Moulsecoomb (in the the burbs) meant that we were mainly catering to our friends and family. No bad thing in itself, but it also felt a bit cliquey (and druggy) and it became apparent to me at least that requirements such as having a place for people to park their vehicles was becoming more of a priority than finding a fat central venue for an exhibition. We could've squatted the old post office on Ship Street but for some reason everyone ought it was too ontop, it was then squatted and lasted over a year, which is insane in Brighton squat terms. It's now (2021) a poncey restaurant. The TAA went off ok although we did have a full-on riot with the local kids.

The third Brighton one in 2010 was in Shoreham and got illegally evicted on the Thursday before it was supposed to begin, which was unintentionally hilarious and showed the low capacity of the crew. TAA by this point was inevitably being tugged in different directions. Some people went down more of a fine art route doing exhibitions under other names on the back of TAA, others dumped whole cans of paint down stairwells (which you could say is even finer art). Some people took the experimental music nights onto another level, other people hung out by their vehicles all weekend.

CHIN STROKING

There was an idea at some stage to do a TAA festival which encountered quite a lot of debate since some people felt the ethos of TAA could not be shoehorned into the requirements of a commercial festival. In the end, the sheer logistics of putting on a festival meant that the idea went on the backburner and then later fed into other projects instead.

Personally I’m much happier with the TAA brand staying associated with squatted events, since so much of the meaning of it is tied up with shortterm transformation of space. Maybe now that is changing for the people still organising it because it is so much harder to squat in England. That’s a shame but good that stuff still happens. Actually I feel bad I never organised an event in the Netherlands, that would have been awesome, although now it’s the same problem, it would be hard to squat a big building for an art event where I am (in 2017).

BACK TO LONDON TAAs

Anyway, to get back to the London chronology after quite a long break (3 years maybe) we did another TAA in London in 2009 (? I think). At meetings beforehand I was pushing again for less partying and more info, soooooo (be careful what you wish for) I ended up in a little sideroom doing an infoshop (on holiday from my normal infoshop activities). It actually went really well: I had some great conversations and shifted most of the stock on donation.

The building was in Hackney Wick, which personally I thought was quite far out of town although to be fair the Wick (which used to be rave central and now is post-Olympic) was at that point in time a place where lots of young arty types were living in warehouse conversion type things, so maybe it was a good place for it. Anyhoo, it was a large warehouse (exprinters) with office space and a yard, and we crammed in lots of art, including P's head outside. There were various workshops (such as blacksmithing, self-defence and drawing). Pitchless did a cool sound installation. There was a pirate paddling pool, where you could drift over to the computer and illegally copy music! I sat in it for a good half hour happily chatting away and soaking my feet before realising my camera was in a sidepocket and underwater. After a good dry-out, it took bleached out photos for a while but it survived somehow!! I then showed some of the weird fotos at a later TAA :)

At the end, just when I was pushing a shopping trolley full up of the remaining infoshop stuff plus stacks of tatted papers left over from when the place was a printers towards my car, I got a call from my dad saying my grandad had died. We were pretty close and I still remember the sudden switch from post TAA euphoria to private grief. And then I was driving home for the funeral instead of going home.

Grief works in weird ways and I think this was one factor amongst others stopping me going to the TAA the next year in Tottenham. But then I was back doing info again with W the next year for the one off Hackney Road in 2011. This was really great, although it was fucking cold in the warehouse (which by the way in an upcoming area of London had been empty for year and still had a DJ setlist on the wall from when it was squatpartied several years before!?). Loads of people came down and I found it really sociable.

I did a presentation of my academic work feeding back how mainstream media discourses were being used to criminalise squatting. It looked like no-one was coming until the sofas and chairs filled up at the last minute. I was a bit nervous to do this in case people thought it was meaningless or stupid, but actually people totally got it and made superinteresting comments. I started working academically to try to work out why squatting was being criminalised and how to stop it, for me it’s really important then to get the research back out of the academic sphere and discuss it with fellow squatters, who of course have a pretty shrewd idea of what is going on since they are the beautiful people in this stupid fucking society based on greed and property. We discussed mainstream media reports on squatting and how they stereotype squatters as the dangerous, criminal, foreign other which must be repressed. I had some slides and showed an unexpected renaissance foto of the Scumtek party which ended up in a riot.

HOME

Everyone was getting no younger and there was talk of this 2011 being the last TAA, but here we are in 2017 and TAA is still happening, that’s fucking amazing! EDIT 2021 lol scream if you wanna go faster EDIT 2025 make it stop 

And since the theme of this particular exhibition is the concept of HOME let me say that TAA has been a real inspiration for me, a place, an idea, a freespace which has really affected who I am and how I see the world. It’s really amazing that a bunch of people can come together and in a short time period invade a building, fix the toilets and leccy, promote the event, fill it with crazy good art and hold it down for week, then clear up and go home. This sort of self-organised DiY stuff gives me so much energy, when everything else is so crap and normal and expensive. Just like squatting a house, just like putting on a squat rave, I am in a space where I can breathe and feel free.

Imagine not having the opportunity to do that.

I’m also really looking forward to TAA2047 (edit 2057) which will be all of us sneaking into a nice warm building in the ruins of London and sitting around knitting and gossiping about the good old days.

It’s gonna be awesome, I can’t wait!

EDIT 2021 my views on squatting have not changed much, I still think it's as important as ever to occupy and resist. I need to feel free and when we did a squatted homeless shelter in Brighton in early 2020 I felt alive again for the first time in a while. I'm lucky to be housed nowadays but my heart is still in squats, it's when I feel alive and free. Props to groups likes ASS, Bike Wars, NLSN and Pokora for keeping the dream alive, it's hard nowadays.

As for TAA? Well it just keeps on going...

EDIT 2025 ... i am now old and reduced to writing long tracts on the internet that no-one reads haha oh but we used to have fun..