PROTEST SCENOGRAPHER at ROSKILDE FESTIVAL . DemonstrationMarch with Colonel artist scenography 2006

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PROTEST SCENOGRAPHER
Protest Scenographer is an Art Format involving the orchestration of protests, using fashion and choreography, with large groups of people in diverse settings. Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel has activated Protest Scenographer at music festivals, night clubs, and art fairs, and incorporated it into other formats such as Critical Run, Debate Rave, Artfairist, and the Emergency Room. The goal of Protest Scenographer is, according to the artist, the creation of a “mass movement of individuals.” Fundamental to the format’s raison d’être is Colonel’s conviction that the energy generated by crowds at such events should be harnessed not just for diversion or profit, but to exercise the Awareness Muscles of the participants by encouraging them to think independently about how to tackle emergencies.
A radio announcement Geoffroy made in 1988 for people to attend FIAC (Foire internationale d’art contemporain) with family photos on their backs marked the first turn toward the creation of Protest Scenographer. “It was not a protest as such but more of a demonstration that family photos were more important than [the photos] we see around [the art fair],” said the artist. Embracing the individuality of the public was taken to a new extreme in 2004 with Protest Underwear, a photography project in which Colonel photographed festival attendees wearing white underwear with self-selected slogans scrawled upon them in red ink. “TO GO TO WAR FOR PEACE IS LIKE FUCKING FOR VIRGINITY,” reads one woman’s undershirt; “SHARE YOUR ORGANS,” reads another.
Two years later, at Roskilde Music Festival, Colonel rallied potential protestors by sending out a mass SMS to registered attendees, inviting them to wear headbands expressing their opinions and to march around the festival grounds together. Opinions which garnered at least ten followers could form groups with their own flags. With a photographer, loudspeaker, and guitarist in tow, Colonel and his fellow protestors recruited new individuals for their mass protest-marching movement over the course of four days. “We really had to pull people out because it was muddy and it was raining and people preferred to enjoy themselves with a beer inside a tent,” said Colonel. The protestors composed “marching songs” which they sung with the guitarist’s accompaniment. “There is the idea of individuality but with a together choreography,” according to Colonel.
Incorporating fashion (e.g. headbands) and choreography (e.g. marching to music) is intended as a “vehicle for sharing the philosophy that expression is important.” The headband makes the wearer’s opinion unavoidable. In 2007, Colonel incorporated headbands into his Emergency Room format at MoMA PS1 in order to facilitate debate between participants; they were also asked to recite their statements into a microphone to be incorporated into a sound work by DJ Seth. In 2009 they were incorporated to the same effect for his format Debate Rave, the debates were also recorded, mixed by a DJ and played back to the rave’s dancing audience. In 2010, Colonel led a group of visual art teachers into Danish Parliament where they wrote opinions on blindfolds, then walked through the building wearing their blindfolds as a means to engage members of parliament with their unsolicited statements on migration policy and other social issues. In 2007 the headbands were introduced to Critical Run in Athens and Istanbul. Protest Scenographer continues to be employed across many of Colonel’s formats, including his interventions at the Venice Biennale.
SPM
# Apathy – Art Format – Awareness Muscle – Emergency Art – Film – Moving Exhibition Vagabonde – Movement – Propaganda Detecteur – Protest Scenographer – Protest Underwear – Sound Art – The Protest Fashion


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Retrospective book Museum Villa Stuck / Snoeck publisher.

Artists that also work with demonstrations, protests :
Jeremy Deller , Fred Forest, Tania Bruguera, Ai Weiwei, The Guerrilla Girls, Santiago Sierra, Coco Fusco, Jenny Holzer, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Hans Haacke, Barbara Kruger, Pussy Riot, Christoph Schlingensief, Żmijewski, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Theaster Gates, Laurie Anderson, , Mona Hatoum, Alfredo Jaar, Claire Fontaine, Allan Sekula,Lucy Orta,, Banksy, Andrea Fraser, , Yoko Ono, Leo Bassi, Joan Jonas, Martha Rosler, Thomas Hirschhorn, Phil Collins, Guerrilla Girls BroadBand, Otobong Nkanga, Brett Bailey, Christian Falsnaes, Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramović, Valie Export, Vito Acconci, Ulay, Carolee Schneemann, William Pope., Tino Sehgal, Antoni Muntadas,