Por Convención Ferrer, 1910 - 1918

ISBN: 184631206X

Author: Jacques, David

Condition: New

In the years leading up to the First World War a small though significant network of Anarchist (specifically Anarcho-syndicalist) activists made their presence felt in downtown Liverpool. An element within the group concentrated their efforts on developing new and distinct programmes of education and an annual conference-come-discussion group under the title Por Convención Ferrer was one outcome. From 1910, on October 13 each year and named in honour of the Spanish educationalist Francisco Ferrer y Guardia, who had been tried and executed on October 13 1909 for his alleged involvement with a violent uprising in Barcelona. Por Convencion Ferrer provided a platform for anyone to propose '...for free and open discussion' any subject of their choosing. The contributions generally came from anonymous sources or from within the group itself, were broad ranging in their subject matter and had often been realised by undertaking some form of time travel. The event ran until 1918 and was also staged along the way by sympathetic parties in Birkenhead, Bala, Salford and Manchester. In this book, using text and images the artist David Jacques explores the Por Convencion Ferrer conferences and relates them to the present. The book begins with a concocted archive. A series of mementoes in the form of pennants, inscribed with the titles presented at each conference. On close inspection, the painted-embroidered silks are fairly rough in their construction, with off-centred pattern registrations, colour bleeds and barely decipherable texts stained into a palimpsest-like surface. They figure more as a series of templates, remnants from a studio or 'works in progress'. The text has been gathered together from a broad spectrum of sources and presented by a researcher / narrator, who gives way to a variety of voices; being the subjects themselves, commentaries contemporaneous to the subject or present day research studies. Each story presents a change of step in register, ranging from the everyday to the catastrophic. No linkage is offered and the seemingly haphazard juxtaposition of events render a fractured, disconnected voyage through time, space and place. The nine gatherings staged between 1910 and 1918 each entail three presentations. Each presentation references a point in time; one takes on an approximate point concurrent with each conference (1910-18), a second sees a point fifty years or more into the past and a third undertakes a point fifty years or more into the future.

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