On Poverty

My Essay for the Living School, by Brandon LaBelle (2018) was prompted by a presentation at the Southlondon Gallery on December 6th, 2016, where I gave a talk about the Estate project (2009-2015). The Estate project was a long term project from within the place I lived for 18 years, and which was demolished in 2014. This essay letter, On Poverty, describes the meaning of the term and its unmeaning at the same time: the way it is appropriated to erase experiences whilst at the same time promote neo-liberal policies.

PP 48-53

The Living School developed through an initial residency with artist
Brandon LaBelle at the South London Gallery in 2014 and resulted in a
series of four public sessions between February and June 2016. Focusing on issues of social housing, common life, precariousness, and self-building, the Living School sought to work as an informal pedagogical platform aimed at supporting dialogue as well as collective making. Each session consisted of workshops and presentations led by invited guests and was held at specific social and cultural venues in London. Through methods of improvisation, somatic practices, experimental pedagogy, and self-organization, the Living School acted as temporary situations from which to draw out possibilities for reimagining what it means to live together, and
what a social house might become.

Session 1: Expulsion (February 2016 / Peckham Liberal Club)
Jane Rendell, professor, Bartlett School of Architecture
zURBS, artist collective
Irit Rogoff, professor, Goldsmiths College
Session 2: Poverty (March 2016 / Ivy House Pub)
Andrew Conio, artist, lecturer University of Kent
Andrea Luka Zimmerman, artist, Fugitive Images
Liz Allen, archivist, Toynbee Hall
Session 3: Self-Built (May 2016 / Limehouse Town Hall)
Chris Jones, 56a Archive
RUSS, urban solutions initiative
Elyssa Livergant, artist, Limehouse Town Hall
Session 4: Shared Space (June 2016 / Open School East with the
Anti-University)
Aria Spinelli, researcher, Radical Intention
Jonathan Hoskins, artist / researcher
Brandon LaBelle, artist-in-residence, South London Gallery