Upside Down Culture
“Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.”
- Hauptmann, Steffin, Berlau, & Brecht
“Resistance and change often begin in art, especially literature.”
- Ursula LeGuin
Upside Down Culture Collective began as a collective project in Detroit circa 2001/02 and it was basically an anti war arts/activist crew which assumed its moniker in homage to the spirit of the anthemic song “The World Turned Upside Down”, in particular Billy Bragg’s version. Eduardo Galeano’s book Upside Down was also in the mix of why we had hit upon this name.
We participated in marches, curated cultural events, lectured, raised funds, had fun and threw our lot in with kindred spirits who believe in a passionate creative resistance to the domination of global capitalism. We made a lot of new friends and co conspirators along the way and for a good long while organized ourselves around the creation, production, and promotion of a book we called All The Days After: critical voices in poetry and artwork. In the end it was pretty sweet and the book is available here for purchase. (I will take a closer look into this era of the collective at a later date within Part III. of the history of our collective.)
Eventually, I found myself, aside from maintaining the ATDA book distribution, checking emails and keeping up with correspondence to our PO Box (which included a few letters from prisoners) wanting to continue the mission with my new ideas. I ended up spreading myself quite thin, simultaneously involved in a handful of various collective projects pedal to the metal. Along the way I also managed to organize and collaborate on plenty of fun creative endeavors which were “Upside Down Culture presents” projects. Life became remarkably challenging and the excitement of the activist art stuff helped keep me going but it all caught up to me and choices had to be made, there was to be less activism in my future.
I hoped to keep the name and spirit of the collective alive though, believing our work had been vital and inspiring, even though “the collective” had ceased to exist. I was not ready to let go of Upside Down Culture so basically here I am 20 years later still finding new Upside Down Culture ideas and going at it…
Part II.
In a way the UCC began as a result of the events following the NYC World Trade Towers attacks, commonly referred to as 9-11 though I think it was in the ether. What I mean by that is our community had been hosting events for quite some time by radical puppet troupes, authors, activists, playwrights and musicians and that's who we were too. I know from looking back on old journals at the beginning of 2001 I had been brainstorming around an idea of creating a “media explosions” group. It was to be a multi-faceted approach to storytelling I imagined as a cross between Food Not Bombs and Trumbullplex. Huh?
As activists, we were starting to see that using art as a way to fight against oppression and make our voices heard was one of the most powerful and valuable tools we had. At the very least it was the most accessible tool we had at our disposal. (Keep in mind, the internet was still just getting going at this point). We were already doing it (local art and activism) just not as a specific group with a name yet...
-Jhon Clark