Unique multidisciplinary UK based musicians will be joining the 100% fully electric Moon Convoy crew and tour around England as a part of a once in a lifetime mobile educational and learning residency. They will join the Moon Arkestra as it moves around the UK. This programme is led by Tour de Moon, a new free nationwide festival in collaboration with our friends at the free, pluralistic and transnational charity University of the Underground.
The residency itself:
This two-month programme is calling for an investigation into whistleblowing as a political action but also an instrument and language.
Moon Arkestra members will be putting together a series of experiences, and creative interventions involving political theory and musical practice (including but not exclusive to Afrobeat, Rai, jazz, funk).
Together the residency programme will explore: How can whistleblowing (revealing secret information as a part of public institutions) be considered a creative practice and outlet to rethink our world being political, economic and sociological- within and outside of institutions?
Members of the public can expect a lot from the musicians, from playing our interactive sports games, DJing, workshops, debates and more!
What the Moon Convoy will experience:
The programme will involve giving classes in towns and cities across the UK but also partaking in tutorials with Head of Programme Dr. Aditi Jaganathan with support from Dr Nelly Ben Hayoun-Stepanian (chairwoman of the University of the Underground charity) along with a team of international tutors who are some of the best teachers, unconventional thinkers, dreamers of the day and nightlife makers in the world today. They will be teaching and guiding moon Arkestra members to develop strategies and inquisitions to build meaningful experiences and how to practically apply them within the context of an institution of their choosing.
What you can look forward to:
– 22 event days across 13 cities from May 11th until 16th June 2022
– 10 evening only events from 18:00-23:00
– 12 full-day events from 10:00-23:00
KEY DATES to remember:
The programme starts: April 22nd 2022 with Symposium Day
Start of the Moon Convoy: 10th May
End of Convoy: 16th June
COLLABORATORS:
Tour de Moon Ltd.
The University of the Underground
The University of the Underground was founded in February 2017, as a charity with ANBI status (RSIN 8575.82.781). The University of the Underground is a free, pluralistic and transnational university based in the basement of nightclubs- with headquarters in Amsterdam and London- and actively working with both institutions and nightlife. As charity, the hope of the University of the Underground is to bring generations together to democratise access to public institutions and trigger changes and critical reflections through the use of creative and experiential practices. With an explicit focus on political theory and philosophy, design of experiences, music, theatrical practices, film, social actions, and social dreaming; it aims to provide toolkits for members of the public and students to actively participate in revealing power structures in institutions. The University of the Underground supports unconventional research, countercultures, and practices that apprehend and challenge the formulation of culture, the manufacture, and commodities of knowledge. For the University of the Underground, it is essential to rethink education beyond national borders, but also to build a federation of cooperative schools globally to support the development, identification and empowerment of countercultures in institutions. As a result, the University of the Underground has started to run educational programmes in the USA, starting in summer 2019, in collaboration with the Hannah Arendt Center of Bard College and the United Nations; but also with the American University in Cairo and online in collaboration with Bassiani, a nightclub in Tbilisi in Georgia; or with activists such as Magid Magid.
The University of the Underground has a board of international thinkers, philosophers, activists, academics, politicians, musicians, filmmakers, innovative entrepreneurs but also creatives and curators such as Prof. Noam Chomsky, Serpentine Galleries artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist, academic Prof. Arjun Appadurai, European MEPs Magid Magid, performers such as Ishmael Butler of Digable Planets and Shabazz Palaces and musicians Massive Attack, drag performer Peaches Christ, Ted Prize winner and SETI Institute scientist Dr. Jill Tarter, activist Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot, author and McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers, President of file transfer service WeTransfer Damian Bradfield, with MOMA curator Paola Antonelli amongst others multidisciplinary practitioners.
About Tour de Moon Ltd
Tour de Moon is a cosmic adventure, a large-scale public festival of immersive experiences and live events developed in collaboration with our “universal satellite”: the Moon, seen as a character, a landscape and a prompt for radical imagination. The festival, composed of 8 programming strands, aims to reach millions of visitors across the UK and the world in 2022, through live and virtual experiences, supporting youth, nightlife creators, scientists and digital creators through cooperation. With Tour de Moon, we seek new beginnings, to empower others to create, to initiate, to innovate with new thinking and pluralistic practices so that history does not repeat itself on and beyond Earth.Tour de Moon is composed of more than 90 individuals as a part of its team, Youth Reporter Board and Advisory Board and further collaborative organisations, all working together to build a festival committed to plurality, decolonial practices, social and racial justice, solidarity and equity. www.tourdemoon.com
About Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios
Founded in 2009, Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios Ltd. designs experiences for you to become an astronaut in your living room while dark energy is being created in your kitchen sink and a volcano erupts on your couch. We are an interdisciplinary design studio which devises subversive events, experiences, and feature-length films. We work on multimedia, highly ambitious projects to empower countercultures and communities by building platforms for them to challenge power structures, while also allowing for change and critical thinking through multi-faceted immersive experiences. We are pioneers in the design of experiences, our mission is to reveal meanings and power structures through experiential practices and to foster critical thinking within institutions across the world. We have consulted and worked with leading scientists, creatives, writers, brands, politicians, policymakers, musicians, and engineers worldwide and we have a track record of having successfully challenged public engagement mechanics through theatrical, experiential, films and design practices. We rethink and question systems in education, design, distribution, communication, public speaking, politics, economics, history, and sociology towards further pluralistic models which we implement in our projects. We are a team of architects, graphic designers, textile designers, philosophers and more based in an artist collective in a train carriage on top of a nightclub. Plurality is one of our core tenets and as a result we support various forms of educative and alternative training, through the University of the Underground, a tuition-free charity we founded in 2017 with board members such as Pussy Riot, Noam Chomsky, and Massive Attack; it supports free, pluralistic, and transnational education. In 2020, Dezeen shortlisted Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios Ltd. one of the world’s best design studios and in 2021 The Dots selected Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios Ltd. as one of the “Top 50 companies to work for in 2021”.