Shy Radicals: Book Launch & Panel Hamja Ahsan

Shy Radicals are the Black Panther Party of the introvert class. Drawing together communiqués, covert interviews, oral and underground history of introvert struggles (Introfada), here for the first time is a detailed documentation of the political demands of shy people.

Hamja Ahsan’s debut book builds an anti-systemic manifesto quiet and thoughtful polemic, a satire that uses anti-colonial theory, anti-psychiatry, teen movie tropes to build a critique of dominant culture,  integrating current debates around state Islamophobia.

The panel will consider the role of introvert and extrovert in debates around privilege, accessibility, diversity, protest culture and radicalism.

Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert by Hamja Ahsan is published by Book Works, as part of Common Objectives, guest edited by Nina Power. It is available to buy here:

https://www.bookworks.org.uk/node/1917

Speakers

Hamja Ahsan is an activist, writer, curator and artist. He is a campaigner for prisoners, human rights and civil liberties under the War on Terror, and was shortlisted for the Liberty Human Rights awards for the Free Talha Ahsan campaign. He has presented art projects at Tate Modern, Gwangju Biennale, Shaanakht festival Pakistan and Shilpa Academy, Bangladesh. He co-founded DIY Cultures Festival in 2013. He is currently working on a project on the role of fanzines on Hillsborough justice campaign.

Daniel Olivier will speak about the Neurodiversity longtable and his participatory performances. They mix pre-planned words and actions with last minute event-specific decision making and improvised dialogue with participants. They layer precariously maintained fantasies with clunky, immanent reality, foregrounding the liveness inherent in working with unprepared participants. They are unashamedly dyspraxic, embracing his lightly off-kilter relationship with co-ordination, social interaction and executive planning. Dr. Daniel Oliver is a teaching fellow at Queen Mary University of London. His research is focused on the socio-political efficacy of awkwardness and uneasiness in contemporary participatory performance, particularly in relation to the ‘Social Turn’ and neurodiversity. He has also worked as a solo performance artist and a collaborator across the UK and overseas since 2003.

Shukri Sultan is a spatial designer and activist. She will speak about architecture, capitalism and introversion.

Nick Brown is an art librarian, shy, dyslexic and a bit deaf. He used to work at the Stuart Hall Library at Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts). He’s not much of an activist but occasionally helps with other people’s activism and is a fellow traveller of the Shy Radicals movement.

Listen to the event here: