Ange Taggart (UK): ANTI… a Gift of an Opposition?

Wrestling is fun, especially when experimenting with the anti-anti tension caused by random acts of consumption. Ange Taggart founder of My Dad’s Strip Club will be in the Red Cross store, carrying out anti-experiments, meeting the customers and giving presentations inspired by the shoppers and products on sale.

This is a creative engagement for hard-core thrift-store shoppers, and those driven by the desire to step outside the retail loop of endless consumption that seems to take over our lives. We go about our business of shopping in a serious way. We’re not alone, but part of a wider community who are subverting and adapting existing systems. It’s a chance to connect with this diverse movement of people who chose to reject material values, not in a passive, but an active way. We may live far apart but our concerns are similar.

Ange lives in Nottingham UK, remote from Kuopio, yet her concerns seem in tune with everyday life here. People in distant locations are drawn together by rejecting trans-national corporations and the types of consumption they promote. My Dad’s Strip Club celebrates dissent through video and performance. Its members are dysfunctional consumers who have lost their ability to shop in the correct way. They engage in intervention, performance, installation and disruption and have been noted by surveillance camera operators worldwide. Across the world club members have been leading a wave of in-store actions set to playfully challenge the shopping addiction.