Mwiinga Twyman

Ten Londoners and a dog. They dance together, steal together, eat together; agree and disagree, celebrate their differences and share their talents. They spark a debate about the world we live in, who has stolen what from whom, and how things might be fixed.

Art Class (2020, 49 mins) is a filmed performance lecture playing on, and exploring, the perennial tension between the two key words in its title. It uses the tropes of scholarly presentation and personal confession alongside extracts from the artist’s work, guest interventions, martial arts and meditation exercises and evidentiary found material. The film tests the limits of access that working-class artists have to cultural production and to the relevant institutions circulating these outcomes. Alternately playful and provocative, serious and satirical, Art Class favors wit over weaponizing and reflection over rhetoric but does not pull its punches when it comes to the real obstructions to working class creative progress, or to the strategies necessary to overcome such outmoded hindrances.