In Everybody in The Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 (2018), British artist Jeremy Deller explores the socio-political history and contemporary legacy of the ‘Second Summer of Love’. Based on a real-life lecture he delivered to a class of A-level Politics students, Deller utilises rare and unseen archive footage to illustrate his telling of this significant cultural movement.
From the genesis of house music in the gay clubs of Chicago and the Post-Industrial wasteland of Detroit, through sound systems of British-Caribbean communities to the Balearic bliss of Shroom, Deller charts the momentum that exploded from illicit underground dance floors, cementing acid house and rave music in the mainstream conscious.
As the Second Summer of Love dawned, Deller explains how for a down-trodden nation recovering from the wounds of the Miners’ strike, the liberal inclusivity of this new music – and drugs – offered a much-needed opportunity for collective catharsis. Ultimately, the proliferation of this counter culture laid bare the stagnation of cultural production in a society constrained by boundaries of class, identity and geography – a moment of seismic change born out of necessity but driven by music.
Deller’s film looks in detail at the social makeup of Britain in the mid to late 1980s, from the initial wave of hysteria and vilification that greeted acid house, to its rebirth through the prodigiously attended raves of 1988-1990 and ultimately its demise as a revolutionary force by the end of 1993.
Jeremy Deller (1966) is an English conceptual, video and installation artist. One of his best-known pieces is the massive performance the Battle of Orgreave (2001), a re-staging of an infamous clash between striking miners and the police in 1984. He won the Turner Prize in 2004, and in 2010 was awarded the Albert Medal of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA). His work is present, among others, in the following institutions: FNAC, Paris; FRAC Nord-Pas-De-Calais; FRAC Pays de la Loire; FRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Musée des Arts Contemporains, Grand-Hornu; Tate Modern, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Exhibitions include: Wir haben die Schnauze voll, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn/DE (2020); Everybody In The Place, The Modern Institute, Glasgow/UK (2019); English Magic, British Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale/IT (2013); Sacrilege, Esplanade des Invalides, Projet Hors les Murs, FIAC Paris/FR (2012); Joy In People, Hayward Gallery, London/UK (2012); D’une révolution à l’autre, Carte Blanche à Jeremy Deller, Palais de Tokyo, Paris/FR (2008).
61 min
Language: English with Slovenian subtitles
Production of the event:
Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2022
in collaboration with the Center for Urban Culture Kino Šiška
In the framework of Akcija!, a cycle of screening events
Supported by:
the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana
