We Are Nature Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones

In 2008, as the storms of the financial crash started to blow, Isabelle Fremeaux and John Jordan deserted the metropolis, their academic jobs and entered a world of art and activism that seemed anchorless and without territory. They embarked on a journey across Europe searching for postcapitalist utopias. They arrived at a place French politicians had declared ‘lost to the republic’, known by those who inhabited and defended it as la ZAD (the ‘zone to defend’): a messy, muddy, imperfect but extraordinary canvas of commoning, illegally occupying 4,000 acres of wetlands owned by an airport. It was a place where, in 2018, the 40-year-long struggle snatched an incredible victory, defeating the capitalist project through a powerful cocktail that merged creation and resistance, building and fighting. ‘We Are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself’ is the story of that place and its people. Fremeaux and Jordan blend rich, raw eyewitness accounts with theory, inspired by a diverse array of approaches, from the neo-animism of recent anthropology, to revolutionary biology, insurrectionary writings and radical art history.