This new film work by Ludmilla Andrews - reconfigured from Test Dept’s archive and with commentaries by cultural critic Alexei Monroe and Test Dept's Paul Jamrozy - explores the collective's legacy through the lens of some of the late Mark Fisher’s key concepts. In so doing, it raises a series of key themes and questions about Test Dept’s history and current work in relation to the multiple political, social and cultural challenges of 2021. It was created especially for the Goldsmiths, Visual Cultures department's 2021 Mark Fisher Memorial Lecture, which was held on 29 January 2021.
Can popular modernism still have an effect in the 21st Century, as Fisher believed it could? What lessons are there for today in the way that Test Dept operated in harsh environmental, economic and political conditions? How did Test Dept create its artistic "fuel to fight" from ruinous conditions and spaces and is it possible to imagine something like this in our own increasingly ruinous political and economic conditions?
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