Karen and Brad are two of the UK’s most interesting, thoughtful (expanded1) film artists and part of the invaluable film production/ critical dialogue/ image making resource no.w.here. Nabil is an artist, writer, and musician; he often deals with issues of immigration and human rights; he’s a member of Call & Response.

Brad and Karen first thought of The Museum of Non Participation in 2007 when - during the Pakistani Lawyers movement in Islamabad - they viewed the protests and subsequent state violence from a window in The National Art Gallery. 

The Museum of Non Participation is an expanded film performance/ lecture/ intervention of texts, slides, narration, video and film; the performance charts the coming into being of The Museum of Non Participation, as an artistic, social and political experiment to define the boundaries of non-participation and resistance.2  

The performance brings together different materials (film, text, speech) and temporarily constructs a filmic space to think through questions of resistance, and the choice and consequence of action vs. inaction: what does it mean to choose to not take part? 

• 1. i.e.: they make films, and they also make multi-screen, immersive, performance-based, architectural, durational film spaces.
• 2. And which has so far variously involved, in London: English/Urdu language classes, a kind of cultural exchange space behind Yaseen’s Hairdressers on the Bethnal Green Road…; and in Karachi: performances at Sunday Bazaar, text banners around town, and newspapers as packaging for food sold by the tandoor walla’s…