5 . Alternative space in London 2000 : counter to what ?

Introduction To what extent, if any, ‘alternative’ galleries can be defined as anti-establishment has long been in doubt. In this chapter, I consider critical literature on oppositional and critical positions and on the failure to maintain such a position. I show some examples of ephemera that record commentary on these issues. I have grouped these examples thematically under the headings: knowledge economy as context, the question of contingency, opposition to commodification, the questions of politics and protest, and exit. I avoid understanding such references in ephemera as a post-modern emptiness of signs, of cynicism, of ironic acceptance that previous strategies of protest are useless now, that can produce a reading of their visual props as decorative souvenirs, to look at the persistence of oppositional ideas in a complex ‘alternative’, again addressing these questions: