David Bell

nomadicutopianism.wordpress.com

David Bell was born in Wolverhampton in 1985 and has been wondering how the world could be otherwise ever since. He now lives in Nottingham where he studies for a PhD in the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice at the University of Nottingham.

In his thesis he draws on anarchist, open Marxist and poststructuralist philosophy; musicology; contemporary art; and utopian literature to offer new ways of thinking about utopian spaces. He develops- and argues for- a 'nomadic utopianism', in which a space is utopian only to the extent that it remains immanently open to the future; and argues that in order to do this a space must be constituted by nonhierarchical social relations.

He is interested in developing artistic, musical and educational practices which create nomadic utopias, and views his work in education and as an improvising musician in this light. His Eastside Island Utopia Project, meanwhile, creates a space to collectively imagine a larger scale 'nomadic utopia' on a piece of wasteland in Nottingham: the same piece of wasteland that he is involved with as part of Wasteland Twinning.

David is co-founder of the Creative Commons record label Records on Ribs and is currently writing a book on music and utopia entitled 'The Shape of Utopia to Come' for Zer0 Books.