My new video:
Friday 16 December 2011
Monday 12 December 2011
Art Activism
“It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush-fires of freedom in the minds of men.”
-Samuel Adams
(Rise of the New World Activist p.1)
Art Activism itself could be considered the art form most interested in the human condition. Unlike the contemporary idea of philanthropy, where people are mainly required to collect money and send it to an organization, then forget about it, activism tends to aim for a specific motive or idea that needs to be changed regarding the rights of humans or other causes. According to Michael Shank in his paper Redefining the Movement: Art Activism; he states that in order to make activism work, activists need to change the hearts and minds of the people. Shank believes that Art has the right tools to do just that.
What most of us must be involved in – whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do—not only has to make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world. (Shank, 532)
To read Shank's article, go to this website:
According to Shank there are two targets that the art activist aims for: they aim for the powerful organizations or powerful social orders or they target the powerless organizations or marginalized movements. The main goal of the first aim is to challenge and destabilize the large corporations. The goal of the second target is to unify and to strengthen the powerless movement. The art activist has four strategies to get what they need accomplished: The first is to wage conflict nonviolently.
One current example of this is an online print community called Occuprint, which is calling artists and designers to create posters in favor of the Occupy Wall Street Movement and printing their work. In all of these Images the artists enhance the conflict that is already in existence, but are using the emotions of the Occupy Movement to further rally them together and to help encourage them in the task they have ahead of them.
All Day Every Day by Cannon Hill Eat the Rich by Christy C Road On Our Watch by Mario Klingemann
The second strategy for art activists to get what they need accomplished is to reduce direct violence. One artist who is located in Boston, Massachusetts has opened a Facebook page dedicated to artists against abuse. There her goal is to collect and show pieces made by artists depicting any kind of abuse, whether it is toward man, woman or child. She calls her page, “Artists Against Sexual Abuse”. Her facebook page is:
Emotional Abuse Over Protection Empty
The third strategy for art activists is to transform relationships. Their aim in transforming relationships is to restore justice, heal trauma and transform conflict. A group of artists who call themselves “Art for Change” have created a website with their art dedicated to the specific causes they have chosen to fight for. “Art becomes a political act, a conscious effort to facilitate and participate in social change. If we want respect, love and beauty among others, and us we must actively promote it through our art” (Art for Social Change). Their Website is:
She is a Hero The Rhythem of Life has a Lovely Heart Beat Shared Fruits Should be Televised
By Rini Hartman
The final strategy is to build capacity. What the artists attempts to do is meet the needs and rights through education, training, research and evaluation. A fairly fresh French art photographer who calls himself J.R. has been traveling to war-torn or desperately poor nations, photographing the local people there and then pasting the images on walls, roofs of houses, or any public surface he can find. A particular project that he did was called “Women are Heroes” where he photographed women to praise the those who tend to be the target in conflict. To read more about JR, go to this website:
The negative side of art activism, or in activism altogether, is that the activist can become disillusioned. When this happens the activist will try and wage conflict as a last resort. When conflict occurs, it can lead to violence, which can be a deterrent rather than help the cause that they have been fighting for. These activists have been known to hijack “sacred symbols to inflict harm to the social order’s world view as an act of revenge in response to the perceived harm inflicted on the powerless” (Shank, 542).
Regardless of the negative side-effects that can occur in art activism, or what cause these art activists might be fighting for, their purpose is to win the hearts and minds of the public. Activists must create a mass amount of people to be able to get the work done, and artists have the capacity to do just that. In regards to global change, art activists have a tall order ahead of them. But no matter how seemingly impossible one’s task might be, it is up to the artist to try and tackle it by doing what they do best.
Monday 5 December 2011
The Triads
In ECA, there is a method of critique used called “The Triads”. What is involved in the triads is that there are three students and a professor. Two of these students are first year MFA and the third is in his or her second year of their MFA. The first student talks about their work for ten or fifteen minutes straight without interruption about their work: what they have done, what they are doing, what they will be doing, why they are doing these things, and what their issues are. After they are done talking, the listener talks for the same amount of time. They say what they heard, what they think some of the issues might be, and how to possibly solve these issues. Finally the third student who is “observing” these “talkers” and “listeners” just describes what happened between the two without opinion within five minutes.
Although, I have to admit some insight can come out of this method of critique, I find that it is far less useful than other methods. It is far too rigid and unnerving. It is easy enough to talk about your work and what you are trying to accomplish and feel what you are have having issues with, but to rely solely on one other individual who most likely has an extremely different opinion on what art should be altogether is a detriment to the artists needing feedback. It is also, in my opinion, far too difficult on the listener to be forced to help the artists who might be on a completely different wavelength.
My preferred critique is with a group of different artists who might be using a similar medium or completely different medium. This allows people to ask questions about the work that the artists might not have explained well in the first place (being that most artists have a hard time verbalizing things anyway). In this way, ideas can be popcorned and molded into actually helping the artists instead of further confusing them, which has been my experience so far in the triads.
Today, my triad involved an illustrative artist who mainly drew his pieces on flat surfaces, an installation/sculpting artist, and me who is a painter/videographer, three very diverse artists. I personally have nothing against different artists with different backgrounds giving critiques on each other’s work in fact I prefer it. However this strict one on one view makes it far more difficult, especially if the other artist likes nothing of what you’re doing, which can and does happen. I believe that if ECA feels that it has to have the triads as apart of the critiquing process then by all means, let it. But I cannot believe that is the only way to critique an artist and his or her work.
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