“The shift in revolutionary investments corresponds with a shift in the nature of power, which has removed itself from the streets and become nomadic.” — Critical Art Ensemble artist-tacticians, Qud in Rita Raley’s Tactical Media. Tactical Media Enter tactical media, a resistant form of cultural production that uses networked intelligence and digital forms to create… Continue reading Tactical Media and Disturbance Art
Category: Raised Fists
Power is Just a Snack
Power is going to come up a lot, so it’s worthwhile to think about a bit. One of the ways that I am interested in how activist art manifests is against, alongside, parallel to, and in opposition to P/power. But how does it work? Chomp, Chomp A mental exercise: Imagine a delicious cracker sandwich, made… Continue reading Power is Just a Snack
Usership, Intersubjectivity, Political Meaning
If the people who are making vernacular, politicized cultural forms are also using these forms and doing so in groups, how do we talk about them? What about when them are us? Users are Experts Steven Wright*, in a 2007 lecture about people using socially-engaged art, points out that they are experts of their… Continue reading Usership, Intersubjectivity, Political Meaning
Hierarchical Power, Invisible Users
“Envisaging an art without artwork, without authorship, and without spectatorship has an immediate consequence: art ceases to be visible as such.†– Steven Wright Part of the confusion between high art, activist art and participatory art and vernacular forms of politicized cultural works lies in determining where resistance emerges from, and against what. Perhaps, as… Continue reading Hierarchical Power, Invisible Users
Where It Lands: Users and Relational Aesthetics
We did an overview of what activist, and socially-engaged / participatory art is and who it is made by in the last posts, so now lets look at some of the ideas artists and makers invoke behind this type of work: users and usership, relationality, intersubjectivity* and groups. Users of the Art/Cultural Experience Activists and… Continue reading Where It Lands: Users and Relational Aesthetics
Makers: Actors, Artists, … Users
Who makes activist/political arts? The individuals and groups who make this kind of cultural production are primarily: movement actors [e.g. activists] within the communities meant to experience and co-create the work; artists, cultural activists, tool-having professionals, also often from within the discourse communities. These groups are far from mutually exclusive and often involve a lot… Continue reading Makers: Actors, Artists, … Users
Activist Art & Participatory Art
What We’re Looking For The first place I began researching was in and around the concepts of “activist art†and “political art,†both of which are colloquial terms that I hear and use regularly.  I was hoping to find a repository where an understanding of the critical importance of the role of those using or… Continue reading Activist Art & Participatory Art
Intro To Study
Over the next three months there will be weekly [ish] posts with writing and readings. Learn with me, talk back to me and each other. To get started and read along, I suggest the following: “Contributions to a Resistance Visual Culture Glossary†by Nato Thompson, http://journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/new3/thompson.html Peruse Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution, edited by… Continue reading Intro To Study
Screenprint Design for fabric printing, 2011-2013
Screenprinting was popularized during WWII by the Works Progress Administration’s Screen Print Division, which taught hundreds of artists what had until then been a specialized and inaccessible method of production. And now… Femmes Fight Back, 2010 Heels on Wheels tour patches, 2011
So Excited About Horizontal Networks and Radical Politics
I just finished a few proposals for the Allied Media Conference — which I swear I will co-work on organizing one of these years! — and one that I’m particularly excited about is called “Out of the Streets and Into the Networks: Horizontal Digital Collaborations for Radical Projects.” I’ve been growing in my comfort level… Continue reading So Excited About Horizontal Networks and Radical Politics