Culture, Media and Creative Industries

This article looks at the practices of Shell Out Sounds and BP or not BP?, two environmentalist groups that stage interventionist performances against oil sponsorship of the arts in the UK. By considering theories of prefiguration in activism and social movements, and the framework of participation in live art and performance, this article asks: Can activist performance be prefigurative and interventionist at the same time? And, if activist performance has potential for prefiguration, where is this potential found? In order to answer these questions the author looks at the organisational processes of these groups, their relationship to arts institutions, and the dynamics of participation in their performances. As a consequence of this analysis, the author suggests that the transgressive use of institutional spaces for unsolicited artistic–political actions can, in addition to pursuing environmental goals, put forward prefigurative forms of participatory art making, as well as allowing a space for the transformation of political subjectivities.

Herbert Read’s 1941 essay ‘To Hell with Culture’ spoke of the state of artistic practice under a capitalist system and conditioned by the structures of the art institution. Read saw a project for social change that had art and culture at its centre, but not a kind of artistic practice that is elitist and exclusive; rather, he saw art as a liberatory practice for everyone. Departing from Read’s essay, this article examines community-centred artistic practices that challenge the canons and structures of institutions, and that have social change at their core. By looking at the processes and politics of these practices, I will argue that art activism has the potential to fight the commodification of culture denounced by Read, and take forward the still incomplete project of democratisation of the arts in a prefigurative manner.

Performance Action looks to advance the understanding of how art activism works in practice, by unpacking the relationship between the processes and politics that lie at its heart. Focusing on the UK but situating its analysis in a global context of art activism, the book presents a range of different cases of performance-based art activism, including the anti-oil sponsorship performances of groups like Shell Out Sounds and BP or not BP?, the radical pedagogy project Shake!, the psychogeographic practice of Loiterers Resistance Movement, and the queer performances of the artist network Left Front Art. Based on participatory, ethnographic research, Performance Action brings together a wealth of first-hand accounts and interviews followed by in-depth analysis of the processes and politics of art activist practice. The book is unique in that it adopts an interdisciplinary approach that borrows concepts and theories from the fields of art history, aesthetics, anthropology, sociology and performance studies, and proposes a new framework for a better understanding of how art activism works, focusing on processes. The book argues that art activism is defined by its dual nature as aesthetic-political practice, and that this duality and the way it is manifested in different processes, from the building of a shared collective identity to the politics of participation, is key towards fully understanding what sets apart art activism from other forms of artistic and political practice. The book is aimed at both specialist and non-specialist audiences, offering an accessible and engaging way into new theoretical contributions in the field of art activism, as well as on wider subjects such as participation, collective identity, prefiguration and institutional critique.

Vista Alegre is a municipality in the province of Neuquén, Argentina. Situated in a region traditionally known for its fruticulture economy, Vista Alegre has recently been identified as a potential location for fracking, a development that has resulted in widespread opposition among its inhabitants. The fight against fracking in Vista Alegre has followed a number of channels, from road blockades to art festivals and a legal challenge to the municipality. This paper analyses the conflict focusing on the forms of community art and media employed by the local assembly against fracking to widen and sustain participation in the struggle, and the role that these media have in mediating collective identity processes in the fight against fracking. Building on the concept of mediated identities (Fornäs and Xinaris, 2013), I look at these community art and media practices as dialogical (Kester, 2004). I propose that activities such as art festivals, mural painting and open radios contribute to collective identity processes through three mediating tactics: participation, knowledge sharing and the event modality. I conclude by arguing that these forms of community arts and media can be seen as a productive output of the conflict (Merlinsky, 2015), as they become crucial practices of cultural resistance.
Download: https://doi.org/10.20897/jcasc/3992

The authors outline how multiple dimensions—historical and contemporary; global and local; political, economic, social, and cultural—inform an understanding of the super-rich. Recent super-rich scholarship is reviewed with regard to three themes: discourses and representations; mechanisms and structures; experiences and identities. The empirical and conceptual insights of the contents are then highlighted, with regard to the significance of discourses of legitimacy, namely, those of meritocracy, civility, and luxury; the intersections of race and class that underpin assumptions about and representations of wealth; institutional and political-economic dynamics, in relation to international financial systems and property markets; and experiences and attitudes, examined via elites’ professional identities and cultural practices. The authors suggest that questioning the super-rich provides an avenue for the study of power in society, how it is reproduced, and how global hierarchies may be shifting. To that end, the articles attempt to make visible the brute force of the infrastructures (politics and policy, cultural and occupational conventions, financial devices and systems) that are occluded by the tendency to focus on the gloss of super-rich lifestyles; to draw attention to the long-term and newly emerging tensions within and between categories of wealth and of elites, and spheres of political, economic, and cultural activity; and to contribute to an understanding of how the accumulation of wealth is perpetuated and excused through discourses of legitimation, structural dynamics, and lived identities. These are much-needed critical interventions at a time of escalating inequality.

Affects are positive or negative investments that we have toward people, but also ideas, things and places (Goodwin et al. 2004:418). It is through affects that we often relate to others. Affect, as emotions, are embodied because “they entail some combination of sensation, behaviour and disposition” and involve “an articulation of bodily activity and worldly social context” (Crossley 2001:45). As Ahmed puts it, “it is through the movement of emotions that the very distinction between inside and outside, or the individual and social, is effected in the first place” (Ahmed 2004:28). The title of the piece suggests that the affects usually associated with transformations in the education sector are merely superficial, and probably not representative of the experiences of those involved. Instead, here affect is reconcidered in a nuanced way, and positioned as a main effect of these transformations.

Resumen: En Argentina y otros países de América Latina, la mercantilización de la naturaleza y la expropiación del territorio son objeto de cuestionamiento por su afectación a los comunes. Este artículo analiza aquellas expresiones de resistencia a estos procesos que asumen modalidades y lenguajes artísticos para intervenir en espacios y discursos públicos. Investigamos de qué manera se produce la definición de lo común en tres medios: el cine documental, las artes visuales y las manifestaciones creativas en el espacio público.

Palabras clave: comunes, extractivismo, arte, activismo



Abstract: In Argentina and other Latin American countries, the commodification of nature and the expropriation of territory are being challenged due to their impact on common goods. This article analyzes expressions of resistance to these processes that adopt artistic forms and languages in order to intervene in public discourses and public spaces. We investigate the ways in which the definition of the commons is produced through three different media: documentary film, visual arts, and creative interventions in the public space.

Keywords: commons, extractivism, art, activism

This article examines the ways in which community radios can act as spaces and vehicles of care for communities fighting extractivism. I draw from fieldwork research carried out in Argentina, and look at experiences of community radio in four provinces: Catamarca, San Juan, Córdoba, and Neuquén. In this task, I adopt the perspectives of ecofeminism and the ethics of care. An ecofeminist ethic of care, I argue, is a useful framework for looking at community media and environmental conflicts because it allows us to jointly think about care for the environment and relations of care within communities fighting to preserve life. In my analysis, I explore the idea of care in urgent resistance and care as a quality of prefigurative social relations and processes. I identify four different ways in which radios facilitate relations of care, and argue that the underlying logic to the ethic of care enacted through these radios is one of interdependence.