Activist Art

FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism is pleased to announce the
launch of issue #15, “Learning Art and Resistance from the South”. This issue
was guest edited by Eva Marxen of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It
consists of a series of essays, interviews and other documents generated in
response to the exhibition Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy and Activism in the
Americas. The exhibition, curated by Bill Kelley, Jr., was featured at the SAIC
Sullivan Galleries in 2018. As part of the exhibition the Sullivan Galleries
organized a number of public programs and events, from which the following
material was drawn. This issue of FIELD, like the exhibition which was its
catalyst, understands artistic practice and political praxis as interdependent and
mutually enriching. It locates an important nexus for these concerns in a range of
new artistic and cultural projects developed in Latin America over the past
decade. One of the primary focal points for the essays included here is the
ongoing struggle against neo-liberal capitalism. If we want to develop a deeper
understanding of the corrosive nature of neo-liberalism, and the forms of
resistance necessary to challenge it, we have much to learn from the Latin
American experience. One of the most important lessons it can offer us concerns
the generative nature of resistance itself. For the artists and collectives presented
in this issue of FIELD political resistance is not simply utilitarian, but rather,
constitutes a form of creative production that is capable of generating its own
unique forms of insight, and of re-shaping consciousness, and subjectivity, itself.
What emerges from these practices is not merely the epiphenomenal expression
of a naïve and spontaneous “actionism” but rather, a coherent pedagogical and
critical methodology from which new paradigms of both resistance and creation
can emerge. This issue of FIELD features bi-lingual translations in Spanish and
English. Contributors include Almudena Caso and Hannah Barco, David
Gutiérrez and Paulina E. Varas, Dignicraft and Ionit Behar, the Iconoclasistas
collective, Sandra de la Loza, Eduardo Molinari and Josh Rios, Red
Conceptualismos del Sur, Guillermo Rivera-Aguilera and Luis Jiménez, Mirliana
Ramírez-Pereira and Eva Marxen. FIELD is available on-line at: http://fieldjournal.
com/.

Comprising essays from some of the leading scholars and practitioners in the field, this is the first book to investigate twenty-first century radical film practices across production, distribution and exhibition at a global level.

Reviews
A newly, always, and again-relevant corner of contemporary and historic media culture—global radical film culture—is provocatively explored by its theorists and practitioners in Contemporary Radical Film Culture. Contributing to and driving these debates and practices while attending to the affordances of re-emergence through networking and networks, the authors, all members of the Radical Film Network, build new connections and learn from empowering histories because of the crises of our times, and in hopes of informing the future.

Alexandra Juhasz, Distinguished Professor of Film, Brooklyn College, CUNY

This first major collection of radical moving-image practices in the 21st century marks an aggressive new phase in the resistance against capitalist commodity culture. Remarkable for its intelligence, originality, accessibility, and especially for its global comprehensiveness, it will be of great value for activists, scholars and teachers, and indeed everyone interested in the struggle for a more equal and less exploitative socialist world.　　

David E. James, Professor, Division of Cinema & Media Studies, University of Southern California

English:
Feminist activist art has existed in public spaces in European and American contexts since the late 1960s, but became a substantial praxis in Israel only in the late 1990s. This paper examines the characteristics of feminist art activism in public spaces in Israel and discusses the ways in which feminist artists merge their art with strategies for radical change, raising questions about social issues and the power relations within society. The theoretical framework of the analysis is based on Bourdieu’s field theory, which views art as a field that has reciprocal relations with other fields, and calls for examining the dynamics, structures, and power relations involved. Methodologically, the paper advocates diversity in its presentation of both artists and artistic media. The artworks are diverse not only in genre – photography, installations, theatre, internet series, and films – but also in the choice of location, strategies, and goals.
Although the examples cited are from recent years in Israel, the roots of such feminist-activist art run deep in global terms. Contemporary feminist activist art reflects the progress that has been made since its beginning, but the ongoing need for social change remains evident. Some of the works discussed in this paper have never previously been examined from a scholarly perspective, and their inclusion as activist-feminist art in the public space is itself an act of activism. We argue that mapping and writing this history is a feminist activity. Locating such art in the field of scholarly endeavor will help link scholarship with activism in the arts in Israel.

עברית:
אמנות פמיניסטית אקטיביסטית קיימת ברחבי העולם משנות השישים של המאה העשרים, אולם בישראל התבסס זרם זה מאוחר יחסית, רק בשנות התשעים של אותה המאה. מאמר זה עוסק במאפיינים של אקטיביזם פמיניסטי באמנות בישראל ומראה כיצד היוצרות מציגות יצירות אמנות המציפות שאלות אודות מצבה של החברה ומשלבות בהן אסטרטגיות למען שינוי רדיקלי של החברה. מאמר זה שואב את מסגרתו התאורטית מתיאוריות של פמיניזם באמנויות ומתאוריית השדות של בורדייה, הרואה באמנות שדה עצמאי אך כזה המושפע ומשפיע על שדות אחרים בעולם והדורשת לבחון את המנגנונים, התהליכים, ויחסי הכוחות הקיימים בין המעורבים בשדה. מסגרתו המתודולוגית של המאמר נובעת מתפיסת העולם הדוגלת במגוון (diversity), לא רק בהקשר לזהות היוצרות, אלא גם מבחינת מגוון היצירות הנבחנות. משום כך מאמר זה יעסוק ביצירות מסוגים שונים בהן צילום, מיצבים, תאטרון, סדרות רשת וקולנוע. היצירות הנדונות במאמר שונות לא רק מבחינת הסוגות, אלא גם ביחס למיקומן במרחב ובשיטות הפעולה ובמטרות שלהן. עם זאת אנחנו מזהות שלכל היצירות יש מכנה משותף מובהק: איתגור גבולות הפעולה האמנותית במרחב הציבורי והרצון לבצע שינוי חברתי בעולם הממשי.

This paper reflects on the art activism that sprung from the Idle No More movement, alternatively known as the Indigenous Nationalism Movement. Despite Bill C-45's passage, Indigenous activism continues to gain momentum, and comments on important issues facing all Canadians. As with Hemisphere's 2013 art review, Visible Movement: The Arts of Idle No More (digitalrepository.unm.edu/hemisphere/vol6/iss1/), this paper follows the artists who continue to inform Indigenous activism in Canada.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the AIDS crisis was reaching its peak, with more than forty thousand Americans dying between 1981 and 1987 alone, as an apathetic presidential administration and profit-oriented pharmaceutical companies did little to quell the death toll. A number of artists and artistic collectives, such as ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), responded to the epidemic through the production of works that made use of advertising strategies such as mass distribution, eye-catching graphics, and shocking statistics in an attempt to jolt the public and the government out of its damaging complacency.

This paper considers Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA) as a work of activist art in its own right, seeing a number of its elements—such as its alluring beauty and emphasis on the viewer’s bodily engagement with the work— as deliberate activist strategies. While the work makes use of distribution as an activist strategy in the style of ACT UP, it might be seen as a more successful form of activism in its ability to present the same radical content under the guise of a beautiful facade deemed appropriate by the public at large. In comparing the tactics of this work with those of other activist works, this paper aims to highlight the power of visual and emotional beauty as tools for change.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism provides an accessible, diverse, and in many respects ground-breaking overview of literary, cultural, and political translation across a range of activist contexts. This volume brings together case studies and histories of oppressed and marginalised peoples from more than twenty different languages, ranging across Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Part One considers the theoretical foundations of translation and activism. Part Two examines the figure of the interpreter as an activist. Part Three examines the figure of the translator as an activist. Part Four is comprised of autobiographical reflections by translators and writers who bear witness to the stories of oppressed peoples. Part Five engages with translation and activism from a range of legal perspectives focusing on human rights. Part Six introduces a range of case studies of translations into vernacular languages. Part Seven situates translation and activism in the context of migration, with particular attention to refugee experience. Part Eight examines the role of translators in shaping revolution. As the first extended collection to introduce translation and activism from a systematically global perspective, this handbook will serve as a useful guide to translators, writers, scholars, and activists seeking to better understand the agency of language in bringing about political change.

FIELD: A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism is pleased to announce the launch of issue #21 (Spring 2022), with a special focus on socially engaged art practice in Iran. This issue has been guest edited by Saba Zavarei, who’s research was featured in FIELD #17 (Winter 2021).[1] For this issue Saba has assembled a remarkable collection of contributors writing on a range of creative, curatorial and critical practices in contemporary Iran. Saba herself has contributed an important analysis of the choreographic politics of public dance and performance. Helia Darabi examines the emergence of new forms of critical, site-specific art within the increasingly complex institutional structures of the Tehran artworld during the 1990s and 2000s. Azadeh Ganjeh describes her work in public performance in Tehran, drawing on the traditions of Boalian theater to involve spectators in ongoing dialogues about pressing cultural issues. Pouria Jahanashad discusses the complex meaning of “political art” in contemporary criticism, grounding her analysis in a reading of “informal” art practices in Iran operating in urban space. Shahram Khosravi explores the persecution of the nomadic Bakhtiari people, through an analysis of efforts to appropriate their cultural history in contemporary Iran. Elham Puriya Mehr examines the political potential of activist curatorial practice, using the example of Club 29 in Tehran to analyze the tension between intervention and institutional appropriation. Khosravi Noori provides an illuminating meditation on the relationship between liberation in Palestine and the often-opportunistic appropriation of the First Intifada by the Iranian government. Finally, Narciss Sohrabi expands on this analysis with her discussion of the transformative power of street art and graffiti in Iran during and after the 2009 uprising. We are extremely grateful to Saba for her tireless work in developing this special issue, and to her contributors for their invaluable insights, and the risks that they have taken, and continue to take, in registering their dissent. FIELD is available at: field-journal.com.

[1] See Bria Dinkins, “Interview with Saba Zavarei,” FIELD #17 (Winter 2021). http://field-journal.com/editorial/interview-with-saba-zavarie