Artivism

We invite applications for our panel "Figuring It Out: Crises and Resistance in Graphic Novels, Comics, and Cartoons" at the XV Conference of the Italian Society for Middle Eastern Studies (SeSaMO). The conference will be held in presence at L’Orientale University of Naples (Naples, Italy) on June 22-24, 2022.

Performance Constellations maps transnational protest movements and the dynamics of networked expressive behavior in the streets and online, as people struggle to be heard and effect long-term social justice.  Its case studies explore collective political action in Latin America, including the Zapatistas in the mid-’90s, protests during the 2001 Argentine economic crisis, the 2011 Chilean student movement, the 2014–2015 mobilizations for the disappeared Ayotzinapa students, and the 2018 transnational reproductive rights movement. The book analyzes uses of space, time, media communication, and corporeality in protests such as virtual sit-ins, flash mobs, scarfazos, and hashtag campaigns, arguing that these protests not only challenge hegemonic power but are also socially transformative. While other studies have focused either on digital activism or on street protests, Performance Constellations shows that they are in fact integrally entwined. Zooming in on protest movements and art-activism in Mexico, Argentina, and Chile, and putting contemporary insurgent actions in dialogue with their historical precedents, the book demonstrates how, even in moments of extreme duress, social actors in Latin America have taken up public and virtual space to intervene politically and to contest dominant powers.
Free to read online until June 30, 2020. https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/00000149n

This essay examines the grassroots feminist zine Flor y Canto, published by the East LA Chicana collective Mujeres de Maíz (MdM). This submission-based publication consists of poetry and visual art by women of color. Often associated with third wave feminism, feminist zines are credited for being the vehicle of expression for third wave feminist thought. Although Flor y Canto presents many of the characteristics common in feminist zines, MdM also draws on a Chicana feminist epistemology grounded in Indigenous worldviews to denounce the gender status quo. MdM adopts a politicized spirituality influenced by Mesoamerican conceptions of art and poetry that understands these art forms as healing, transformative, and connected to the divine. This essay argues that MdM employs this framework in their zine to make a larger critique of patriarchy and gender violence. They interrupt Western notions of art and use an Indigenous spiritual epistemology to redefine art and artists. Using the altar as a framework, this essay analyzes the poetry and art in Flor y Canto as an offering on an altar to illustrate how Chicanas deploy their artivism to speak against gender violence and ultimately heal from this trauma.

16th century ‘face to face’ persuasion scams adopted to letters, telephone, fax and Internet with the development of new communication technologies. In many of today’s fraud schemes phone numbers play an important role. Various free-to-use on-line tools enable the scammers to hide their identities with fake names, bogus business websites, and VoIP services. These fake businesses or personas can appear more legitimate when connected to a phone number, enabling a faster, more personal contact to the victims. With the typology of a sample probe of 374 emails, commonly used in business proposal scams, the emails were categorized and tested to see how believable the proposals sound once the scammers were contacted by phone. The research can be explored in a 5-channel interactive audio installation called ‘Let’s talk business’ that uncovers which business proposals and scam schemes are commonly used, and how believable the proposals sound once the scammers are called.

This article is an adapted version of a text originally published in Turkish in the historical materialist journal PRAKSIS in 2016, and translated into English by the author. It focuses on performative protest acts and the role of the performing artist in Turkey in the context of the Gezi Park uprisings of 2013. The article examines how some of Gezi's performative protest actions evidence a larger cultural transformation, of which we can see a continuation in new theatre playtexts.

A movement begun by Magda Sayeg in Houston (Texas) in 2004, but only documented since the late 1990s, a new kind of texture-fiber-has made an appearance and made its presence felt on the street art scene. The practice of what is usually referred to (more or less interchangeably) as "guerrilla crochet", "knit bombing", "yarn bombing", or "graffiti knitting" mostly consists of interventions with customized crocheted or knitted cozies in different 3D elements of street 'furniture' such as sculptures, benches, poles, pipes, signage, railings, door handles fences and, above all, trees. Unlike other genres of art in public space, knit-bombing is rooted in the practice of crafts and activism. In fact, most actors started crochet or knitting as a hobby, as a fundraising campaign or as political activism rather than to pursue fame or reputation in the so-called 'art world'. This paper aims to serve as both an introduction to as well as an analysis of yarn-bombing practice in street art and post-graffiti contexts. It discusses how this medium impacts, challenges and disrupts the perception and use of contemporary cities by humanizing them and making them more approachable. In a broader sense, the medium's rootedness in the everyday generally appears to result in a positive reception by the city users who engage with it.

This paper explores the attempts of the political activist group Centre
for Political Beauty to restore beauty to politics. While the Centre
for Political Beauty claims that their performances can be traced back
to the multimedia artist Christoph Schlingensief, my contention is
that their self-understanding as artists is problematic. By approaching
selected interventions against the backdrop of their respective
contexts in the history of the avant-garde, I develop criteria facilitating
a differentiation between protest art and political activism. I posit
that protest art, in contrast to political activism, need not be driven
by a goal-oriented artistic intention, and must possess openness as
a strategy. Rather than aiming at a direct pedagogical or educational
effect on the audience, protest art desires to open up a dialogue between
the artwork and the audience. The way in which shame operates
in the interventions of the Centre for Political Beauty calls into
question whether their interventions actually allow for the open and
dialogical engagement that is promoted by protest art.

In his 1980 essay, "Social Movement: Phenomenon or Meaning?," Michael McGee cautioned rhetorical scholars against conceiving of "social move-ment" as empirical phenomenon. He wrote, " 'Movements' are not phenomena , nor does the concept 'movement' explain a phenomenon empirically; rather, 'movement' is an analogue comparing the flow of social facts to physical movement. It is an interpretation of phenomenal data controlled less by what happens in the real world than by what a particular user of the analogue wants to see in the real world." 1 With his influential essay, McGee intervened into debates about the proper rhetorical definition and scope of "social move-ment" by widening the rhetorician's sense of the context of social movement. 2 That is, rather than see the context of the rhetoric of "social movement" as tied to political constraints and opportunities or rhetorical appeals, McGee widened the context of "movement" to the entire "flow" of public discourse and ideology over time. While, on one hand, McGee's approach has been tremendously influential and productive for rhetorical critics, on the other hand, much research published in the last several decades implicitly rebuts McGee's basic argument that the materiality of social movement is found primarily in the movement of meaning. Increasingly, scholars illustrate just how important "phenome-nal" contexts, like bodies, place and space, physical motion, and emotions, are to social movement. 3 With the increasing emphasis on the importance of rhetorical criticism in situ, the material contexts of social movement rhetoric

"Art and gentrification. Culture as the assumed driving force behind urban renewal". The same pattern is being repeated across various old city quarters. Trust is being placed in culture as the almost exclusive driving force behind urban regeneration. Yet it is a specific, self-interested view of culture: art (and the artists themselves) supposedly impregnating the urban district scheduled to be renewed with a bohemian, sophisticated halo; this is exactly what the quarter’s real estate appreciation needs more than anything else. Museums and visitors’ centres, homes and premises discretionally subsidised for artists and architects, tours of the wall paintings, statues of famous artists, theme markets, etc. are just some of the numerous strategies, the latter having been cloned over the last few years between one city and the next and mainly promoted by the political sphere. The artist is deliberately being used and guided by the ideologue who happens to be on duty in the urban renewal strategy. And, on the whole, the artist fails to notice or does not want to notice the flip side that this brings as a result, which is the gentrifying or elitising process that he or she is collaborating in when he or she executes his or her commission: the forced transfer of the inhabitants who cannot afford the rent increases in the renewed quarter. It is perfectly understandable (we all need to eat, after all), but it is still reprehensible, particularly in the case of quite a few architects and artists displaying a supposedly rebel, progressive attitude but who are contributing with their work towards increasing social inequality in the form of urban segregation. So the art and city binomial is being used on more than a few occasions to disguise the negative social consequences resulting from urban regeneration. Economic power is using art understood thus as a cosmetic, diversionary alibi, rather than criticising and finding fault with it from the standpoint of creative, political reflection (in the primeval sense of the word, in other words, relating to the polis, urbanness). Quite the opposite, because it is deflating genuine (ruthless yet constructive) criticism by tainting it all with an anaesthetizing patina, which is either of an innocent aestheticism or of a self-referencing sarcasm. In particular, art and architecture labelled as social have been disguised recently by participatory processes full of post-its, when what they are really only after is the subsequent participation of consumers and tourists. May this reflection serve as a wake-up call by the (old) city (quarter) portrayed as a work of art so that it does not end up deprived of its content, in other words, as the repository of passions, social dramas and life, too.

Curated by Yelaine Rodriguez and edited by Tatiana Flores, this Dialogues stages a series of conversations around Afro-Latinx art through interventions by Afro-Latina cultural producers. Black Latinxs often feel excluded both from the framework of Latinidad as well as from the designation “African-American.” The essays address Blackness in a U.S. Latinx context, through discussion of curatorial approaches, biographical reflections, art historical inquiry, artistic projects, and museum-based activism. Recent conversations around Latinxs and Black Lives Matter reveal that in the popular imaginary, Latinx presupposes a Brown identity. In their contributions to “Afro-Latinx Art and Activism,” the authors argue for a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of Latinx that does not reproduce the racial attitudes of the Lusophone and Hispanophone countries of Latin America or the black-white binary of the United States.  They look forward to a time when the terms “Afro” or “Black” might cease to be necessary qualifiers of “Latinx.”

Through a multidisciplinary approach, the text brings data about the ar-
tivisms of sexual and gender dissident in Pará state, north of Brazil, and
the socio-cultural and environmental contexts in which this scene emer-
ges. Conflicts and confrontations mark this emergence. There are aes-
thetic and ethical productions aspects, also theirs evident in interviews,
academic writings, life histories of artists and activists engaged. They are
created concepts, languages, epistemology and other forms of politics.
The coastal Amazon scene creates an intersection with climate, urban,
and religious issues and it reaffirms territoriality as an essential point for
these cultural, social and identity manifestations.

Este libro es una versión desencorsetada y con miras a un público más amplio, de mi tesis doctoral "Tramas en lo público. Activismo artístico en La Plata desde la década de 1990 al presente" (finalizada en noviembre de 2018 y defendida en junio de 2019) para el Doctorado en Ciencias Sociales de la UBA (Universidad de Buenos Aires).
El texto bucea en la relación entre prácticas estéticas y praxis política, a partir de experiencias de activismo artístico desarrolladas en o desde la ciudad de La Plata y zona de influencia, desde la década de 1990 al presente. Evidentemente, no pretendía abarcar la amplia cartografía de artistas, colectivos y prácticas en la ciudad, sino que, desde el sinuoso camino de la investigación, decidí profundizar en tres experiencias particulares:
• Las prácticas colaborativas de Ala Plástica (1991-2016),
• Los escraches a genocidas y centros clandestinos de detención de HIJOS La Plata y la Mesa de Escrache Popular (1995-2012).
• Las acciones online de LULI en torno a la desaparición de Jorge Julio López (2010-2016).

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How do Space Pioneers act, what techniques do they use for spatial appropriation, what drives them and which social functions can we attribute them? Space Pioneers emerged just a couple of years ago and already shape our townscapes and debates about public space and their participative design. This paper develops the characteristics of the social figure of the Space Pioneer. The data basis is constituted by expert interviews in the field of space activist projects. The social figure of the Space Pioneer will be sharpened by a comparison with other social figures like the figure of the Stranger, the Vagabond and the Project Maker, which show similarities in their survival strategy and their function in society. By the description of Other Spaces by Michel Foucault a tighter analysis of the constitution of spaces in former waste land by the Space Pioneers is possible. Finally, the Space Pioneer will be put into the context of the Figure of the Third and the limit and the fuzziness of distinctions by involving the figure of the Parasite from Michel Serres.

Starting from the notion of 'post-democracy' elaborated by Colin Crouch, which indicates an increasing tendency towards the deterioration of democratic principles and the narrowing of the public sphere, this book explores how, in the Dutch context, this process is influenced by theatre and performance practice, art policy and governmental action. It points out that, within discourses of post-democracy, aspects of depoliticisation are commonly assessed through theatrical concepts such as spectacle, play, game and theatre. At the same time, this work argues by an analysis of three performances, 'Wijksafari Utrecht' by Adelheid Roosen, a political protest by Quinsy Gario, and 'Labyrinth' by the refugee group 'We are Here Cooperative', that there might be a role for theatre in this age of depoliticisation. It proposes to scrutinise, based on the writings of Samuel Weber, a paradox of theatre. Namely, while concepts of theatre are applied to convey disapproval of government and politics, theatre has a possible emancipatory character to dispute the given order.

This practice-based research focuses on the film Ínsula (Insular in English) to explore ways of conducting, intertwining, and assembling performing bodies with audiovisual performance, through the creation of original dispositifs. It expands relations between different types of performance with cinematographic methodology and unique approaches to editing, to suggest a new term, "cine-performance," centered on the action and modification of the performing body by the cinematographic apparatus. Performance is an embodied intervention in the world, an instrument for assembling / disassembling territories and languages, a visual and sound composition of the cinematic apparatus. Cine-performance is an expressive potential of the multiple compositions between bodily and audiovisual performance. Through it, live performance is embodied in image through audiovisual capture and the camera eye's and the editing process's reconfiguration of the human body.

Nel bene e nel male, l’arte ha sempre ricadute politiche, ma il legame tra etica ed estetica è spesso scomodo. Nel tempo sono state elaborate strategie raffinatissime per neutralizzarne le potenzialità emancipatorie. L’analisi parte da lontano, dalla “Lotta per l’arte” svoltasi in Germania alla fine degli anni Venti e dalle azioni del GAAG Guerilla Art Action Group, portate avanti dal 1969 in poi, per approdare al presente che ha visto azioni di protesta prendere forma e propagarsi proprio perché costruite intorno a comunicazioni artistiche potenti, come la performance Un violador en tu camino che dal Cile ha fatto il giro del mondo.
For better or worse, art always has political repercussions, yet the link between ethics and aesthetics is often uncomfortable. Over time, highly refined strategies have been developed to neutralize its emancipatory potential. The analysis starts from afar, from the "Fight for art" which took place inGermany at the end of the 1920s and from the actions of the GAAG Guerilla Art Action Group, carried out from 1969 onwards, to arrive at the present that has seen protest actions take shape and spread precisely because they are built around powerful artistic communications, such as the performance Un violador en tu camino, which from Chile travelled around the world

Art is aesthetically pleasing to human's eyes, touching each heart, and interpreting by own understanding. Because art is usually for aesthetics, other artworks are not recognized as a change or as meaning for everyone. Art mirrors each image of society, art is for everyone, not just painting, but all kinds of art. And all artists have a responsibility in inspiring and waking people up on what is happening to the world. All artists should be activists. Art and Activism become Artivism. Making art or doing art to protest about rights and contributes to oppressed to be free. Spreading your art to be heard and to fight about political issues. This paper study explored and described Art and Activism, Artivism, through researching studies about Activism and Artivism. The researcher chose this topic because she conducted a research about Artivism a few years ago and wanted to see the changes happen after three years. Artivism as a practice for nonviolence protests.

In this research I explore artivist performance proposals that lead to an analysis of the spectator position intrinsic to the spectatorial, as a construction linked to colonial discourses of otherness. This investigation presents the encountering processes of the transnational troupe of La Pocha Nostra and the Puerto Rican persona of Freddie Mercado with their respective spectators, where local-global constructs of coloniality become unveiled, made and unmade spectacle through their re-reproduction of otherness. Side by side with performance art-life, I explore the deconstruction and de-linking possibilities of the spectatorial taking the work of these artists to build and develop the dilemmas and alternatives presented. From these complex hyper-othering performance practices I research the social implications on the spectatorial at a local and global level. The artistic proposals discussed are focused under the decolonial lens and researched as practices that make possible the co-creation of decolonial relationalities. I focus in the trans-possibility these ‘other’ encounters produce and are produced by. This work inserts the issue of the spectator within broader social concerns and it is under this umbrella that the ‘question’ of the Other arises within the mechanisms of the modern spectacle. These artistic practices exert diverse tactics that directly imply the figure of the spectator within this social configuration.

Artivism is a creative and youthful way of being, thinking, doing and seeing in the world that hinges on an explicit commitment to intervening in personal and collective circumstances toward change. Artivists respond to injustices in our own lives by engaging any, and often multiple, artistic means in a shared effort to create for a better world.

But what are the challenges of belonging to a community of artivists while also seeking to become part of an academic community by pursuing a doctoral degree? What does it mean to be an artivist in an academic context premised on individual achievement and dominated by textual modes of expression? And how might artivism be enhanced by the kind of deep and sustained reflection made possible by the privilege of academic study? This dissertation aims to create a conceptual inter-space for the coming together of two worlds apart, that of artivism and academia.

By bringing scholarship to artivism and artivism to scholarship I address two main questions: (1) how can artivism mobilize and legitimize under-represented youth responses to the asymmetrical global conditions that shape our everyday lives? And, (2) how can artivist modes of inter-action and expression offer new responses to the asymmetrical global conditions that shape University life?

When I began my doctoral degree I had recently completed co-research with youth in Uganda. Together we co-designed a series of community murals in response to youth identified concerns including HIV/AIDS and prostitution. My final master of design thesis and accompanying gallery show were well received by my examining committee and the public, yet for me, the work was unfinished. I had become part of a group of youth interested in creating a sustainable space of resistance. The community has come to be known as artivists 4 life and as it turns out, our work is never finished. Thus, I was driven to pursue a doctoral degree through a desire to continue supporting the collective’s shared efforts of “creating for a better world” (artivists 4 life motto). Yet, through my experiences as a doctoral student I began observing many barriers to engaging in artistic, youth-driven co-research situated in Africa, particularly via the existing framework of graduate study prescribed by the Western University system. Thus, through the observation that certain knowledges and ways of knowing are undermined in the academy, including the artistic, collaborative, youthful and Ugandan/African, my initial objective of doing co-research with artivits 4 life was no longer enough. I became obligated to simultaneously re-politicize creative co-research to respond more adequately to the conditions of global coloniality and the unequal power relations it manifests in the academy—across knowledge systems, race, culture, class, gender and other differences.

This co-research is guided by decolonial perspectives including the understanding that our current world order is co-constituted by a colonial logic that serves to divide human beings and societies into less-than and more-than derivatives through the subjugation of knowledges and subjectivities in relation to their proximity to the hetero-Euro-centric norm. For decolonial thinkers, hope for an egalitarian pluriversal society lies in the struggles of the marginalized, the acceptance of their agency, and the willingness to be guided by their perspectives.

All the pieces of this dissertation embody an artivist consciousness that allows for constant re-adaptation to the broader questions of decolonial struggle that shape the realities of those with whom I collaborate. Circumstances addressed include youth unemployment, sexual exploitation, epistemic racism and the increasing corporatization of academia, particularly as these precarious conditions impact upon members of artivists 4 life, myself inclusive. Artivist inter-actions engage multiple forms of enunciation in the making of murals, comics, performances, workshops, creative writing, and any other creative means necessary to break from the
pervasive wiring of global coloniality and the wounds it inflicts upon us. These interventions work to re-conceptualize aesthetics, authorship and knowledge creation/dissemination in order
to shift power.

Throughout this dissertation fixed relations prescribed by modernity/coloniality—including the researcher-researched and the student-teacher—are re-imagined through the reconnection of creative practices to collective action. Through creative co-research with Ugandan youth and in one instance with fellow graduate students, I engaged with communities to unveil the mechanisms that sustain asymmetrical relations produced by modernity/coloniality in the places We/I dwell. Focusing on the structures of societal control serve to open new imaginaries for transcending power differentials by moving away from cultural mimicry toward the co-creation of new social formations not yet in existence. I hasten to add that emergent artivist epistemes and actions for such transformation require adjacent spaces to the academic project in order to support the co-creation of more adequate modes of inter-human contact premised on community self-determination. Overall, this dissertation enacts tactics for undoing disciplinary norms and other intellectually colonizing tendencies by allowing creative reflection and artistic action to flourish through an ethical commitment to making visible the invisible.

A arte, como forma ritualística do outro dizer sobre si, é um mecanismo fundamental utilizado para dramatizar o mundo. Nesse sentido, a partir do estudo de caso da Igreja da Comunidade Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte, uma comunidade cristã autodenominada inclusiva, esta comunicação trata das relações entre arte e militância, no que diz respeito à presença dessa igreja na III Marcha contra a LGBTfobia de Belo Horizonte e Região Metropolitana com apresentação de performances artísticas. Para tanto, serão apresentadas fotografias, no intuito de se levantar considerações acerca das práticas artísticas e militantes manifestadas. O deslocamento da igreja para o centro da cidade reconfigura seus ritos pela arte, levantando perguntas sobre a consciência da natureza artística, das propriedades do seu domínio de origem e da adequação ou não de seu novo local. Assim, religião e arte encontram-se na concretude das experiências e no concreto da cidade.

[fr] La thèse réunit cinq travaux portant sur le rôle joué par la fiction dans notre expérience et notre appréhension du monde. La fiction peut-elle véhiculer des contenus de savoir ou constituer en elle-même une source de connaissance ? Cette interrogation est déclinée à travers une série d’études portant sur la sociologie implicite de l’écrivain américain William S. Burroughs ; les musiques industrielles comme dispositifs critiques ; le pouvoir configurateur de 1984 dans la dénonciation des nouvelles technologies de surveillance et de contrôle social ; l’homologie profonde entre pouvoir et narrativité ; ou encore les contre-fictions dans les "sociétés de contrôle". L’introduction générale qui précède ces travaux s’attache à construire deux exemples de "formes fictionnelles d’intelligibilité" conçues comme ressources cognitives et pragmatiques utilisées par les personnes : le "simulacre", qui consiste en la critique originale d’une cible, sur un mode systématiquement ironique, de manière à retourner contre elle son langage et son mode de fonctionnement ; le "futur antérieur", qui propose l’anticipation d’une menace décrite comme déjà advenue, de manière à montrer l’urgence d’une action à entreprendre pour la conjurer. La thèse défend une conception minimaliste et holiste de la connaissance fictionnelle : c’est en tant que moyen au service de la modélisation mimétique de processus politiques et sociaux que la fiction, en activant notre sens du possible, exerce une fonction cognitive. Ces travaux dégagent ainsi les premiers éléments d’un programme de recherche en sciences politiques et sociales autour du pouvoir du et comme récit. Le récit apparaît non seulement comme un objet, mais surtout comme un "analyseur" du politique.
[en] The thesis assembles five publications dealing with the role played by fiction in our experience and apprehension of the world. Can fiction convey contents of knowledge or even constitute a source of knowledge in itself? This question is broken down into a series of studies about the implicit sociology of American writer William S. Burroughs; industrial music as a critical device; the configuration power of Nineteen Eighty-Four in the denunciation of new technologies of surveillance and social control; the deep homology between power and narrativity; as well as counter-fiction within “societies of control”. The general introduction preceding these publications aims at building two examples of “fictional forms of intelligibility” conceived as cognitive and pragmatic resources used by members of society: “simulacrum”, which consists in criticising a target, in a systematically ironical mode, so as to turn its language and mode of functioning against it; “future perfect”, which proposes the anticipation of a threat described as having already occurred, in order to demonstrate the urgency in taking action to thwart it. The thesis defends a minimalist and holist conception of fictional knowledge: it is as a means at the service of the mimetic modelling of social and political processes that fiction activates a sense of possibilities and exerts a cognitive function. In this way, these collected works intend to give the first elements of a research programme in social and political sciences around power of and as a narrative. Narrative appears not only as an object, but especially as a tool for analyzing politics.

Artivismus versucht, sich ständig den Grenzen wissenschaftlichen Reflexion und Definition zu entziehen. Denn er ist aus der Praxis heraus entstanden und trägt die Prägung der Kunst und des Protests, die sich beide keinen Regeln und Ordnungen unterordnen möchten und können ohne sich selbst zu verraten.
Diese Arbeit versucht eine Perspektive auf dieses Phänomen zu geben, und einige elementare Aspekte dessen, was Artivismus ausmacht oder wonach er im Vollziehen sucht, zu beleuchten. Dies erfordert Ausdauer und zirkuläre Kreisläufe, denn der Artivismusbegriff bleibt nicht starr, noch leblos; er ist kämpferisch und dynamisch und wehrt sich gegen jegliche Schublade.

This dissertation outlines a relational space encompassing the Oficina Uzyna Uzona Theater Company–founded in 1958 in the city of São Paulo–and queer artivisms, inasmuch as both their artistic productions take stands for gender and sexual disobedience, upholding political formulations verging on anarchism and the anticolonial struggle. These ideas are developed herein based on a cartography of the Oficina experience and on a genealogy of the queer scene—considering also its surfacing in Brazil along the last decade. The “dissident body” concept is formulated in order to address assemblages referred to the Company’s and artivism productions, aiming at turning over the established notions of subjectivity and individuation—by showing the incongruity of the multicultural paradigm against the sounder consistency of multinaturalism and the multiplicities. This work is based on the Philosophy of Difference  and brings together concepts from both queer and decolonial studies.

This book analyses the aesthetic and utopian dimensions of various activist social movements in Western Europe since 1989. Through a series of case studies, it demonstrates how dreams of a better society have manifested themselves in contexts of political confrontation, and how artistic forms have provided a language to express the collective desire for social change.
The study begins with the 1993 occupation of Claremont Road in east London, an attempt to prevent the demolition of homes to make room for a new motorway. In a squatted row of houses, all available space was transformed and filled with elements that were both aesthetic and defensive – so when the authorities arrived to evict the protestors, sculptures were turned into barricades. At the end of the decade, this kind of performative celebration merged with the practices of the antiglobalisation movement, where activists staged spectacular parallel events alongside the global elite’s international meetings. As this book shows, social movements try to erase the distance that separates reality and political desire, turning ordinary people into creators of utopias. Squatted houses, carnivalesque street parties, counter-summits, and camps in central squares, all create a physical place of these utopian visions

English version is below.

Eleştirel düşüncenin ve felsefi sorgulamanın ışığı altında zihinlerde oluşan ‘dertlenme’ baskılanamamış ve tarih boyunca farklı eylemlerle açığa çıkmıştır. Bu eylemler günümüzde de çoğalıp çeşitlenerek devam etmektedir. Bununla birlikte ‘Derdi kusma’ noktasında ifade araçlarının ve yöntemlerinin değiştiğini görmekteyiz. Bu çalışmada, çeşitli alanlarda özgür düşünceyle sorgulama ve düşüncelerin hür bir şekilde ifade edilmesi gerektiği inancıyla, ‘dertlenme - derdi kusma’ ve sanat-mekan ilişkisi üzerinden incelemeler yapılmıştır. Bu ilişkinin sorgulamaya farklı bir yön ve değer kattığı düşünülmüştür. Eleştiri ve sorgulamanın devamındaki dertlenme ve derdi kusma yolunda sanatın, mekanın, disiplinlerarası ilişkinin varlığı ve kullanım şekli incelenerek düşünceyi yansıtmanın önemi konusunda farkındalığın güçlendirilmesi amaçlanmıştır.
Sorgulama eyleminin XX. yüzyılda ve oradan da günümüze evrilmesinde etkili olan gelişmelerden birisi eleştirel teoridir. Bununla birlikte sorgulama eyleminin yer yer anarşist teori ile de kesişen yönleri olduğu söylenebilir. Anarşizm, daha iyi bir hayat için arzulana doğru hareketlenme olarak tanımlanabilmektedir. Anarşizm, hem söylemi hem de eylemi barındırarak farkındalık yaratmakta, propaganda manifesto gibi enstrümanlar kullanarak insanları uyandırmaktadır. Tarihte ve günümüzde hayatın, düzenin eleştirilmesiyle harekete geçen ve bunun sonuçlarını eyleme döken çeşitli oluşumlar vardır. Bu oluşumlar güçlü bir karşı duruşu yansıtmaktadır. En büyük özellikleri ise hayata dair sosyal, politik, psikolojik ve ekolojik durumlara karşı eleştirilerini sanat ve mekan ile yansıtmalarıdır. Bu noktada aktivizm eylemcilik- sanat ile birleşerek ‘artivizm’i yani eylemci sanatı yaratmaktadır.
İnsanlık tarihinde aydınlanma ile birlikte sosyal ve politik yaşantılardaki değişimlerle hayata karşı söylemler hep sanatla ifade bulmuştur. Bu değişimler romantiklerle yoğun bir şekilde başlayarak Fütüristler, Dadacılar, Sürrealistler, Konstrüktivistler ve Avangardistler ile birlikte şiddetini arttırmıştır. Ne şekilde olursa olsun sorgulama eyleminin sonucunda düzenlere direnen, uykudan uyanıp ayaklanan ya da buna olanak sağlayan, insanlarla var olan sanat kendisini göstermektedir. Sanatlaşan hayat var olan dünya düzenini değiştirmektedir. Mekan ise bunu yansıtan ve hayata geçiren bir öğe olarak öne çıkmaktadır.
Bu çalışmada Postmodernizmin başlangıcı olarak sayılan ve avangardın doruk noktasını yaşadığı 1968 yılı ile Postmodernizm sonrası dönem olarak sayabileceğimiz günümüz karşılaştırması yapılmaktadır. Çoğu noktalarda ise daha çok birbirlerini andıran söylemler ve olaylarla karşılaşmaktayız.

Insuppressable ‘unrest’ forming in the light of critical thought and philosophical questioning has come to the fore via various actions throughout the history and continues to increase and diversify today. We witness that instruments and methods of expression are transforming in connection with ‘disgorgement of the unrest’. The relation between unrest- disgorgement of the unrest and art-space can be studied in various ways in the belief to question through free thinking in all realms and express thoughts in a free manner. This relation provides an added value and a different way of questioning. The unrest and vomiting this unrest following criticism and questioning, art, architecture and the existence and use of inter-disciplinary relation are considered to augment awareness regarding the importance of reflecting thoughts.
One of the particular advances related the evolution of questioning in the 20th century is critical theory. However there are some common points between questioning action and anarchist theory. Anarchism can be defined as the movement in accordance with demand of a better life. Anarchism creates awareness by embodying both discourse and action, awakens people: like propaganda or manifesto. There are various movements taking action with the criticism of system in history and the present day. This movements performs a persistent disobedience. Their most important characteristic is the reflection of criticisms for social, political and ecological situations through art and space. At this point activism is combined with art and creates artivism, namely activist art.
In human history, discourses about life related with social and political changes in collaboration with enlightenment has found expression with art. Starting intensively with romantics, these have exacerbated with futurists, Dadaists, surrealists, constructivist and avant-gardists. No matter how it happens as a result of questioning action art comes along with awaken people as resistance against order. And the space is an element reflecting and putting into practice it.
In this study, there has been a comparision and analogy between the year 1968 as a beginning of postmodernism and one of the best situation of avant-garde and today’s world. Mostly there can be seen common senses and incidents.

The aim of this study is to highlight the “naturalization” of stereotyped imagery of migratory phenomenon as seen in media and political discourse.  Starting from literature by critical thinkers such as Michel Foucault (1966) and Louis Marin (1981), this paper will discuss the relationship between the concepts of ideology, representation and power in border-crossing contexts.
Combining the theory of arts with a semiotic approach, I will focus on the specific case of the practice of artivism, as counter-narratives, realized by the street artist JR on the border between Mexico and the United States. This case study is recognizable as a syncretic work that develops in two phases. The first is attributable to the work Giants. Kikito - Border Mexico (2017) that JR created after the executive order signed by Donald Trump to complete the construction of the wall; the second, consists of an artistic practice which is rather recognizable as an ongoing performance: Migrants. Picnic across the border (2017). The importance of reading these two works in dialogue with each other lies in the intrinsic power of the images (Bredekamp 2011). Indeed, the effects of meaning underlying the project, want to undermine the idea of the wall as an object of the “natural world” (Greimas 1970) self-legitimizing. The question of the critical construction of the gaze, that is to say of a point of view, is the key to understanding the semiotic efficacy of artistic work at the border. Thanks to JR’s work it will be possible to reveal the question of the construction and remodulation of the concept of otherness. The latter is in fact based on a specular principle (Stoichita 2016) whereby the encounter between two entities is both proof of the other and strengthening of the same.

Lourdes Portillo’s Señorita Extraviada (2000) is a riveting investigation that tells the story of the hundreds of raped, murdered, and missing young women of Juárez - a Mexican-US border city. This subversive documentary unravels binational and bicultural hegemonic power that, by omission or complicity, licenses and tolerates violence against women, including massive homicide (femicide/feminicidio). I argue that this film is a significant lens through which to pose important questions about transnational neocolonial encounters, gender discrimination, and patriarchal discourses in the Mexican-US borderlands. Moreover, it functions pedagogically to forge participatory relationships between the artists and the community. In so doing, it opens up spaces for educators who seek to counter subordination of peoples and support critical, feminist, and decolonizing perspectives to develop art content. This film can be used to engage students in a form of critical pedagogy that mobilizes their participation in social change.

This book is a collection of texts on one of China’s boldest social experiments in recent years: the Bishan Project, a rural reconstruction and practical utopian commune project in a small village Bishan, Anhui Province, China. This project ran for 6 years (2011- 2016) and caused a national debate in China, when it was invited to be exhibited and presented abroad.

The writings describe and criticize the social problems caused by China’s over-loading urbanization process and starts a contemporary agrarianism and agritopianism discourse to resist the modernism and developmentalism doctrine which dominated China for more than a century, answering a global desire for the theory and action of the alternative social solution for today’s environmental and political crises.

This collection of writing will be of interest to artists, architects, scholars, activists and the cultural community at large.

Ou Ning is director of documentaries San Yuan Li and Meishi Street, chief curator of 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture, jury member of 8th Benesse Prize at 53rd Venice Biennale, member of Asian Art Council at Guggenheim Museum, founding chief editor of literary journal Chutzpah!, founder of Bishan Project, visiting professor of GSAPP, Columbia University and research fellow of Center for Arts, Design and Social Research in Boston, USA.

https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9789811557903

ISBN 978-989-98796-1-4
Nesta investigação tentamos contribuir para um enquadramento teórico da ciberformance, a performance que acontece em plataformas, ambientes e mundos virtuais e que se caracteriza por ser ao vivo, mediada, intermedial, multimodal, híbrida, liminar, colaborativa e interventiva estética e socialmente, sendo low cost e usando tecnologia livre e acessível.
Há duas décadas que acções performáticas se desenvolvem através da Internet, ligando utilizadores e públicos distribuídos geograficamente. Fóruns e ambientes textuais de jogo foram os primeiros espaços usados por ciberformers tendo estes, mais tarde, apropriado ambientes gráficos e mundos virtuais online.
Na primeira parte deste estudo investigamos o lugar da ciberformance e os aspectos do habitar o virtual que se afiguram importantes para entender o processo criativo deste género artístico. O carácter aberto livre e comunitário de plataformas e mundos virtuais cria lugares que estão para lá da simulação, proporcionando uma ampliação do virtualmente humano que favorece a prática da ciberformance. Esta implica uma actividade que se desenvolve através de interfaces visíveis e que possibilita a compreensão desses espaços não como imersivos mas sim como ampliações hipermediadas.
Uma passagem pela relação histórica entre a performance e a tecnologia permite-nos sediar a genealogia da ciberformance nos movimentos vanguardistas do século XX.
Com base na nossa própria prática artística nos contextos referidos e em recente produção académica sobre a performance digital criámos um enquadramento que visa possibilitar uma melhor definição e compreensão deste emergente género artístico. A análise da forma, conteúdo e processo criativo de algumas performances específicas, conduziu-nos a uma tipologia operativa que apenas existe na intersecção dos seus tipos. Estes são definidos pelo seu desenvolvimento através da palavra, através da construção de código e através do corpo em interface com a tecnologia.
Procuramos aqui abrir caminho para a análise do contributo deste género para o panorama mais vasto da relação entre a comunicação à distância, a interacção humano computador e a arte contemporânea.

In recent years, Internet users have been increasingly participating in so called digilantes or cyber-vigilante communities, becoming self-appointed avengers of justice who wade through the Internet to hunt down unlawful netizens. These groups see the legal mechanisms for criminal punishment as ineffective and use social networks to crowd-source both the prosecution and the execution of punishment. I conducted an experimental investigation into these justice-seeking activist groups to compare the ‘scambaiting’ anti-fraud movement and their methods and similar web-formations like ‘Perverted justice’, ‘Human Flesh Search Engine’ and ‘Internet Haganah’. Each group’s motives are presented with recent examples, and parallels are drawn to similar projects carried out by journalists, artists or activists. Mass mediated prosecutions entertain popular culture and are used to regulate social norms. It was found that vigilante communities use congruent techniques in gathering intelligence and use comparable prosecution methods like shaming, humiliation, cyber bullying, or doxing. Furthermore, moral concerns of these deviant actions and possibilities of governmentality are discussed.