This page includes print resources related to Art & Activism available at Yale University Library, including printed books and archival collections.
Ai Weiwei: Spatial Matters by
A richly illustrated exploration of Ai Weiwei's installation and architecture projects, focusing on the artist's use of space. Outspoken, provocative, and prolific, the artist Ai Weiwei is an international phenomenon. In recent years, he has produced an astonishingly varied body of work while continuing his role as activist, provocateur, and conscience of a nation. Ai Weiwei is under "city arrest" in Beijing after an 81-day imprisonment; he is accused of tax evasion, but many suspect he is being punished for his political activism, including his exposure of shoddy school building practices that led to the deaths of thousands of children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. In 2009, he was badly beaten by the police during his earthquake investigations. Ai Weiwei's work reflects his multiple artistic identities as conceptual artist, architect, filmmaker, designer, curator, writer, and publisher. This monumental volume, developed in association with the artist, draws on the full breadth of Ai Weiwei's architectural, installation, and activist work, with a focus on his use of space. It documents a huge range of international projects with drawings, plans, and photographs of finished work. It also includes excerpts from Ai Weiwei's famous blog (shut down by Chinese authorities in 2009), in which he offers pithy and scathing commentary on the world around him. Essays by leading critics and art historians and interviews with the artist, drawing out his central concerns, accompany the 450 beautifully reproduced color illustrations of his work.
Art and Agenda by
This text explores the impact of political activism on contemporary art. It introduces a variety of artists who are advocating political and social reform on a local or a global scale.
Articulating Resistance by
The disciplinary understandings of contemporary Indian art are being challenged in our time by experiences, narratives, and strategies designated as activism. Articulating Resistance: Art and Activism explores this space between art and activism without letting the discourse being reduced either to a simple formulation about art in activism or activism in art. The focus, instead, is on interrogating the politics of aesthetics as well as the connections between the visual and other disciplines. Deriving its insights from methodological moves made in the fields of art history/criticism, culture studies, and visual culture, the book foregrounds the links between the practice of art and the urgencies of the public world trying to bridge, in the process, the space that reaches across the academy and all that is known as activism in our time. The different sections in the book explore the complex relationship between art-producing practices and frameworks of viewing that seek alignment with the various struggles around caste, community, gender, and sexuality.
Artwork by
artWork: Art, Labour and Activism brings together a variety of perspectives on contemporary cultural production and activism in order to interrogate how the concepts of art, labour and activism intersect in practices for social change. What can we learn about contemporary art and politics by looking at the intersections between art, labour and activism? What theoretical tools can help us arrive at a deeper understanding of these intersections? In order to address these questions, this collection explores the role of art as activism, the use of social media and technology in creative production and organising, the politics of artmaking, the commodification of culture and the possibility of a creative commons, and the work of artist activists as educators. In addition to offering a variety of new perspectives from researchers and practitioners, it proposes new paths towards interdisciplinary research in this field that combine sociological, anthropological, philosophical and art theory perspectives. It will be of interest to students and scholars interested in creative labour, social movements and political arts practice.
Conflictual Aesthetics by
A new political theory of art and artistic praxis. Leaping into current debates about the political efficacy of art, the essays in Conflictual Aesthetics critique the supposition that all art is inherently political. Opposed to the political art defended by art world functionaries that hides behind "simplistic complexity," Oliver Marchart argues for a straightforwardly political theory of art and artistic praxis. At the intersection of art theory and radical politics, he proposes an aesthetics of agitating, propagating, and organizing, through which he problematizes and evaluates art in relation to activism or political propaganda, and addresses the radical potential of dance, theater, artistic re- and pre-enactments, public art, the curator, and the biennial.
Crafting Democracy by
Crafting Democracy: Fiber Arts and Activism calls upon craft, during an era of political disruption, as a creative force to voice dissent, express hope, critique the curtailment of civil rights, and to restore dignity to the human experience. The essays and artwork featured in this exhibition catalogue are framed within the context of American democracy and disclose how we, as individuals and as a culture, "craft democracy" and ultimately question what democracy means today. This is the catalogue of an exhibition held at Harold Hacker Hall, Central Library of Rochester [New York] & Monroe County: August-October, 2019. Juilee Decker is associate professor of museum studies at Rochester Institute of Technology. Her publications include the 3rd edition of Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums (2017) and the four-volume series Innovative Approaches for Museums (2015). Hinda Mandell is associate professor in the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology and is a co-editor of Nasty Women and Bad Hombres: Gender and Race in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election (University of Rochester Press, 2018). She is editor of Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats (forthcoming with Rowman & Littlefield).
Craftivism by
Craftivism is a worldwide movement that operates at the intersection where craft and activism meet. With interviews and profiles of craftivists who are changing the world with their art, and through examples that range from community embroidery projects (such as stitching in prisons, revolutionary ceramics, AIDS activism, yarn bombing and crafts that facilitate personal growth) Craftivism provides imaginative examples of how crafters can be creative and altruistic at the same time.
Culture War by
The culture wars--intertwining art, culture, and politics--have sparked prominent political debates across the globe for many years, but particularly in Europe and America since 2001. Focusing specifically on the experience of Denmark during this period, Culture War aims to analyze and understand the rise of right-wing nationalism in Europe as part of the globalization and mediatization of the modern nation state and the culture war and affective politics arising from it. This culture war provides an example of an affective cultural politics in which institutional structures become entwined with media representations, events, and patterns of belonging. Employing a detailed and critically reflective argument covering social media, television, political campaigns, advertising, and "artivism," Camilla Møhring Reestorff refuses the traditional distinction between the world of visual culture and the political domain, and she provides multiple tools for understanding the dynamics of contemporary affective cultural politics in a highly mediatized environment.
Curatorial Activism by
Current art world statistics demonstrate that the fight for gender and race equality in the art world is far from over: only sixteen percent of this year's Venice Biennale artists were female; only fourteen percent of the work displayed at MoMA in 2016 was by nonwhite artists; only a third of artists represented by U.S. galleries are female, but over two-thirds of students enrolled in art and art-history programs are young women.Arranged in thematic sections focusing on feminism, race, and sexuality, Curatorial Activism examines and illustrates pioneering examples of exhibitions that have broken down boundaries and demonstrated that new approaches are possible, from Linda Nochlin's "Women Artists" at LACMA in the mid-1970s to Jean-Hubert Martin's "Carambolages" in 2016 at the Grand Palais in Paris. Profiles key exhibitions by pioneering curators including Okwui Enwezor, Linda Nochlin, Jean-Hubert Martin and Nan Goldin, with a foreword by Lucy Lippard, internationally known art critic, activist and curator, and early champion of feminist art, this volume is both an invaluable source of practical information for those who understand that institutions must be a driving force in this area and a vital source of inspiration for today's expanding new generation of curators.
Delirium and resistance : activist art and the crisis of capitalism by
In the aftermath of the 2016 US election, Brexit, and a global upsurge of nationalist populism, it is evident that the delirium and the crisis of neoliberal capitalism is now the delirium and crisis of liberal democracy and its culture. And though capitalist crisis does not begin within art, art can reflect and amplify its effects to positive and negative ends. In this follow-up to his influential 2010 book, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture, Sholette engages in critical dialogue with artists' collectives, counter-institutions, and activist groups to offer an insightful firsthand account of the relationship between politics and art in neoliberal society. Sholette lays out clear examples of art's deep involvement in capitalism: the dizzying prices achieved by artists who pander to the financial elite, the proliferation of museums that contribute to global competition between cities in order to attract capital, and the strange relationship between art and rampant gentrification that restructures the urban landscape. With a preface by noted author Lucy R. Lippard and an introduction by theorist Kim Charnley, Delirium and Resistance draws on over thirty years of critical debates and practices both in and beyond the art world to historicize and advocate for the art activist tradition that radically--and, at times, deliriously--entangles the visual arts with political struggles.
Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms by
International scholars and artists show how feminist art and activism can intervene in social processes The term "artivism" seems to have become a catchword for any woman's empowerment through the arts. This volume aims to critically dissect this catchword, unveiling the diversity of practices and realities that it comprises. Representing a range of critical insights, perspectives and practices from artists, activists and academics, Feminist Art Activisms and Artivismsreflects on the role of feminist interventions in the fields of contemporary art, the public sphere and politics. Essayists include: Linda Aloysius, Marissa Begonia, Sreyashi Tinni Bhattacharyya, Marisa Carnesky, Paula Chambers, Amy Charlesworth, Emma Curd, Katy Deepwell, Tal Dekel, Emma Dick, Lior Elefant, Christine Eyene, Abbe Leigh Fletcher, GraceGraceGrace, Alana Jelinek, Sonja van Kerkhoff, Alexandra Kokoli, Elke Krasny, Loraine Leeson, Laura Malacart, Rosy Martin, Alice Maude-Roxby, Kathleen Mullaniff, Louise O'Hare, Tanja Ostojic, Martina Pachmanová, Gill Park, Pune Parsafar, Roxane Permar, Anne Robinson, Stefanie Seibold, Pam Skelton, Mare Tralla, Christina Vasileiou, Camille Waring, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Virginia Yiqing Yang.
Global Activism by
Documenting and describing the emerging "performative democracy," the first new art form of the twenty-first century. Today political protest often takes the form of spontaneous, noninstitutional, mass action. Mass protests during the Arab Spring showed that established systems of power--in that case, the reciprocal support among Arab dictators and Western democracies--can be interrupted, at least for a short moment in history. These new activist movements often use online media to spread their message. Mass demonstrations from Tahrir Square in Cairo to Taksim Square in Istanbul show the power of networked communication to fuel "performative democracy"--at the center of which stands the global citizen. Art is emerging as a public space in which the individual can claim the promises of constitutional and state democracy. Activism may be the first new art form of the twenty-first century. global aCtIVISm (the capitalized letters form the Latin word civis, emphasizing the power of citizens) describes and documents politically inspired art--global art practices that draw attention to grievances and demand the transformation of existing conditions through actions, demonstrations, and performances in public space. Essays by leading thinkers--including Noam Chomsky, Antonio Negri, Peter Sloterdijk, and Slavoj Zizek--consider the emerging role of the citizen in the new performative democracy. The essays are followed by images of art objects, illustrations, documents, and other material (first shown in an exhibition at ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe) as well as case studies by artists and activists. Essays by Can Altay, Sruti Bala and Veronika Zangl, Tatiana Bazzichelli, Olaf Bertram-Nothnagel, Angela Bonadies, Robin Celikates, Korhan Gümüs, Dietrich Heißenbüttel, Bruno Latour, Sarah Maske, Ugo Mattei, Graham Meikle, André Mesquita, Marcus Michaelsen, Walter D. Mignolo, MTL, Antonio Negri, Dimitris Papadopoulos, Vassilis Tsianos and Margarita Tsomou, Rita Raley, Arman and Arash T. Riahi, Martha Rosler, Peter Sloterdijk, Karl-Peter Sommermann, Guido Strack, Jackie Sumell, Zixue Tai, Tatiana Volkova, Christoph Wachter and Mathias Jud, Dan S. Wang and Sarah Augusta Lewison, Peter Weibel, Ahmad Zatari, Bo Zheng, Ragip Zik, Slavoj Zizek. Interviews with Ammar Abo Bakr and Ganzeer, Younes Belghazi and Hadeer Elmahdawy, Erdem Gündüz, Joulia Strauss
Mobilizing Metaphor by
Mobilizing Metaphor illustrates how radical and unconventional forms of activism, including art, are reshaping the rich and vibrant tradition of disability mobilization in Canada. The artists, activists, and scholars in Mobilizing Metaphor reveal how their work is distinctive as both art and social action, and how disability activism is as varied as the population it represents. Sketching the shifting contours of Canadian disability politics, the authors challenge perceptions of disability and the politics that surround it, leading us to re-examine how we define oppression and how we enact change.
Rebels Rebel: AIDS, Art and Activism in New York, 1979-1989 by
Rebels Rebel looks at the history of AIDS activism undertaken by various artistic collectives in New York between 1979 and 1989. Among these once-controversial, now-legendary collectives were Gran Fury (who scandalized the 1990 Venice Biennale with their billboards juxtaposing the pope and his anti-contraception stance with a two-foot high penis), the Silence = Death Project (who appropriated and inverted the Nazis' pink triangle), Gang and DIVA TV. These collectives addressed concrete social problems using unconventional media, and in doing so helped to shift the public and political perception of the AIDS crisis. Collating a wealth of materials and perspectives, from graphic design to art works, and from sociopolitical to art-historical reflections, Rebel Rebels is an important and thorough examination of a rare overlap between art and activism during a time of heightened conservativism in America. It includes a full-color poster.
Strike Art by
The collision of activism and contemporary art, from the Seattle protests to Occupy and beyond The collision of activism and contemporary art, from the Seattle protests to Occupy and beyond What is the relation of art to the practice of radical politics today? Strike Art explores this question through the historical lens of Occupy, an event that had artists at its core. Precarious, indebted, and radicalized, artists redirected their creativity from servicing the artworld into an expanded field of organizing in order to construct of a new--if internally fraught--political imaginary set off against the common enemy of the 1%. In the process, they called the bluff of a contemporary art system torn between ideals of radical critique, on the one hand, and an increasing proximity to Wall Street on the other--oftentimes directly targeting major art institutions themselves as sites of action. Tracking the work of groups including MTL, Not an Alternative, the Illuminator, the Rolling Jubilee, and G.U.L.F, Strike Art shows how Occupy ushered in a new era of artistically-oriented direct action that continues to ramify far beyond the initial act of occupation itself into ongoing struggles surrounding labor, debt, and climate justice, concluding with a consideration of the overlaps between such work and the aesthetic practices of the Black Lives Matter movement. Art after Occupy, McKee suggests, contains great potentials of imagination and action for a renewed left project that are still only beginning to ripen, at once shaking up and taking flight from the art system as we know it.
Talking to Action by
Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas is the first publication to bring together scholarship, critical essays, and documentation of collaborative community-based art making by researchers from across the American hemisphere. The comprehensive volume is a compendium of texts, analysis, and research documents from the Talking to Action research and exhibition platform, part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. While the field of social practice has had an increasingly high profile within contemporary art discourse, this book documents artists who have been under-recognized because they do not show in traditional gallery or museum contexts and are often studied by specialists in other disciplines, particularly within the Latin American context. Talking to Action: Art, Pedagogy, and Activism in the Americas addresses the absence of a publication documenting scholarly exchange between research sites throughout the hemisphere and is intended for those interested in community-based practices operating within the intersection of art, activism, and the social sciences.
Transnationalism, Activism, Art by
Banksy is known worldwide for his politically subversive works of art, but he is far from the only artist whose creations are infused with internationally relevant, activist themes. How else can the arts help activate citizen participation in social justice movements? Moreover, what is the role of culture in a globalizing world? Transnationalism, Activism, Art goes beyond Banksy by investigating how the three complementary political, social, and cultural phenomena listed in the title interact in the twenty-first century. Renowned and emerging critics use current theory on cultural production and politics to illuminate case studies of various media, including film, literature, visual art, and performance, in their multiple manifestations, from electronic dance music to Wikileaks to bestselling poetry collections. By addressing how these artistic media are used to enact citizen participation in social justice movements, the volume makes important connections between such participation and scholarly study of globalization and transnationalism.
When I Remember I See Red by
When I Remember I See Red: American Indian Art and Activism in California features contemporary art by First Californians and other American Indian artists with strong ties to the state. Spanning the past five decades, the exhibition includes more than sixty-five works in various media, from painting, sculpture, prints, and photography, to installation and video. More than forty artists are represented, among them pioneers such as Rick Bartow, George Blake, Dalbert Castro, Frank Day, Harry Fonseca, Frank LaPena, Jean LaMarr, James Luna, Karen Noble, Fritz Scholder, Brian Tripp, and Franklin Tuttle, as well as emerging and mid-career artists. Taking cues from their forebears, members of the younger generation often combine art and activism, embracing issues of identity, politics, and injustice to produce innovative--and frequently enlightening--work. The exhibition, along with the accompanying catalogue, transcends borders, with some California artists working outside the state, and several artists of non-California tribes living and creating within its boundaries. Diverse cultural influences coupled with the extraordinary dissemination of images made possible by technology have led to new forms of expression, making When I Remember I See Red a richly layered experience. Published in association with the Crocker Art Museum Exhibition dates: Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento: October 20, 2019-January 26, 2020 Institute of American Indian Arts, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe: August 14, 2020-January 3, 2021 Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles: July 18, 2021-February 27, 2022
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