Political Art Research Articles

People, Place, Public: The Public Art of Nic Moon

In the realm of public art, New Zealand artist Nic Moon’s practice extends from permanent outdoor sculpture to ephemeral, site-responsive installations and staged public events. Such a range spans the trajectory of contemporary public art, a genre which theorists struggle to define categorically: historical precedents for public art offer no template for the present or for the future. Working in conjunction with mana whenua iwi, local government agencies, art institutions, museums, architects and the community¸ Moon creates large-scale object art as well as temporary and relocatable works, circumstantial installations, public artworks as utilities, and ephemeral art with a short life span. Her public art encompasses a broad spectrum of forms while speaking constantly of human ecology - the interdisciplinary study of relationships between people, our social systems and our environments. It is these relationships that underpin the work of Moon who, in common with new genre public artists internationally, is prepared to work outside the historical framework of public art to engage her audience in socially conscious, political art.

Biopolitical art and the struggle for Sovereignty in Putin’s Russia

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the public appeal of political actionism in today’s Russia through analysis of the political art of Pyotr Pavlensky. The research uses the methodological paradigm of biopower and biopolitics, as outlined by Michel Foucault and further critically developed by Giorgio Agamben, since it helps to better understand both the oppressive nature of the Russian state, and the protest art of Pavlensky. The article seeks to unpack the struggle for the human body that has started in Russia in recent years, with the state imposing its normalizing and regulatory mechanisms upon private lives and corporeal practices of individuals, and people’s responses by re-claiming their bodies, from an open public discussion of sexuality, domestic violence and gender equality, to the radical exposure of the body by artists like Pavlensky. As the argument goes, the centerpiece of political controversy is not just the battle for the human body, but a battle for sovereignty, defining the limits of state intervention, the borders of the political community and the rights of the individual. The article asks a number of questions: how Pavlensky’s performances can be explained within the framework of the biopolitical regime of Putin’s rule? Whether Pavlensky’s use of his own body for political purposes (a “biopolitical art’ of sorts) is a response to the increased biopolitical intervention of the Russian state that has marked Putin’s third term in office? Why did political protest become corporeal? How does the individual body turn into a tool for political contestation and how does it embody collective meanings? How the politicization of the body transpires, and how an individual body can incarnate a collective body of nation?

‘Darkness Turned into Power’: Drag as resistance in the era of Trumpian reversal

Abstract In ‘Darkness Turned to Power’ Ella Greenhalgh unearths the role of the contemporary drag queen as a force of revitalized queer resistance in the United States. Beginning by tracing the political, cultural and social impact that Donald Trump’s election campaign and presidency has had on queer Americans thus far, Greenhalgh demonstrates that it is Trump’s toxic masculinity that creates a context in which drag is more obviously defiant. The role of drag as an innately resistive and political art form is acknowledged in drag’s long history. However, Greenhalgh goes on to portray modern drag as having greater power in political activism, with a greater mainstream public interest due, most notably, to the television show RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009–present, US: Logo and VH1). Three queens who use their drag to oppose Trump in differing ways are considered. She finds resistance emerges through direct action, interpretive art and dance, social media presence and straight-up mockery. While highlighting that drag is antithetical to the conservative world-view that considers binaries fundamental, Greenhalgh notes the inherent limitations within drag’s rise to the mainstream, concluding that if drag is ‘darkness turned into power’, drag artists must use this power to fight inclusively against the common enemy.

Throwing Our Weight Around: Fat Girls, Protest, and Civil Unrest

Throwing Our Weight Around: Fat Girls, Protest, and Civil Unrest

The art of postcolonial politics in the age of empire: Haiti's object lesson at the World's Columbian Exposition

The art of postcolonial politics in the age of empire: Haiti's object lesson at the World's Columbian Exposition

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985, Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985, Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA

Maquiavelo y Suárez o un encuentro inesperado-esperado

El siguiente trabajo enfrenta las posiciones de Francisco Suárez y Nicolás Maquiavelo acerca del poder político y legislativo. Si bien entre estos autores existen algunas coincidencias, como el hecho de que ambos entienden que el poder legislador tiene su origen en el conjunto de los hombres y de que la política tiene que ser renovada de acuerdo con las nuevas condiciones sociales y culturales del mundo moderno, Maquiavelo piensa que el arte político debe dejar de lado su justificación teológica, cuadro en el que, por el contrario, se inserta el modelo suareciano, que sigue la tradición aristotélica y escolástica del poder. Por otro lado, Suárez concibe el poder como una fuerza subordinada al recto gobierno de los hombres en la virtud. Maquiavelo, por su parte, sostiene que el poder se encamina a la mayor fortuna del gobernante. A esto responde Suárez que la inmoralidad -en que pudiera caer la autoridad para conseguir mayor fortuna- no puede ser un objeto legítimo de la ley.

Ratzel's stone guest: The art of politics in the work of Friedrich Ratzel

In this essay I demonstrate that Friedrich Ratzel's Lebensraum essay can itself be read as a biopolitical text because it contains something more than a pure description of the Darwinian struggle for life, namely an imperative. I therefore interrogate Ratzel's ideas in the light of Michel Foucault's theory of biopower. In order to unveil the deeply biopolitical character of Ratzel's Lebensraum idea, I point first to Ratzel's specific notion of culture, which he shares with the cultural studies approach (Kulturwisenschaften) developed by the Leipzig circle. Secondly, I detect the main ‘stone guest’ in this text – Ratzel's idea of politics and the ‘art of state politics’ (Staatskunst), by folding ‘politics’ into German cultural imperialism. Finally, by interrogating Ratzel's notion of science, I show his construction of geography as ‘power-knowledge’ in ways designed to reveal to politicians the keys for an understanding of human and political life.

The politics of aesthetics, space and community: An analysis of Same Old, Brand New by Cao Fei

Abstract This article analyses the site-specific video artwork Same Old, Brand New by Chinese artist Cao Fei, which was exhibited in Hong Kong during Art Basel 2015. Set in the context of the Umbrella Revolution, it is argued that although the work by Chinese artists who became known in the 2000s may seem apolitical, artists such as Cao Fei have found subtle ways to create political art, to engage the public with politics, to disrupt political hegemony, to go beyond the boundaries of art institutions and to produce ungovernable communities that may evade identity politics. In its intervention in public space and its reworking of popular culture Same Old, Brand New has helped to temporarily constitute a politically engaged public. Using theories by Jacques Rancière, Henri Lefebvre and Jean-Luc Nancy, this study shows how Same Old, Brand New disrupts the distribution of the sensible and the hegemonic production of space and produces a sense of ‘being-in-common’.

Activating Temporalities: The Political Power of Artistic Time

Abstract Inspired by Marx’ view of “untimely temporalities,” I connect my own conception of the need for anachronism in art history with some contemporary artworks focusing on the political importance of art in the present. The analyses of work by three contemporary artists who each bring their own aesthetic of slowness, interruption, and activism to their art leads to a conception of political art as activating rather than directly activist. In addition to Marx, especially his view of temporality, and to Henri Bergson as a major philosopher of time, the article also establishes connections with the ideas of contemporary cultural analyst Kaja Silverman. These three thinkers, each in their own way, undermine the binary oppositions on which so much of thought is based.

The Micropolitics of Performance: Pop-up Art as a Complementary Method for Civic Engagement and Public Participation

Scholars typically categorize pop-ups as part of insurgent do-it-yourself (DIY) movements or simple creative placemaking events. It is unclear if these dominant narratives are accurate representations or how these acts of temporary urbanism are connected to planning. This study serves two connected purposes: to identify how pop-ups are organized and explore how pop-ups combine political art and urbanism to create opportunities for civic engagement and public participation. Drawing on a national sample of principal cities and a comparative study of exemplar art pop-ups in Austin, Baltimore, and Boise, this research addresses how pop-up organizers influence urban planning and urban policy from outside traditional channels. Findings suggest that these events are undertaken by diverse sets of organizations and partnerships to increase civic dialogue and educate citizens. The prevalence of pop-ups in public space and their focus on urban issues suggests the need to integrate these complementary strategies into planning practice. More broadly, the study shows that art pop-ups can be a legitimate form of urban planning rather than performing purely as urban entertainment.

Spregelburd’s Stubbornness


 
 
 In recent years I have almost religiously gone to see something by or featuring Rafael Spregelburd whenever I visit Argentina, on stage or screen. On my last trip, this March, alongside two films(Florencia Percia’s debut Cetáceos and Lucrecia Martel’s historical drama Zama) and a talk, in conversation with the academic Gabriel Guz, it was his ambitious play La terquedad (Stubbornness). Spregelburd is widely acknowledged as one of Argentina’s most significant contemporary dramatists. His work appears regularly on European festival stages, and has won prizes worldwide. He has translated Harold Pinter, Sarah Kane, and other British playwrights for performance in Spanish. Yet it is a number of years now since The Argentine Moment appeared at London’s Royal Court, and his namewill hardly be familiar to British readers. Some may recognise him as a screen actor, playing the proverbially tortured political artist, gruff husband to the eponymous heroine, and love rival to SamHuntington’s lead in Nico Casavecchia’s Finding Sofia (2016).
 
 

Pleasure in Performing a Jagged Version of Femininity: Interview with Bjørk Grue Lidin

Abstract In this e-mail interview from April 2016, London-based performer, writer, curator and editor Bjørk Grue Lidin speaks about the difference between political art and the aestheticization of politics, the HYSTERIA collective’s radical feminist and editorial politics, its growing international membership and the ways in which her fellow ‘lovely hysterics’ have been encouraging her to push the boundaries of her own performative explorations of abjection, incivility, discomfort, complicity, violence and other ways of destroying the meanings inscribed into the feminine body.

Garoian, C.R. (1999). Performing Pedagogy: Toward an Art of Politics. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Softcover, 248 pages.

Garoian, C.R. (1999). Performing Pedagogy: Toward an Art of Politics. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Softcover, 248 pages.

What remains: reviving Lumumba's legacy in music video

ABSTRACTIn the face of prolonged violence, rupture, and erasure, the music video, ‘Agizo ya Lumumba,’ reflects efforts by emerging artists in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to mediate memory. This video, produced by the Yole!Africa cultural centre in Goma, is part of an online series, Art on the FrontLine, that probes the possibilities for political art in sites of active conflict. But where other episodes evoke overt protest through aesthetics of hip hop and Third Cinema, ‘Agizo ya Lumumba’ relies on embodied, textual, and archival engagement with a poem by Patrice Lumumba. In this video, rappers, contemporary dancers, and filmmakers creatively interrogate both the contested record of historical facts crippling Congo's postcolonial development as well as the underlying questions of agency, power, and accountability that obscure narrations and representations of Lumumba's political legacy. Through close reading and analysis of its aesthetic and moral implications, this essay frames ‘Agizo ya Lumumba’ as an example of socially engaged art that foregrounds history and social memory as both dialogic and fundamental to discourses on human rights in conflict zones. By extension, it queries the potential for socially engaged scholarship to influence the conception and administration of international aid.

Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage

Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage

Realism + Its Discontents: Determinism Noir

Abstract This short comic based narrative depicts the challenges to and climate of an alternative form of realism in the art-world as a new project for art's politics and construction. Determinism Noir, Realism and Its Discontents calls upon the classic genre of noir narratives to situate themes of agency, mastery, rationalism and metaphysics. These ideas and images are generated in the nihilistic climate of alienation, itself borne out through the machinic, technological and capitalistic forces of the Twentieth Century. The comic presents three parts: first we see the formation of a project base to insinuate a rational determinism: A world of cause that is unpredictable but nevertheless, a pragmatic working environment; second we see a report, based on real life events, showing arguments from politics and the art-world that continue to voice the fear that it is representation itself that has blighted art's real political purchase. The comic criticizes these arguments as having left art with either a naive commitment to an abstract and essential mythology of present-ness or an antirealist self-contortion that dispossesses it of power. The third part of this narrative re-joins the work of the epistemological detective work that is the exercise for this new realist project. Beech's abstract story gels painterly construction, philosophical argument and political diatribe to extend her ongoing work. Here she argues that art must surpass the egotistic self-consciousness that have wrongly subtended claims to realism, whilst condemning those that aspire to exit realism altogether.

The Art of Trans Politics

Emmanuel David on contemporary artist Cassils’s embodied struggle and trans politics.

Artist for a New Age: Dissident Russian Performance Art and the Work of Petr Pavlenskii

After Petr Pavlenskii performed the action Otdelenie in 2014, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova compared Pavlenskii’s work to that of Pussy Riot, and argued that the carefree, carnivalesque spirit that had characterized their punk rock performances was no longer suitable for the political reality of Putin’s Russia. This article takes Tolokonnikova’s statement as a starting point and explores the ways in which Pavlenskii’s artistic practice both conforms with, and deviates from the model for art activism employed by Voina, Pussy Riot, and other political art collectives in contemporary Russia, including Kollektivnye deistviia, Ekspropriatsiia territorii iskusstva, Oleg Kulik, and Chto delat’, among others. The author finds that Pavlenskii’s work largely conforms to the style of his predecessors in terms of locale, political sentiment and reasoning, but diverges from these models in its tone, brutality, and premeditated use of state power as an artistic medium.

Ética, estética y erotismo en formas del deseo y lo religioso. Notas epistemológicas materialistas para una “sociología de interioridades”

Este texto reflexiona sobre significaciones en las imágenes del “pensador” o intelectual en la privacidad, pero como sujeto mediado por condiciones sociales. Desde una “sociología de las interioridades” nos preguntamos sobre las significaciones culturales que producen temporalidades y espacialidades del pensamiento, ideas o motivaciones que configuran acciones de la estética y el arte del conocimiento para transformar la violencia del exterior. Así, afirmamos que dinámicas socioculturales no son nociones ontológicas en la obra de arte y la religiosidad, como esencias en el mundo, o Ser filosófico absoluto, sin materialidades concretas. Por el contrario, los contenidos de verdad de las interioridades son materialidades de la lucha de clases contra la violencia social, política y estructural de pobreza, miseria, hambre, muerte; contradictoriamente, ligadas al deseo y lo religioso del “suspiro de creatura oprimida” contra la fetichización y alienación del mercado (“opio del pueblo”). Por esta racionalidad de la esperanza en la desesperanza, el pensamiento crítico y estético de lo nuevo en las “artes estratégicas de la política” devienen posibilidades del concepto contra conceptualizaciones mitológicas de la violencia del derecho, normas y reglas administrativas-estatales para la dominación del Capital. Como Walter Benjamin, para redimir del lenguaje los destellos eróticos, para la realización de las palabras de justicia, democracia y libertad, proponemos mirar las imágenes dialécticas de la cultura como continuidad del hombre completo-genérico, diría Carlos Marx, práctico, erótico y religioso con el Otro, la naturaleza en el Nos-Otros como pensamiento-deseo y obracreación-utopía en la comunidad.