About the Book
The world is in crisis, bringing activists and protesters onto the streets and into the public eye. More than ever, activism relies on spectacle and visibility in order to be noticed in the era of globalized capitalism and networked media. At the same time, a growing number of artists employ creative strategies to critique the establishment, act in resistance, and demand change. Visual activism of this kind is not new, but it is rapidly evolving.
This anthology presents 16 case-studies of visual activism from across the globe, providing an up-to-date picture of the impact of contemporary visual and art activism, and combining a scholarly interrogation of visual activism with an examination of how it works in practice. The case studies address a wide range of issues including human rights abuses; state violence; gender and sexuality; racism; migration; and climate breakdown. They examine a range of approaches from playful carnivalesque parades to extreme practices such as ‘lip-sewing’, and are drawn from a wide range of international contexts – from Europe and the US, to Iran, India, Pakistan, Tunisia, and China. This diverse scope enables readers to consider examples comparatively – noticing emerging trends and key differences to reveal how geopolitical and cultural factors play an important role in shaping activist practices.
This rich and timely collection provides a fresh perspective on the possibilities, limitations and politics of visual activism, as activists, artists, and curators respond to the changing world around them in this most uncertain of times. It will add significantly to our understanding of how art can aid political struggle in a global contemporary context, and will be a key text for both scholars and practitioners alike.
Table of Contents:
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION TO THE ANTHOLOGY, Darcy White and Stephanie Hartle (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
PART ONE: THE POLITICS OF PERFORMANCE: ACTING/ RE-ENACTING AND ALTERNATIVE HISTORIES
1. Making Sense and Claiming a Presence: the Social Semiotics of Visual Activism, Eve Kalyva (University of Kent, UK)
2. A Total Performance: Invisibility, Respectability and Resistance in Corporate Capitalism, Jill Gibbon (Leeds Beckett University, UK)
3. By a Thread: the Space Left to Activism when Fashion Deals with the Refugee ‘crisis’, Elsa Gomis (University of East Anglia, UK)
4. Digging up the Left-Wing Corpse? Visual Activism and Melancholia in Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave, Stephanie Hartle (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
5. Imperialism, Empathy and Healing in Rajkamal Kahlon’s Artistic Activism, Margaret Tali (Estonian Academy of Arts)
6. Shooting Back / Speaking Forward: Decolonial Strategies in the work of Sasha Huber, Temi Odumosu (Malmö University, Sweden) and Sasha Huber (Independent Researcher, Finland)
PART TWO: PLACES OF PROTEST: PUBLIC SPACE AND CITIZENSHIP
7. Visible Speechlessness: A Critical Approach to Image Acts of Lip Sewing, Ana Lena Werner (Independent Scholar, Germany) and Amelie Ochs (University of Bremen, Germany)
8. ‘Ripples in water’. Minor Episodes of Feminist Visual Activism by Three Women Artists in the PRC (2007–2015), Monica Merlin (Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar)
9. ‘America is Black, Indigenous, and Muslim’: Tatyana Fazlalizadeh’s Public Challenges to White Nationalism, Stefanie Snider (Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA)
10. Farida Batool: A Pakistani Visual Activist, Amina Ejaz (National College of Arts, Pakistan)
11. Jason deCaires Taylor’s Submerged Sculptures and the Iconography of Slow Violence, Karen Stock (Winthrop University, USA)
12. Keeping the Peace: the Visual in the ‘struggle’ of Nonviolent Activism in a Global Existential Crisis, Darcy White (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
PART THREE: CONNECTIVITY ONLINE: DIGITAL ACTIVISM AND THE NETWORKED IMAGE
13. Montage and Vernacular Spectatorship: the Role Played by YouTube Channel AnarChnowa as a Tool of Visual Activism in Post-14 January 2011 Tunisia, Mariana Liosi (The Free Fine Arts Academy in Rimini, Italy)
14. Sociality, Appearance, and Surveillance in Digital Political Activism, Stefka Hristova (Michigan Technological University, USA)
15. Rendering the Invisible Visible: Menstrual Activism in Contemporary India, Sugandha Sehgal (University of Delhi, India)
16. Unruly Images: The Activist Visuality of Glitches and Disabilities on Instagram, Vendela Grundell Gachoud (Stockholm University, Sweden)
INDEX
About the Author :
Stephanie Hartle is Senior Lecturer in Media Arts at Sheffield Hallam University, UK.
Darcy White is Principal Lecturer in Visual Culture at Sheffield Hallam University, UK.
Review :
With its 16 chapters, this exciting volume introduces readers to a fresh series of contemporary visual practices and, importantly, a valuable range of perspectives that invite us to reflect on what visual activism is, and what it can achieve at a time of multiple crises.
An insightful contribution to understanding visual politics in the 21st century.
A valuable contribution to the urgent ongoing debates about the contradictions and paradoxes stemming from activism in the field of visual culture, and art in the field of socio-political action. The book offers some newly-produced critical and theoretical discourses in the context of socially-engaged art that can inform artists, critics, curators, scholars, and activists who are invested in endorsing art as an important and potent social medium.
