Artivism Part 1: Introduction & Examples
Ever since I started joining climate protests, I have been intrigued by the role of visuals and creative actions. Activists regularly come up with funny costumes, crazy constructions, beautifully made signs, and catchy slogans. Sometimes there is even a choreographed performance or a band singing protest songs. All this creativity adds strength to the movement, for example by conveying a sense of urgency, pointing to outrageous power relations, or revealing how ridiculous things we take for granted can be, doing so in ways that really grabs the attention. Such combinations of art and activism are often referred to as artivism.
In this blog post, I discuss artivism and share some inspiring examples and helpful resources. Most of my own exposure to art in activism comes from the climate movement, as well as the global justice movement and indigenous resistances to extractivism. If you have inspiring examples from other social movements, please share in the comments!
Introduction to artivism
Jay Jordan, who has been involved various memorable artivism projects (including the clown army and bike protest discussed below), and who currently collaborates with Isabelle Fremeaux as the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, wrote a wonderful chapter on artivism in the book Degrowth in Movements (2020), and provided the following description:
“Artivism is not really a movement. It’s more an attitude, a practice which exists on the fertile edges between art and activism. It comes into being when creativity and resistance collapse into each other. It’s what happens when our political actions become as beautiful as poems and as effective as a perfectly designed tool.”
“What it’s definitely not about is making political art, art about an issue, such as a performance about the refugee crisis, or a video about an uprising. It is not about showing new perceptions of the world, but about changing it. Refusing representation, artivism chooses direct action.” (Jordan, 2020: 60).
Artivism often uses humor, confusion, and constant innovation of new tactics in order to keep the authorities a step behind and make it harder for them to figure out how to respond. There is also often a form of transgression by challenging or breaking social rules or even laws, doing things that are unexpected, surprising, slightly unsettling, possibly illegal. This type of transgression questions the existing conventions about what is proper and right, and who or what is truly served by such conventions. We take so many things for granted without wondering why they are the way they are.
While doing research for this blog post, I started to recognize a few different forms of art that can feature in activism and turn into artivism: (1) characters & performances, (2) props & constructions, (3) music & dance, (4) culture jamming, (5) street art, and (6) indigenous art & ceremony. I will discuss examples in each of these categories. After that, I will talk a bit about the importance and dangers of finding funding for artivism, and I will end by sharing examples of slogans and links to organizations, resources, and literature.
Characters & performances
An amazing example of characters and performances in activism is the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA), founded in 2003 by Jay Jordan, Lawrence Bogad, Hilary Ramsden, Jennifer Verson, Zoe Young, Matthew Trevelyan, Theo Price, and others. The aim was to bring playfulness and joy into the social justice movement, which had been experiencing intense times with protests around the WTO in Seattle in 1999, the G8 in Genoa in 2001, and the Iraq War in 2002 and 2003, among others. The development of the clown army involved lots of trainings and devising of creative tactics, combining clowning with direct action and civil disobedience, using chaos, confusion, and ridicule to undermine authorities. The first action was to welcome arch-clown President W. Bush visiting the queen in London in 2003. After this, the clown army grew fast. In 2005, two months before the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, in July 2005, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination went on the Ridiculous Recruitment tour, visiting nine cities in the UK. They ended up organizing an army of 200 clowns for the G8 protests in Scotland! The encounters between these clowns and police resulted in hilarious situations, some of which you can watch in the footage from July 6th, 2005 in the video above. A day later, however, four suicide bombers in London Underground trains killed 52 people and injured more than 700, interrupting and overshadowing the G8 summit and the protests. After 2005, the clown army started to slowly dissolve, although the concept spread internationally and still circulates. In fact, Robyn Hambrook is building on the work of the clown army and bringing new life to the role of the clown in activism. In the meantime, quite a lot has been written about the CIRCA, including academic articles about the tactics and effects, some of which were written by former members (for titles and links for more in-depth reading check the references in the Wikipedia article). A fascinating and somewhat disturbing fact worth mentioning is that an undercover police officer had infiltrated a clown group in Leeds for five years in the early 2000s, supposedly to monitor domestic extremists, a bizarre focus and expenditure on peaceful protesters.
The Red Rebel Brigade, pictured at the top, is another fantastic example of the use of characters and performances for a powerful visual communication. They regularly accompany actions by Extinction Rebellion and their red robes with headdresses, face paint, slow movements, and dramatic poses are hard to ignore. The color red symbolizes the blood we all share with humans and other animals, and the rebels can often be seen as mourning the great losses caused by the climate breakdown. Sometimes there are variations in the color they wear, like blue to represent water. Their calmness forms a deliberate de-escalating contrast with the XR rebels who are blocking roads or buildings and who may become subjected to violent reactions from bystanders or police. The Red Rebel Brigade was developed by Doug Francisco and Justine Squire from Bristol’s Invisible Circus for the Extinction Rebellion Spring uprising April 2019 in London. The Red Rebels emerged from characters created for demonstrations against the Iraq War in 2003, which in turn were developed from a slow-motion mime show from the 90s. Here is a wonderful video about the Red Rebel Brigade made by XR Netherlands (it’s mostly in Dutch but still worthwhile to watch, and a beautiful explanation in English towards the end).
A simpler example of a character would include these people in the picture to the left dressed up simultaneously as pump jacks and as representatives of the fossil fuel industry, regularly marching through XR actions in the Netherlands. These characters are mostly represented by the costume, which includes moving parts on the pump jacks and black strips of fabric flowing from their backs onto the ground. There is no deeper intentional strategy to confuse or de-escalate as with the clown army and red rebels, but it’s an effective visual way to remind the audience of the people and their motivations driving the climate crisis.
Another example would include this set-up where climate protesters are standing on blocks of ice underneath the gallows with nooses around their necks and hands tied behind their backs. It creates a powerful image with a simple message and I have seen it copied in various cities in the past few years.
And I would argue that the actions of people throwing soup at famous paintings in musea would also fall under the category of performative artivism. There are no characters or costumes, but it is a highly performative act. The point being made, and effectively so, that we tend to care more about famous paintings than about the planet we live on.
Props & constructions
Various protests have made use of props and constructions to complicate things for authorities and simultaneously make a particular point. One example is the bike bloc protest for the UN Climate Change Conference COP 15 in Copenhagen in 2009. Organized by Jay Jordan and Isabelle Fremeaux of the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, with various collaborations, discarded bikes were fixed and welded into new forms, i.e. machines of resistance, planned to be used in combination with a sound swarm during the protest. Activists on bike can move more quickly around police blockades or draw police away from certain spots. In this documentary, Pockets of Resistance, you can see footage of the work and police interference in the time leading up to the action as well as the day of the action itself. It also shows other amazing examples of artivism from around the world, including interactive theater in Nepal, feminist street art in Bolivia, and political singing in Egypt.
Interestingly, the bike bloc project was initially part of a city-wide exhibition about art and climate change by the Copenhagen Contemporary Art Centre, but was dropped when the center realized it would involve civil disobedience. Lateron, one of the welded bikes, the double trouble sound swarm version, became part of a museum exhibition in London called “Disobedient Objects”. It points to an interesting tension between the institutional art world and artivism in practice, something I will explore a bit further towards the end of this post under Funding Artivism.
The idea of using bikes in civil disobedience was also applied during an action against the use of private jets at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands, organized by Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion in 2022. A few hundred activists managed to enter the part of the airport where private jets are kept and, while some of them blocked the wheels of an aircraft, others rode around on bikes, taunting and evading police. It resulted in humorous footage that quickly went viral (including a sped-up version on Benny Hill music) and the story was picked up by international media. However, the police was very rough on the cycling activists and at least one of them ended up with a head injury, reminding us of the potential safety issues with these kinds of actions.
The book bloc is another cool idea for the use of props that was first launched by Italian students protesting Berlusconi's education reforms in 2010, holding shields that looked like giant books as protection against the police. The concept subsequently spread to various protests in other countries. The image of a clash between a police officer and a peaceful protester holding Huxley's Brave New World of course sends an incredibly powerful message. You can find instructions to make one here. Alternative versions have also been developed. For example, the Heathrow Climate Camp protesters used shields with photographs of people affected by the climate crisis, also hiding behind them pop up tents that could be used to block the authorities.
Another memorable prop that was used during the April rebellion of Extinction Rebellion UK in London was the iconic pink boat, which was a tool to block Oxford Circus and simultaneously functioned as a stage for speeches and other performances, including a speech by actress Emma Thompson. Obviously it was quite a process to obtain a suitable boat and get it to the right location. After five days in the blockade, the police confiscated and removed the boat and it has been in police possession ever since, possibly destroyed by now.
This also leads to two reservations about the use of big and complex props. First of all, there is always the possibility that the police may confiscate it before the actual action, leading to a lot of hard work getting lost. This happened with some of the bikes in Denmark mentioned above, and for example when London police seized hundreds of art works from XR in fall 2019, including a valuable giant skull made by established sculptor Ron Mueck and lent by him to XR. Secondly, there is the question of environmental impact of material use. While the bike bloc made use of discarded bikes and thus recycled materials, the XR boat was functional and purchased from the original owner while hiding the real intentions for its use. In addition, after it was seized, there was a collective decision not to bother retrieving it and XR actually purchased six more boats. Obviously, it is important to stay critical of the environmental impact of actions and action props, and to be creative in finding suitable natural and circular materials.
A last example in this category is this very cool gigantic “speaking truth to power” fist made for an action against by XR in Amsterdam in the fall of 2020. It was created in such a way that several activists could lock themselves in the top and it was fixed onto a trailer where more activists could be locked on. I was present at this particular action and could observe the police trying to figure out how they would remove the activists and dismantle the construction, which ended up being quite an operation requiring the right equipment to saw through the metal and remove activists from a precarious situation at a certain height. Of course, the more complex such a structure, the longer it can keep the police busy, the longer it can stretch the duration of the action.
Music & dance
Music often plays quite an important part at demonstrations and actions. Chants and protest songs can connect protesters, keep their bodies moving and dancing, and keep them warm and entertained during sometimes lengthy and slightly boring sit-ins. Usually, it’s all quite simple and improvised, but sometimes serious musicians and/or dancers connect themselves to the cause and help out in this department.
XR Netherlands was lucky when musicians from various backgrounds formed an actual orchestra with choir to support the regular highway blockades against fossil fuel subsidies in 2023. They often play Mozart’s version of Dies Irae, the day of judgment, with the entire orchestra in the middle of the road blockade, as you can see in this Twitter post with video by participating composer Michel van der Aa. On one occasion, the police confiscated the instruments, so the musicians decided to still perform with the choir while miming the playing of the music, an amazing improvisation, which went viral on Twitter. I think it’s fantastic how this shared concern about the future of the planet can pull classical music out of the orchestra halls onto the streets, adding emotional depth to the protest and at the same time legitimizing it with “high culture”. While climate protesters are often assumed to be long-haired unemployed hippies, and comments of this nature are rampant on any social media posts about such protests, the presence of something like a proper orchestra (just like the presence of grandparents and scientists) can undermine such assumptions and reach a different audience. It illustrates the value and importance of solidarity across social groupings, including class, as well as race, gender, sexuality, religion, health, physical abilities, neurodiversity, and more. There is still so much that needs to be gained in this respect, but this is at least an inspiring example.
Another fun example of music & dance as artivism is the concept of the Discobedience, which of course is a combination of disco and disobedience. It first popped up as an action by XR Australia in 2019 with people dressed up in extravagant disco-style (or with whatever silly wigs and colorful clothes could be dug up) and dancing to the song Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees while causing disruption for the climate. It quickly spread to other XR groups across the globe, but the Covid-19 pandemic limited its momentum as protest became impossible or incredibly restricted. Above is an awesome example from Venice. The Discobedience was not just a new protest strategy, but a bit like the clown army a way to bring joy back into the movement.
Culture jamming
Culture jamming is a form of activism that uses mainstream consumer culture against itself by subverting its messages and exposing corporate evils. One important form is changing branding and advertisements to instead share the hidden messages, goals, or results of companies or organizations. Adbusters, founded in 1989 in Vancouver, was an important early player in this regard and remains active today. Adbusters is a magazine, as well as a collective of activist artists. Among many other projects, they created the alternative American flag with corporate logos in place of the stars to represent corporate power over government. They were also behind Buy Nothing Day in the late 1990s and collaborated with anarchist anthropologist David Graeber at the roots of Occupy Wall Street in 2011. A similar collective of activist artists called Brandalism was launched around the Olympics in the UK in 2012, when they put their versions of corporate advertisements on various billboards in multiple cities. In 2017, Brandalism launched Subvertisers International to facilitate a transnational network.
The Yes Men are a great example of culture jamming. Created by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos, they became well-known with their first film “The Yes Men” in 2004. Their approach emerged when they started a fake, satirical website based on the WTO with a slightly different web address with content that formed an outrageous caricature of the organization. They quickly found that website visitors often failed to recognize the satire and would even send them invitations for conferences. Thus, they created the aliases Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno and started accepting such invitations, giving ridiculous and shocking performances in name of WTO and other organizations, often testing the limits of what the general public would consider acceptable, and regularly putting the actual organizations in a tough spots by making all kinds of outrageous statements and promises. They have managed to reproduce this act in various forms ever since, creating materials for two more films, “The Yes Men Fix the World” released in 2009 and “The Yes Men Are Revolting” released in 2015. One of the most iconic performances was when they represented Dow Chemical on BBC World in 2004 to take full responsibility for the horrible chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, in 1984, which caused thousands of death and many more illnesses over the following years, and to promise $12 billions of dollars to compensate the victims (see video above). The news quickly spread worldwide until the hoax was discovered. Obviously, the effect was that Dow Chemical had to announce that none of it was true, that they would not take responsibility, not compensate the victims. These actions are of course incredibly gutsy and require both nerves of steel and a strong legal team. All three movies can be watched through their website, together with a lot of other video materials. They also do coachings, trainings, and collaborations.
Last year, Fossilfree Netherlands culture jammed a new advertisement campaign by Shell that aimed to greenwash its activities. The original campaign stated things like “It starts with one windmill. And before you know it you are building four windparks at sea.” Fossilfree made new posters resembling these advertisements with different statements, like “It starts with Greta. And before you know it, you need a 6 billion marketing budget.” And “It starts with an oil spill. And before you know it, nine Nigerian activists are hanged.” You can find all eight printable posters here. Shell summoned Fossilfree to remove the poster about the Nigerian activists, but instead Fossilfree created six more posters about Shell’s role in pollution and human rights violations in Nigeria, including a QR code linking to a page with more background info.
Street art
I suppose the most famous political street artists would include Keith Haring and Banksy. Haring gained recognition through his graffiti in New York subway stations in the 1980s and over the years incorporated more activist themes into his work about sexuality and AIDS, racism, and drug abuse. As he became famous and earned good money for his work, he continued to engage in street art and also did a lot of work for charity, until his death in 1990. Bansky became active as a graffiti artist in Bristol in the early 1990s and has spread his political art in public spaces throughout the world. His work is strongly anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, and well-known pieces include the mural of the man throwing a bouquet of flowers in the West Bank. In 2010, he released the documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop”, using footage recorded by Thierry Guetta who followed various street artists and documenting Thierry’s own transformation into a famous street artist Mr. Brainwash.
The artivism in these types of works lies not just in the focus of the art pieces themselves, but also in the direct action of reclaiming of public spaces, especially in times when such spaces are plastered with corporate advertisements. There is often a tension for such artists between artivism on one hand and earning a living on the other, especially when the scale tips to fame & fortune. With some of the art works by Haring and Banksy now being worth millions of dollars, their art tends to get appropriated by the elite, who through their wealth may well be complicit in some of the issues addressed in one way or another, and pulled off the streets into institutional and private spaces. Artists may try to fight this, but once their work reaches ridiculous value, very little can be done to undermine it. Many people will have heard of Banksy’s stunt to shred the painting of the girl with balloon at a live Sotheby's auction the moment it was sold for $1.4 million in 2018. However, the value of shredded work only increased and was sold for $25.4 million in 2021. In addition to the elitist appropriation of work by certain artists, there have also been movements of co-optation of graffiti by corporations and governmental organizations in such ways that it can become difficult to distinguish between street artivism and advertising.
In addition to graffiti, I would argue that postering and stickering can also be forms of street art and artivism. They are more easily accessible for people who lack the skills or interest to get busy with paint and a fast way to make a point in public spaces with little risk of getting caught, especially with an explosion of camera surveillance in the past decades. Of course, graffiti, but also postering and stickering, in public places is considered a form of vandalism in most countries, and thus illegal. It very much depends on the context to what degree it would be punishable with a fine or even a prison sentence. Last I read, you could get a fine of up to €140 for putting a sticker on a trash bin in the Netherlands. When you stop to think about it, it’s bizarre how we accept constantly being tempted with faraway travels, SUVs, meat, make-up, and other useless shit no one truly needs, wherever we go, but graffiti on a train is what really pisses people off and could put a person in prison. Ultimately, corporate advertising does much more harm to the world than graffiti ever will…
Anyways, back to postering and stickering. If you are not too artistic yourself, you can always look for ready-made or printable posters and stickers that you’d like to share with the world. I have listed various organizations and websites that share art for this purpose under the section Resources towards the end of this blog post.
One postering trend in the Netherlands that I remember well from my student days concerned the Loesje posters pictured above. Loesje is a fictional character, a young girl who shared her silly and critical insights with the world. According to the website, the key values of Loesje are: “showing solidarity, being anti-authoritarian, being sexually free, showing initiative, being decisive, being a-religious, and being independent.” Loesje considers itself a free speech organization and was founded in 1983. They went international in 1994. People can form local groups and create locally relevant texts in their own language. Although the texts can be pretty funny and sharp, it also happens quite regularly that it’s cringey or appears to go against the Loesje values.
Last week, I saw this very clever and effective stickering campaign by XR’s Justice Now group on instagram where they put “genocide” stickers on stop signs in various cities in the Netherlands in support of Palestine. And I found various fun accounts on Instagram sharing stickers found in the wild, which are great for inspiration: radicalgraffiti, graffiti.from.palestine, brandalism_uk, brandalism_nl, stickeroorlog, plaktivisme, stickersnl, linkse_plak_activist.
Indigenous art & ceremony
Having done some research on indigenous resistances to extractive industries, I have come across powerful forms of indigenous art in activism, for example around the protests against Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline expansion in Minnesota in 2020 and 2021. This pipeline was planned to cut through waterways and indigenous lands. Five Ojibwe tribes had legally challenged the pipeline in court, but in the end of 2020 permits for the construction were granted, unleashing a wave of protests and actions as a last attempt to build social pressure and stop the project. Despite all the resistance, the project still went through and the pipeline expansion was completed in October 2021. Although this may seem like a failure, all the effort invested has contributed to building knowledge, skills, and alliances that strengthen a broader movement against extractive industries. These types of resistances attract and mobilize increasing support from indigenous and non-indigenous allies (individuals and organizations), who share concerns about the climate, the environment, and indigenous land rights. As a protest group grows, media and supporter toolkits often get put together to make it as easy as possible for allies to have access to the right information, references, and materials. In case of the Line 3 protest, various artists provided art work for free use for the cause and for similar non-profit causes, even including a complete Defund Line 3 Art Kit with designs and lots of practical suggestions for making and using protest art. Two indigenous artists who contributed are Isaac Murdoch and Christi Belcourt who currently collaborate as the Onaman Collective, a community-based social arts and justice organization, working to reclaim indigenous heritage towards positive social change for the future. On this website, they share additional activist artwork, “free to download and use for all water and land protection actions by grassroots people”, not for profit.
In addition to posters and banners, indigenous activism often also incorporates music, singing, dance, or even specific ceremonies, which helps to expose the colonial violence of extractivism and the ongoing erasure of indigenous rights and cultures. The performances of cultural practices become acts of resistance in and of themselves. One powerful example I have encountered was a performance of a 3-day ceremony to honor the ancestors by Wet’suwet’en people at the Unist’ot’en Camp in British Columbia, Canada, in the path of the planned Coastal GasLink Pipeline. As land defenders on unceded indigenous territory, the Wet’suwet’en people opposed the pipeline, but the BC government, the court, and the police supported the project and violently beat down any resistance over the course of the construction from 2019 until completion in 2023. In this example from 2021, the ceremony remembered missing and murdered indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people who have been victims of sexual violence in Canada and the United States in shockingly disproportionate ways. The so-called man-camps that are established to house the many men working on the construction of pipelines create particularly unsafe situations for indigenous women in the areas concerned. The ceremony performed in the video involved the hanging of red dresses to hold the spirits of the women, girls, and two-spirit people. The ceremony was interrupted and broken down by police and several people were arrested. At this moment in time, and over the coming months, various people involved in protests against the Coastal GasLink Pipeline are still facing legal charges. You can donate to their legal fund here. Activities at the Unist’ot’en Camp to reoccupy the territory, revive indigenous practices, and heal trauma are still ongoing. You can find the Unist’ot’en Camp support page here. For more tips on supporting indigenous and grassroots resistances against extractive industry, see my living blog post Support the Resistance.
Now of course, non-indigenous activists shouldn’t just use indigenous activist art in their own protests, since it would reproduce colonial practices of appropriation. Instead, it’s important to work on true solidarity with indigenous peoples who are on the frontline of extractivist industries and to support them in their resistance in ways that work towards decolonization of the climate movement itself. Although indigenous people form only about 5% of the global population, they safeguard 80% of the world’s biodiversity. We have a responsibility to educate ourselves about the history of exploitation and marginalization of indigenous people across the world, the ongoing consequences today, and the deep roots of the colonial mindset in our own thoughts and behaviors. In addition, indigenous people generally have more holistic views of humans’ place in relation to nature and to history, something that humanity desperately needs to embrace again, now more than ever.
Funding artivism
It may be obvious that some of the artivism examples I have discussed above involved professional artists, either generously donating some of their time and skills or getting paid by the movement or through external funding. Such professional forms of artivism tend to be particularly sophisticated, thoroughly thought-out, and well executed, with multiple levels of meaning and strategy. I want to emphasize that professional artists donating their time and skills should not be taken lightly and, most of all, not be pressured or exploited. We easily take for granted that idealists freely share their work for the cause, but tend to forget that idealists also need to eat. So it's important to be mindful of sacrifices people make for the movement and to pursue opportunities for funding to support artists engaging in artivism, in particular artists who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and LGBTQI+, or belong to other marginalized groups. Although of course movements often rely on volunteers and financial donations for materials, promotion, and legal assistance, it could definitely be worthwhile to invest in artivism when possible and strengthen alliances between activists and artists.
Now, there may also be possibilities for artists to receive external funding for artivism. I haven’t done thorough research on opportunities available, but did see that the Center for Cultural Power organizes Disruptor and Constellations Fellowships for BIPOC artivists, and Beautiful Trouble has the Get Up, Rise Up (GURU) Direct Action Fund for up to $1000. Some of the other artivist organizations, like the Artivist Network and the Center for Artistic Activism, may also have leads with regards to sources of funding. A range of external funding sources might be available from governmental organization, art institutions, and businesses. However, as soon as the funders are not specifically aiming for social change and not quite aware of what is required to achieve such change, tensions may arise between the objectives of the movement and the expectations of the funders.
As I mentioned above, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination collaborated with the Copenhagen Contemporary Art Centre on the bike bloc protest for COP15, but the art center withdrew when it realized the project would involve civil disobedience. The first leg of the same project, involving the construction of the prototypes for the bikes, took place at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol for the C -Words Exhibition (Carbon, Climate, Capital, Culture), and was funded by the Arts Council (and indirectly by the city council). A news article in the Guardian pointed out that public money would thus be used for climate protest involving civil disobedience. While there was no mention of any kind of outrage about this situation, it was recognized that the state funding anti-state activities was quite a unique situation and the gallery would have been more hesitant had the protest itself taken place locally. Although solid democracies have obligations to support a healthy civil society and a critical mass of people to keep the government in check, it generally doesn’t quite work so nicely in practice.
Gaining external funding could be an interesting opportunity for new collaborations and for pushing funders into new territories, but it could also end up working in the opposite direction when the requirements associated with the funding become too restrictive for the activists. The reality is that activists often fight the status quo that is being maintained by the power of the wealthy, so it would be naïve to expect that plenty of funding would be made available to seriously undermine this power. However, art institutions in particular should reflect on their own power, positionality, and social responsibility in this regard. There is a tendency that they become too subservient to capital, but as they end up silencing and manipulating artists, eradicating critical and subversive voices, they themselves will lose relevance once the art they support becomes little more than propaganda, or “as interesting as a sack of porridge” according to the poet Anthony Anaxagorou. His remark was in response to a recent policy update by the Arts Council of England that emphasized that “overtly political or activist” statements might create “reputational risk” and endanger funding arrangements, just one example of an art institution exerting its power. The resulting outrage about this change has pushed the ACE to issue a statement and announce a revision of the language, but this is unlikely to truly reverse the damage done.
I have already talked a bit about the importance of creativity in sourcing funding in the blog post Concrete Action for System Change. It’s something I am thinking and reading about a lot and will be working more on in the coming months. I just got a copy of the book The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex by INCITE! (2007). I can’t say much about it yet since I just started, but it sure has raving reviews. Ultimately, for both activists and artists, it’s crucial to find solid funding directly from supporters as much as possible in order to maintain independence and strength. That said, very interesting things are also happening in the field of radical philanthropy, with generational wealth being inherited by young people who have very different ideas on the ways such wealth should be shared with the world. I’ll definitely be writing more about that as well.
Resources & literature
Slogans
Now, I didn’t include slogans in the categorization of artivism because I consider them more as potentially part of artivism projects rather than as artivism in and of themselves. I still do want to briefly discuss them separately here. Coming up with original slogans that may catch on does require creative thinking and it is a fascinating process to see how slogans can start to circulate widely and even become strongly associated with particular social movements. For example, “Black Lives Matter” started as a hashtag, went viral after several high profile cases of (police) violence and killings of black men and women, and became the actual name of the movement itself. Other examples of slogans representing particular movements include “We Are The 99%” for the Occupy Movement, “Make Love Not War” for the movement against the Vietnam War, and “We Shall Overcome” for the Civil Rights Movement.
I have started collecting some good slogans I have seen around about capitalism, the climate, and social justice issues, so I wanted to share some of the best ones here for inspiration:
Capitalism is a pyramid scheme
Stop worshipping billionaires
You can't eat money
Fight corporate greed
You don't hate Mondays, you hate capitalism
Eat the rich
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism
Capitalism won't solve the climate crisis
We can change by design, or change will come by disaster
The sea is rising, so must we
System change not climate change
If the climate were a bank, it would have already been saved
The climate is changing, why aren't we?
There is no planet B
Choose eco, not ego
Destroy the patriarchy, not the planet
You know it's time for change when children act like leaders and leaders act like children
Your silence will not protect you
No one is free when others are oppressed
If you are not angry, you are not paying attention
I can't believe I am still protesting this shit
Will trade racists for refugees
Nobody is illegal
No borders, no nations, stop deportations
Respect my existence or expect my resistance
My favorite season is the fall of the patriarchy
If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem
They tried to bury us, they didn't know we were seeds
Which one is your favorite? Do you know some other good ones to share?
Useful resources
This is a somewhat random list of useful and fun resources I found during my research for this blog post that might inspire you. If you know any others, please share in the comments.
Artivism: The Art of Subverting Power. This was a conference organized by the Disruption Network Lab, June 23-25, 2023 (in Berlin & streaming).
Beautiful Trouble ToolBox, with stories, tactics, principles, theories, and methodologies.
Justseeds repository of activist graphics
XR NL Art Group downloads & Design Guide
Onaman Collective banner downloads
Flyers for Falastin (instagram & linktree)
Organizations
The Center for Artistic Activism
Literature
Here are some interesting book titles I found during my research. Apart from Degrowth in Movements, which I referenced in the introduction, I haven't yet read any of the others, but they are definitely on my reading list!
Belarde-Lewis, Miranda (2021). Artivism: The Role of Art and Social Media in the Movement. In: Indigenous Peoples Rise Up: The Global Ascendency of Social Media Activism. Bronwyn Carlson and Jeff Berglund (eds). P. 157-169. Rutgers University Press. Goodreads link.
There is only this one chapter on artivism in the book. Overall, the book focuses on indigenous movements building through the forming of international coalitions using social media.
Boyd, Andrew (2012). Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for the Revolution. OR Books. Goodreads link.
Duncombe, Steve, and Steve Lambert (2021). The Art of Activism: Your All-Purpose Guide to Making the Impossible Possible. OR Books. Goodreads link.
Fremeaux, Isabelle, and Jay Jordan (2021). We Are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones. Series: Vagabonds. Pluto Press. Goodreads link.
This book is part if a series called Vagabonds: Radical Pamphlets to Fan the Flames of Discontent, striving “to publish an eclectic mix of long revolutionary essays and experimental works at the intersection of radical action, interventionist art, and critical inquiry.”
Jordan, John (2020). Artivism: Injecting Imagination into Degrowth. In: Degrowth in Movement(s): Exploring Pathways for Transformation. Corinna Burkhart, Matthias Schmelzer, and Nina Treu (eds). P. 59-72. Zero Books. Goodreads link.
There is only this one chapter on artivism in the book. Overall, the book is a fascinating collection of essays from a wide range of social movements, discussing the ways they may connect with the degrowth movement. It's a reminder of the fragmented nature of the resistance on one hand and the way various groups work on shared values and visions.
Mitchell, Dave, Juman Abujbara, Marcel Taminato, and Andrew Boyd (2017). Beautiful Rising: Creative Resistance from the Global South. OR Books. Goodreads link.
Neal, Lucy (2015). Playing for Time: Making Art as if the World Mattered. Oberon Books. Goodreads link.
Notes from Nowhere (2003). We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible Rise of Global Anti-Capitalism. Verso Books. Goodreads link.
Quiroz, Diana, Manon Stravens, and Eline Achterberg (2022). Art & Climate Justice: Voices for Just Climate Action. Profundo. More info & download.
Sholette, Gregory (2022). The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art. Lund Humphries. Goodreads link.