This past weekend in Charlottesville, VA, Nazis and their allies marched for white supremacy and Heather Heyer, one of the legions of human rights advocates who came out to oppose them lost her life to a terrorist who plowed his car into a crowd. Protest—along with care and consolation and building resilience—is one of the three aims of artistic response to civil or natural disaster in Art Became The Oxygen: An Artistic Response Guide; just enter your email to join a thousand others who’ve downloaded the this free 74-page Guide in the last week, and learn more about the models, methods, ethics, and awareness needed for effective artistic response.
Last week we wrote about the Guide as a whole. This week, our focus is on art that protests injustice, calling people to awareness and action. The USDAC is built on the principle that human rights are cultural rights are foundational human birthrights. Watch this Indivisible guide for solidarity events. Donate to the Solidarity C’ville anti-racist legal fund, Black Lives Matter C’ville, or other organizations that stand for equity, justice, and cultural democracy.
Once you download the Guide, be sure to join us at 3 pm PDT/4 pm MDT/5 pm CDT/6 pm EDT on Tuesday, 29 August 2017 for an Artistic Response Citizen Artist Salon featuring Carole Bebelle, Co-founder and Executive Director of Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans; Mike O’Bryan, Program Manager in Youth Arts Education at the Village of Arts and Humanities in North Central Philadelphia; and Amber Hansen, a co-director of Called to Walls and a visual artist based in Vermillion, South Dakota. Just enter your email to sign up and you’ll receive a link to take part in this online video conversation.
Cultural Agent Dave Loewenstein's vision of a monument to racism vanquished. See all three images in the series here.
What can Artistic Response do in moments such as these? As we say in the Guide,
As a vehicle of protest, artistic response can share the realities of those most directly affected by emergencies, countering cover-stories and distant analyses. It can reach people emotionally and somatically, as well as intellectually, adding impact. It can generate images, sounds, and other experiences that build awareness and lodge in memory, affecting future actions. It can illustrate what is broken and offer powerful images of healing and possibility.
Here are just a few of the Guide excerpts on protest-focused artistic response projects:
The Mirror Casket. De Andrea Nichols designed The Mirror Casket, a coffin faced entirely in mirrored glass, “to challenge on-lookers to question, empathize, and reflect on their own roles in remediating the crisis of countless deaths that young men of color experience in the United States at the hands of police and community violence.” The Mirror Casket was carried in many demonstrations before it became part of the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. Here’s how De’s website describes the project:
The Mirror Casket is a visual structure, performance, and call to action for justice in the aftermath of the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. Created by a team of seven community artists and organizers, the mirrored casket responds to a Ferguson resident’s call for “a work of art that evokes more empathy into this circumstance” following the burning of a Michael Brown memorial on September 23, 2014.
With an aim to evoke reflection and empathy for the deaths of young people of color who have lost their lives unjustly in the United States and worldwide, The Mirror Casket was performed as part of a “Funeral Procession of Justice” during the Ferguson October protests. As community members carried it from the site of Michael Brown’s death to the police department of the community, its mirrors challenged viewers to look within and see their reflections as both whole and shattered, as both solution and problem, as both victim and aggressor. The Mirror Casket has since been used throughout related protests and marches.
Marching with The Mirror Casket.
#Icantkeepquiet: Every issue that encroaches on community and individual well-being stimulates protest art. Consider the song #icantkeepquiet, emerging from the Women’s Marches in January 2017. Los Angeles musician MILCK wrote the song and taught it online to a group of women who came together to perform it first during the demonstration on the streets of Washington, DC. It went viral on YouTube. The site makes sheet music and guide recordings freely available and collects stories of speaking out in the face of repression.
#WRITERSRESIST. Writers gathered in 100 events across the globe on January 15, 2017, the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., under the banner of #WRITERSRESIST, asserting their commitment to free, just, and compassionate democracy in the face of official actions that shake these commitments.
I Hear A Voice. In the summer of 2016, students in the Twin Cities Mobile Jazz Project summer school program created a song in tribute to Philando Castile, who was killed by police just days before. The track weaves snippets of news soundtrack, spoken word, and choral singing with instrumental music.
Social Emergency Response Centers. The Design Studio for Social Intervention has been experimenting with SERCs (Social Emergency Response Centers)…. You can see images and video describing the prototype center DS4SI piloted in 2016 in Dorchester, the largest and most diverse neighborhood of Boston. Their website says “Our goal is for communities to be able to self-organize SERCs whenever they feel like they need them. We imagine a people-led public infrastructure sweeping the country!” They encourage people to pop up SERC’s in all kinds of venues: “youth programs, art galleries, health centers, colleges, community organizing programs, etc.”
Please share the Guide, tell people about the Salon, and watch this space for more information about the USDAC’s Artistic Response work to come.