Kelly Bartko- Performance Art Intervention

The Art Of Activism: Your All-Purpose Guide To Making The Impossible Possible by Steve Duncombe and Steve Lambert

We need to learn to fight on the terrain of our enemy. But there are also times when we can shift the terrain to one more advantages to ourselves. While it's often impossible to change the physical realities of our situation, we can change the way in which people make sense of that reality. There will always be death and taxes, but in shifting the terrain of the debate Jesus figured out how to escape both.” Pg 95 It's important to be able to have that switch and be able to quickly change what you know and need to get done. There's always going to be an advantage and a disadvantage on both ends for everything. There are always going to be a different pros and cons and outcomes for everything no matter if it seems good it might even have something bad or if it seems bad it might also have something good. I like this quote because it talks about learning how to work with that shift of the terrain and getting used to something different.

“Problems are often hard to see. Racist violence frequently happens in back alleys and after the Sun goes down. Economic inequality is often the result of abstract forces. Ecological degradation takes place over long periods of time. And most people would simply rather look away from things that make them uncomfortable.” Pg 109 This little section is titled the principal: make the invisible visible. I feel like this is a good topic to cover because no matter where you are or what you're doing there's always going to be people, strategies, resources, services, that are going to have different types of issues and you're going to  need to be able to adapt and reflect to these new things that are available to you. things don't get talked about unless they are seen or heard by many and that's why most issues still exist, not everyone sees them and if you don't see them you don't feel affected by it so closely.

“Symbols are the first things we notice when engaging with popular culture, but it's the meanings we are after.” pg 157  There are going to be symbols everywhere throughout your life, good and bad. It's up to you to decipher and figure out what they truly mean. Relating to popular culture they could have a completely different meaning than what you expect it to mean. As humans we are always after that deeper meaning, trying to figure out what the true issue is and what it's trying to convey and what we can eventually learn from it. 

“Our culture shapes what we think is good and bad, beautiful and ugly, just and unjust, normal and strange. It lays the foundation for politics as it outlines the contours of our very notions of what is possible. This culture makes us as we make it…If we want to change the world, and sustain that change, we have to leave new webs of significance. We need to change culture.” Pg 163 This section starts to talk about Little culture Verse Culture. Culture changes everything we do, every way we act, respond to situations, the way that we know how to live. In the end if we want to change it we are going to have to do it. Kind of like style for change something for the long run. 

So I printed out copies of this paper and had them around in visible sports for people to see in hopes that they would want to stop and participate. 

page 125 Kissing Doesn't Kill: Greed And Indifference Do.

So this is from a group called Act Up. Gran Fury took a popular clothing brands ad style and turned it into this. It was put on a bus in color showing interracial and perceived same sex relationships. This was made as a reaction and a way of activism towards the Aids Crisis. I wish I was around then to have seem the impact and to have talked to people when seeing this on a bus roll by.

Shaun Leonardo El Conquistador vs. The Invisible Man" (2006)

I think I like this piece the most because it seems to challenge ideas that most people perceive without actually thinking. He makes it a point that because of what he looks like this act should be most different but I think thats what makes it good. Having that represent in something that is out of the norm makes it extra special. Seeing that its okay to be different do do something weirder than your usual art piece is okay.