The artwork I have chosen from the textbook is about the social indifference and ignorance about the AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s and one group's response to it, the ACT-UP group founded by playwright Larry Kramer. Creating images and posters to capture public attention, this one specifically being a homosexual consumerist message to push the agenda. The message the work tries to convey to the audience is said by their slogan “Kissing Doesn’t Kill: Greed and Indifference Do.” introducing the message that the less the people know about what is going on, the more people will get killed from this indifference about not knowing the message! This is not the only protest they’ve committed, they have also put a giant condom over the home of homophobic senator Jesse Helms (as stated in the reading) to communicate the message that the AIDS epidemic was as much a political crisis as a health one.
Of the performance artists, the one I have chosen to write about is the work of Shaun Leonardo’s “Freedom To Move”. I like how the artist goes from an athlete to artist and how the artwork expresses both sides of that. I think the message the work is trying to convey to the audience is that anyone can do art and use your body no matter what you come from. The artist mentions “I really wanted to see by diving into our experiences of conflict, we could sense some sort of truth in another person’s body and therefore question our perception of how we read ‘an other (another)’. The artist also mentions “I want more people in the world that look like me to be able to move through the world with that kind of freedom.” This shows some of where the artist's inspiration comes from and what he wants to be seen out of his performance art. The artist says he want freedom to be an essential goal in his performance art. These activist artworks connect to my performance because of the free speech my mother was allowed to make in our performance. She was only speaking Spanish and I told her she was allowed to say essentially anything in the performance as long as it was in the Spanish language.
Shaun Leonardo's "Freedom To Move" video image
From the reading of chapter 3 of from The Art of Activism, Your All-Purpose Guide to Making the Impossible Possible by Steve Duncombe and Steve Lambert, the first quote I have taken is from page 114 “We need to be aware of how the words we use, the image we employ, and the performances we stage will be made sense of in various contexts. Our opponents can consciously manipulate our symbols for their own ends, and we need to operate with the assumptions that they will.” Creating activist art is something that we have to do with consideration of the audience that it will be given to. People are always going to react and whether they do with agreement or violence is not our choice to make. This chapter highlights more than just the history of the civil rights movement in America, or how the black panthers sought to revolt within politics, but also within the rest of the world’s history and how activist art can be seen in their past major events too. When Rosa Parks rejected giving up her seat to a white male, even this was seen as staged artistic activism due to the impact it has had on history as well. The second quote I have taken from this chapter is within page 128 “It’s easy to get dispirited as an activist. Because of this it is important to bring creativity, joy, pleasure, and play into activism.” As you can see in the readings, it is mentioned a lot where the activists noticed that they did not want their messages only to appear headstrong, but creatively as well. That’s why in protests such as the ACT UP where their posters contained homosexual images alongside heterosexual ones, you can see the mixture of creativity alongside activism. Also the women get creative during the “second wave” where feminists hold a demonstration outside the Miss America Pageant, tossing bras and girdles into a “Freedom Trash Can”. Getting creative is one step that should be recognized when starting or joining an activist movement, making it more artistic, so it can appeal more to the public eye and impact better.
From the reading of chapter 4 of from The Art of Activism, Your All-Purpose Guide to Making the Impossible Possible by Steve Duncombe and Steve Lambert, the first quote I have taken is from page 156, “Sometimes even what we take to be the negative aspects of pop culture contain positive lessons; for instance, that pop culture provides many with a comforting escape.” I think many can agree that culture powerfully affects how our artistic activism will result in. Being a conscious or subconscious influence in how we live and create in our daily lives. Speaking about pop culture, we have to know what is attracting all the attention so our artwork can be influenced by it as well. Knowing what is hip in pop culture is important for artists so that we all can be up to date on the latest trends. Even if that means analyzing a movie in theaters after we have watched it and using that to influence our next artwork. The next quote I have taken from this reading is on page 166, “There is no way to escape culture. What we can do is create forms of culture that express the values we want to see reproduced, instead of passively accepting those of the dominant culture.” Like using alt culture to push forward what we believe in or using pop culture to influence what we believe in, we must use culture in a positive way to influence these beliefs. If something is not reaching the general audience then alt culture can be used by taking what is not that recognized and pushing it into a broader scale for people to notice. Once we do this we can turn that into pop culture which is recognized by a broader audience. Culture is something that has always been and will always be so to use it to our advantage is the best chance we can take to make artistic activism great.
Performance intervention on YouTube: "Spanish Speaking Miss Pageant Public Video - Juan Ferreira"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9aj3Lp67xo
This video is about 2nd generation American children not being able to speak their parent's native language. For example in this instance, I am Hispanic and cannot speak fluent Spanish. Which means the child has to sit down in the middle while the parent, or guardian, is speaking Spanish (or any other language where your parents are from) and the person sitting has to do nothing but just listen (and not understand) while the parent is standing up speaking their native language to them.
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