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Who is faking it: artists or activists, or both? | 11 comments

[new] art during anti-war (Avg. Score: none / Raters: 0) (#1)
by katrienjacobs on Sun May 4th, 2003 at 07:43:51 PM EURODISCORDIA TIME
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I am not sure who exactly is saying here that art was not a strong force during the recent anti-war demonstrations. I really had a different experience during the anti-war demonstrations in Boston and Cambridge. I thought that the quality of the body movements (eg. African-American dancers), puppets, drums an slogans was really superb. One could really find a definition of art based on the value of live performance (gestures, voices, sounds energies enabling transfer of ideas) to argue that these were artful demonstration, or that the aesthetic quality of the protests had a very unique flavor. This is different from Holmes' claim that artists are activist because it is hip to be activist, and different from saying that artists were overall driving this movement. We could look at the documentation of protests and study the performance aesthetics more carefully, would that be useful? It was an unusual blend of people here in Boston, not very artsy, but gestural in meaningful and I would say memorable ways.
I was myself also curious about the naked protests going on in other cities, and it would be good to hear some testimonies of 'nakedness as art' from the people who were there. Rather than assuming that these were fashionably subversive individuals --as issue-driven claims about artists go --I was overwhelmed by the glimpses of naked bodies and wanted to get information. This quality was not recorded by the mass media.

being picky by Marc Herbst, 03/27/2004 12:23:29 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME (none / 0)
Forms of protest by Aileen, 05/06/2003 02:01:10 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME (none / 0)
Holmes' article by TreborScholz, 05/05/2003 11:44:49 AM EURODISCORDIA TIME (none / 0)

Who is faking it: artists or activists, or both? | 11 comments

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