Socially Engaged Art

Art and Activism

I mentioned my interest in the intersections between art and activism in my first blog post.  I want to take a moment to give this topic some more attention and provide some examples of artists who use their profession as a platform for social change.

The Yes Men

The Yes Men are often considered performance artists. In my mind they are primarily activists who use performance art, technology and social media to debunk corporate lies, bring awareness to environmental and human rights issues and thus incite social change. Their masterfully crafted "pranks" bring to light corporate abuses that otherwise might never make it to the main stream media. In the video above (a personal favorite) Andy Bichlbaum, one of the two Yes Men, is posing as Jude Finisterra a DOW Chemicals spokesman during an interview for the BBC. He claims responsibility for the Union Carbide Bhopal  gas leak in India, which killed and debilitated thousands of people living near the chemical plant. 


Ai Weiwei 

In light of social media's highlighted importance in Prof. Hawkin's Generalist Social Work Class, I thought Ai Weiwei's art would be especially relevant to discuss. Ai Weiwei has repeatedly stressed the role of social media in democracy, and much of his art relies on it. Via electronic collaboration and hands on community investigation, he gathered 5,000 student's names who perished during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, due to the collapse of poorly built government schools. In relation to this incident, he also published findings on corruption and the withholding of victim numbers and names by the government. His influential blog was blacklisted and blocked shortly after. In the recent documentary, Ai Weiwei, Never Sorry, he stresses the belief that all artist should be concerned with protecting freedom of expression. In his piece Sunflowers, installed at the Tate Modern, he commissioned 100 million hand painted porcelain sunflower seeds to be spread on the gallery's floor. This piece brings to light issues surrounding mass consumption, loss of identity and industrial labour. He is a globally influential figure who is constantly using his position to speak out for freedom of speech and expression. His TED talk (shown above) is worth watching.

Links to relevant projects -

Waiting for Godot New Orleans

Conflict Kitchen

Waffle Shop

And finally: A little bit of theory goes a long way -

"Questions emerge from the perception that social work and socially engaged art are interchangeable or at least that an action in one area may successfully become meaningful in another. It is true that in some cases a social work project that effects change in a positive manner in a community could also fall under the subject  of artwork. Similarly, an artist may share the same or similar values with a social worker, making some forms of SEA appear indistinguishable from social work, which further complicates the blurring between the two areas.
However, social work and SEA, while they operate in the same ecosystems and can look strikingly similar, differ widely in their goals. Social work is a value-based profession based on a tradition of beliefs and systems that aim for the betterment of humanity and support ideals such as social justice, the defense of human dignity and worth, and the strengthening of human relationships. An artist, in contrast, may subscribe to the same values but make work that ironizes, problematizes,and even enhances tensions around those subjects, in order to provoke reflection".
-Pablo Helguera from his book Education for Socially Engaged Art (page 35)