Street Art of Resistance (original) (raw)
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This chapter focuses on the interrelation between resistance, novelty and social change. We will consider resistance as both a social and individual phenomenon , as a constructive process that articulates continuity and change and as an act oriented towards an imagined future of different communities. In this account, resistance is thus a creative act having its own dynamic and, most of all, aesthetic dimension. In fact, it is one such visibly artistic form of resistance that will be considered here, the case of street art as a tool of social protest and revolution in Egypt. Street art is commonly defined in sharp contrast with high or fine art because of its collective nature, anonymity, its different kind of aesthetics and most of all its disruptive, " antisocial " outcomes. With the use of illustrations, we will argue here that street art is prototypical of a creative form of resistance, situated between revolutionary " artists " and their audiences, which includes both authorities and society at large. Furthermore, strategies of resistance will be shown to develop through time, as opposing social actors respond to one another's tactics. This tension between actors is generative of new actions and strategies of resistance.
Street Art Between Business and Resistance
Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, 2020
Street art has been both a product of and a response to the unequal distribution of resources and visibility in the city. A dialectical study that investigates both sides of the coin showing art’s aesthetic, spatial, social and political situation in the changing neo-liberal urban landscape is needed. Analyzing simultaneously the hegemonic restructuring of the urban environment and the growth of counter-hegemonic resistance on the streets requires taking into account the plurality and complexity of the links between the urban environment, society and arts. This article discusses how street art, as an aesthetic dispositive, functions dialectically as both resource and resistance in the sociopolitical make-up of the urban landscape.
In discussing various forms of struggles, three different types of injustices are highlighted and related to subjectivity and the arts. It is argued that in neoliberal societies these struggles and injustices have become intertwined to the degree that agentic socio-subjectivity is no longer experienced or conceptualized. Admitting that art embodies neo-liberal contradictions and often supports the status quo, the possibilities and limitations of aesthetics are reflected. Arts’ critical agenda of addressing power and resistance is portrayed through examples regarding economic-political injustices and injustices of representation, recognition, interaction, and subjectification in the visual and performing arts. Aesthetic conditions for the possibility of resistance in the arts are presented with the conclusion that street art may be a better candidate for challenging the status quo than traditional art. It is argued that aesthetics is an area of life that provides sources for fighting injustices.
Introducing the Street Art of Resistance
Street Art of Resistance, 2017
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Street Arts of Resistance in Tahrir and Gezi
Middle Eastern Studies
With the tremendous visibility of popular mobilization in the last decade, scholars have increasingly directed their attention to the streets to examine the dynamics of power and resistance. Among emerging venues of politics, this study examines street art and graffiti as a performance of resistance in the 2011 Tahrir Revolution and 2013 Gezi Protests in Egypt and Turkey, respectively. As re-appropriation of the urban landscape and modes of self-expression, street art and graffiti lie at the intersection of politics, space, and identity. Inspired by James C. Scott's concept of ‘arts of resistance’, this study takes up these ‘street arts of resistance’ as revealing the hidden transcript, namely, the self-disclosure of subordinates under the politics of disguise. While unpacking that subversive power, this study rests on its claim that street art and graffiti not only seek to represent, but also to perform and interject. Thereafter, it examines how these modes of visual culture interrupt time, space, and the self, along with their respective effects.
Special Issue: Street Art's Politics and Discontents
Journal of Urban Cultural Studies , 2020
Street art, with its subcultural character and sociability, has been looked upon for its anti-cultural potential. While some accounts have diverted attention to street art's utopia with its creative dissidence and regenerative potential, others have insisted that street art has already been coopted by the aesthetic and institutional order of the neoliberal economy. This special issue aims to contribute to the critical perspectives of cultural geography, urban sociology, art history, visual studies and critical theory through analyses of the urban space and street art. The prolific significance of this issue is in its multi-perspective approach to bring together social, political and aesthetic dimensions in the intersection of art and the changing urban environment. Recently, activist art, social practice and socially engaged art are just a few terms that have been popular for describing art that attempts to attract public attention to the current social and political landscape. This thematic journal issue explores the potential theoretical and empirical inputs that a spatial and urban approach of art can bring to the understanding of both arts and the urban space. It offers a multi-geographical, multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary perspective to analyze how street art, as an aesthetic dispositive, functions as an integral part in the socio-political space of the urban landscape. Street art contests two main regimes of visibility-legal and governmental on one side, and artworld or social aesthetic on the other-which creates the conditions within which it must compete for visibility. How can we interpret the politics of street art from the perspective of subcultures, freedom of expression, and limits of criminality? Are street artists obliged to be a part of the urban resistance against neoliberalism? How does street art reveal, delimit or question the complexity of neoliberal urbanization? How is street art activism perceived by the authorities, politicians, businesses, and the wider public? What prompts street artists to communicate with urban dwellers with their marks on the city's surface? How does street art partake in social movements? This special issue hopes to continue academics' and artists' conversations on street art's relationship with the urban space and the public as a defining element of urban culture, but also offers a critical look at the spatial and political dynamics that reflect territorially embedded mechanisms that generate particular social and cultural processes.
Power of paint: Political street art confronts the authorities
In the context of Spain’s economic crisis, waves of protests have transformed the streets of Spanish cities into sites of place- austerity years, street art has become an important part of political participation. Based on artists’ interviews and on my visual ethnographic research in the Spanish cities of Madrid (2013–2016) and Valencia (2016), this paper seeks to illuminate how political street art forms a part of social expression toward the authorities. Street art is a media through which artists can question decision-makers and challenge policies made by statesmen. The examples of political street art highlight how creative contestations become barometers of dissatisfaction and how street art confronts institutional power. Ultimately, political street art is argued in Spicca and Perdue’s (2014) term as ‘spatial citizenship’ producing more polyphonic space. Keywords: Political Street Art, Protest, Political Participation, Visual Ethnography, Spain
Activist Art. The Art of Resisting, Art Resisting
2008
Royal Academy Bachelor Thesis Award 2008 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Royal Academy of Art, The Netherlands One Thesis Awarded, 7 Nominees, 180 Students graduated in 2008 Dissertation title: “Activist Art. The Art of Resisting, Art Resisting” Foci: Activist Art, Appropriation Art, Graffiti, Street Art, Art in Public Space, Art of socio-political relevance, Situationism, Culture Jamming Advisor: Dr. Anja Novak
Mind the trap: Street art, visual literacy, and visual resistance
2018
Street art is used in political contexts by both powerful players and resistance movements. To understand how images make meaning and are constantly being negotiated between rule and resistance, a visual literacy must be fostered. I have therefore introduced an interdisciplinary methodology for critical visual analysis that allows for the differentiated examination of images in the interplay of rule and resistance and considers the specific features of street art. This analytical framework aims to foster a cross-fertilization between visual culture and political science and more specifically, International Relations.