Performance as Social Resistance: Pussy Riot as a Feminist Avant-garde

2021 ◽  
pp. 026327642110327
Author(s):  
Ilaria Riccioni ◽  
Jeffrey A. Halley

This article describes the short but remarkable sociopolitical life of the Russian rock group Pussy Riot. The group became famous in 2012 not only for the political content of its performances but for its transgressive performativity: its violation of established public settings and its creation of disturbing anti-authoritarianism images of today’s official Russia. The analysis aims to establish Pussy Riot as part of an avant-garde movement and as a radicalization of the very idea of the avant-garde against the familiarity of the public aspect of everyday life. Public ‘normalcy’ reveals itself to be complicit in that what should be criticized is instead taken for granted, and legitimized. Pussy Riot is a new art avant-garde in terms of both how it relates to activism, social justice, feminism, and art, and to the general public, not only to the art world.

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 122
Author(s):  
Jaime Almansa Sánchez

While Archaeology started to take form as a professional discipline, Alternative Archaeologies grew in several ways. As the years went by, the image of Archaeology started being corrupted by misconceptions and a lot of imagination, and those professionals that were claiming to be scientists forgot one of their first responsibilities; the public. This lack of interest is one of the reasons why today, a vast majority of society believes in many clichés of the past that alternative archaeologists have used to build a fictitious History that is not innocent at all. From UFOs and the mysteries of great civilizations to the political interpretation of the past, the dangers of Alternative Archaeologies are clear and under our responsibility. This paper analyzes this situation in order to propose a strategy that may make us the main characters of the popular imagery in the mid-term. Since confrontation and communication do not seem to be effective approaches, we need a change in the paradigm based on Public Archaeology and the increase of our presence in everyday life.


2005 ◽  
pp. 45-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivana Spasic

The paper offers an analysis of the interview data collected in the project "Politics and everyday life: Three years later" in terms of three main topics: attitudes to the political sphere, change of social system, and the democratic public sphere. The analysis focuses on ambivalences expressed in the responses which, under the surface of overall disappointment and discontent, may contain preserved results of the previously achieved "social learning" and their positive potentials. The main objective was to examine to what extent the processes of political maturation of citizens, identified in the 2002 study, have continued. After pointing to a number of shifts in people?s views of politics which generally do not contradict the tendencies outlined in 2002 (such as deemotionalization and depersonalization of politics, insistence on efficiency of public officials and on a clearer articulation of positions on the political scene), it is argued that the process of rationalization of political culture has not stopped, but it manifests itself differently in changed circumstances. The republican euphoria of 2002 has been replaced by resignation, with a stronger individualist orientation and a commitment to professional achievement.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Schartner ◽  
Fran Bidwell

The most disruptive sculpture that broke the art world and the notion of art itself; the notorious Fountain, by Marcel Duchamp changed art history forever. Since the anonymous submission to the salon of independent artists in New York 1917, art lovers have never been able to come to a consensus about the piece. Debates and disputes polarized the opinion of the public. As a result, the name Duchamp had become synonymous with the term Readymade, Dada and the avant-garde. Absurdly, sufficient evidence suggests that the French artist Duchamp was not the artist behind Fountain. The female Dada poet and German American contemporary artist, Baroness Elsa von Freytag Loringhoven, was the mastermind behind it. 


Author(s):  
Eric Porter

This essay attempts to recuperate the legacy of Jeanne Lee, an important artist whose work has gone largely unnoticed by scholars, while simultaneously examining the broader social and cultural significance of her work. Using Lee’s 1979 performance of her poem “In These Last Days” as a point of reference, I explore her multidisciplinary artistic practice that extended the parameters of improvised vocal music. “In These Last Days” exemplifies a cultural politics that was both a product of the political moments in which she lived and her interactions with a variety of thinkers and artists. This piece helps situate Lee’s work within the post-nationalist and post-cultural nationalist imaginary —an ethical, political, and cognitive remapping of the world -- informing the creative work and social visions of other African American improvisers during the 1970s. The recording showcases the ways that her incorporation of elements from intermedia performance practices enabled her social vision while implicitly commenting upon the deracinating incorporation of improvisation by the avant-garde art world during the 1960s. Additionally, Lee’s performance of gender on the piece raises a host of issues pertaining to the terrain female improvisers had to negotiate in different improvising communities and ultimately disrupts the privileging of masculinity when defining improvisational artistry. I also consider the ways in which her work encourages us to rethink jazz history as field and method.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie S. McDougall

One of the most notable features of the fifties and sixties in China was the public willingness of the literary and art world to submit to the dictates of the political leadership. The reasons for their cooperation, heavily qualified though it might have been, and the various methods by which the authorities ensured it, have been described elsewhere and are not the topic of this paper.' What I am interested in here is the way in which this cooperation was undermined in the seventies and openly flouted in the eighties. Instead of submission, a sigruficant number of people in literature and the arts offered challenges both within the system and outside it, ranging from flagrant rejection of accepted conventions to a more cautious testing of the limits of tolerance, and from demands for professional autonomy to private arrangements outside existing organisations. The limit-setters and upholders - that is, the overlapping groups of orthodox Party leaders, the entrenched cultural bureaucracy, and writers and artists claiming positions of authority - found themselves restricted in their response to these challenges by the post-Mao modemisation program. The reform faction in the new leadership, acknowledging a complex relationship between the superstructure and the economic basis, found themselves to a certain extent obliged to yield ground, supporting the challengers and restraining the orthodox. The more detached of the Party intellectuals might also have noticed how, with a keen grasp of Marxist imperatives, the new activists began by establishing their own means of production and distribution.


2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-274
Author(s):  
Cherstin M. Lyon

The rise of Asian American History and Ethnic Studies courses, decentered whiteness in museum collections and exhibitions, and ethnic preservation activism all have the potential to inform and sensitize the general public in the same sense advocated by revolutionary thinker Paulo Freire. Ideally, they are all forms of problem-posing education that deeply engages and activates the public on behalf of social justice for the excluded or oppressed.


2002 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudina Richards

Legislative reforms have been introduced in several European states to tackle the question of the legal recognition of same-sex relations, with the Nordic countries taking the lead.1 Changes in the attitude of the general public towards gays and lesbians, as demonstrated by the publicity and popularity of Gay Pride marches throughout Europe, has brought the issue to the fore of the political and legal arenas. France has been no exception, with the public debate on the recognition of same-sex couples culminating in the recent adoption of the law relating to the Pacte Civil de Solidarité (PACS) which provides for the registration of a couple's partnership regardless of sex.


Unity Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 33-38
Author(s):  
Chiran Jung Thapa

This paper attempts to demonstrate the dissonance between the highlighted themes placing people at the epicenter and yet excluding the general public and their actual security needs, examines national security from a consumer’s perspective. To underscore a dissonance in the discourse on national security, the writer explores the paradigm of national security policy. Then, it illustrates the discord between the public security needs in their everyday life and the outlined threats in the national security documents. To validate the above argument, the paper offers a new avenue on the overlooked consumer identity of human beings and demonstrates the probability and impact of threats to national security by means of the qualitative data analysis.


Res Publica ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 575-597
Author(s):  
Peter Bursens

This article starts from the observation that the Belgian level of adaptation to the requirements posed by its membership of the European Union is surprisingly low. Following an institutionalist line of thinking, it is argued that the impact of the European Union is seriously constrained by the characteristics of the Belgian federal system. This results into defining both cultural (1) and structural (2) indicators for the degree of Europeanisation: (1) European opinions and awareness of political elites and the general public and (2) the Belgian domestic organisation of European co-ordination mechanisms. The article more concretely argues that the European opinions and European awareness of the political elites and the public opinion are coloured by an inwards-looking mentality that stems from the dominant focus on the ongoing federalisation process. In addition, it is also found that the limited Europeanised installation and outcomes ofthe European co-ordination mechanisms are at least partly shaped by hard and soft federal elements


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 236
Author(s):  
Sigit Pranawa ◽  
Rahesli Humsona

Deferring to McCombs and Shaw’s agenda setting theory, this research aims to study the power of social media in the political marketing of incumbent candidate Governor of DKI Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) by Teman Ahok (Ahok’s Friend). This paper tests the theory that what is considered as important by media will be perceived as important to the public as well.  Teman Ahokwas established long before Ahok was nominated to run for the governorship. Teman Ahok organization employed social media as the basis to market its candidate. Social media used were Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, blog, website, and WhatsApp. Social media was considered as effective to reach the general public. Through the message delivered continuously to the public via social media, the proponents expected that the public would consider that the message delivered was important and the candidate they support would be elected during the election of DKI Jakarta’s Governor.


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