Resisting the Tourist Gaze. Art Activism Against Cruise Ship Extractivism in the Venice Lagoon

The essay situates Venice’s struggles against the cruise ship industry within a larger framework of resistance against planetary extractive capitalism, emphasising the role of local art-activist initiatives in denouncing the social and the ecological degradation caused by the cruise ship presence in Venice. In the first part, the concept of extractive tourism is introduced and analysed in relation to the case of Venice and the cruise companies’ economic model. The operations and infrastructure of cruise tourism produce extractive relations that entangle and exploit tourists, local communities and the natural environment. The Author examines how mass tourism has aggravated the environmental and social issues of the city of Venice and its lagoon. In the second part, the essay presents a number of artistic projects, specifically by visual artists Eleonora Sovrani, Gli Impresari, Banksy, and Elena Mazzi. These artworks can help us visualise the failures of the current urban development model of the tourist economy, while also exposing the nefarious effects of extractive capitalism on the well-being of the lagoon ecosystem and the human and non-human subjects cohabiting in it.

The ARt of Inequality: A Youth Social Justice Exhibition in Augmented Reality

The substantive development in the role of augmented reality (AR) technologies in public spaces provides new opportunities for digital arts and arts activism as a means of increasing awareness of critical social issues. However, because of the digital divide and dominant narratives in the museum, there is an existing racial and socioeconomic gap in (digital) art, activism education, and museum curation. In this paper we present a curriculum that aims to empower high-school-aged youth from minoritized backgrounds through art activism in museum spaces via the development and exhibition of augmented reality art pieces that address social justice issues relevant to youth interests and experiences.

Antropologias, artes e política: engajamentos e encontros

Este artigo explora as modalidades de engajamento que a disciplina antropológica tem vindo experimentar, e em particular, seguindo um percurso pessoal da minha atividade como antropólogo e cidadão, procura dar conta da produção de um certo tipo de antropologia pública. Tomo como ponto de partida a perceção de que todo o conhecimento é, para além de situado, político, uma vez que a produção ou o enquadramento do conhecimento tem sempre efeitos políticos. Para ilustrar esse debate proponho partilhar as estratégias e os itinerários utilizados na realização de três encontros internacionais que buscaram cruzamentos entre arte, antropologia e ativismo e que visavam conjugar tanto artistas quanto pesquisadores, num pano de fundo ligado a uma cidadania engajada. Palavras-chave: Antropologia Pública. Arte. Ativismo. Antropologia engajada. Anthropologies, arts and politics: engagements and encounters Abstract: This article explores the modes of engagement of anthropology that anthropology has been experiencing, and in particular, following a personal journey of my activity as an anthropologist and citizen, seeks to account for the production of a certain type of public anthropology. I take as my starting point the perception that all knowledge is political, besides being situated, since the production or framing of knowledge always has political effects. To illustrate this debate, I propose to share the strategies and itineraries used in the realization of three international meetings that sought intersections between art, anthropology and activism and that aimed to conjugate both artists and researchers, in a backdrop linked to an engaged citizenship.Keywords: Public Anthropology. Art. Activism. Engaged Anthropology.

ART ACTIVISM: NOT JUST VISUAL APPEAL BUT A CATALYST FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

As children, we are always taught to look at something in the world using the 3 Ws- What, When, and Why? So, when the researcher had the opportunity to explore the current role of art in shaping society, she delved deep into it. She questioned what art portrayed to individuals, why people were subconsciously influenced by the art around them, and when was the right time to use this creative tool to make an impact on society. She was pleasantly surprised to learn that even the primal forms of art in history had played an important role in social movements like the outbreak of feminism and political propaganda like war. She wants to explore the positive and negative sway art has over its audience. On an optimistic note, the researcher wants to explore a new model that can revolutionize the scene of social movements – art activism. Artistic Activism is a dynamic practice combining the creative power of the arts to move us emotionally with the strategic planning of activism necessary to bring about social change. The goal of activism is Effect, and the goal of art is Affect- but can these goals intertwine to create something revolutionary? On the pessimistic note, she wants to explore how role stereotypes and the inequality depicted -not only in historic but in also contemporary art- manipulates our perception of the world and contributes to those suffocating labels in society. Can the mere subject of an artistic piece encourage our behaviour towards a certain aspect in society? Through a journey exploring the bane and boon debate of arts temporal power, the researcher hopes to establish its undeniable impact on both society and its individuals.

How is art political? The political construction in the discourse of art activism in Hong Kong

With the radicalization of activism in Hong Kong in the past decade, it has become increasingly common for artists to engage in the political situation through their creative work; the discussion of art and activism has also become popular and the term ‘art activism’ is usually used to describe such practices, referring it with a new political imagination of art. This article takes the discussion of such practices through the concept of art activism as a complex dynamic of discursive practice. It reflects the ways in which politics are constructed through the discourse of art activism, and how such a concept contributes to its political dynamics in social movements. This article attempts to analyse the changing trajectory of the discourse of art activism and to explore how different actors discuss its confrontational relationship in different contexts. Hence, what kind of politics does this concept refer to? This article suggests that the discourse of art activism has been influenced by the theory of New Social Movements in the West, in which the construction of collective emotions and identities are emphasized. It has become a key element in the political composition of art activism, and provided a new impetus to the dynamics of social movement, but at the same time imposed certain limitations later on. This article takes such a review as an attempt to outline the political construction of the discourse of art activism in Hong Kong, tracing its dynamics and changing trajectories, hence the heterogeneous elements in the discourse of art activism that may provide an alternative perspective in deconstructing its boundaries.

The Explosive Potential of Artistic Activism: Factors – Functions – Response

This article considers the change in artistic means in the digital globalised world and the development of art actionism as a new inter-genre. The author provides an overview and comparison of the key actions of protest events in Russia, also focusing on some South Slavic practices. Additionally, the article analyses incentive impulses, ways of realisation, and the social response to the most impressive art actions. The correlation of the aesthetic and utilitarian component of events is the main goal of the research, as well as the assessment of their political potential. The paper uses cultural, semiotic, and interdisciplinary methods trying to clarify the phenomenon of protest culture, the role of urban space in it, and the development of protest techniques. The author mainly refers to electronic resources containing materials of the most prominent art activists. The methodological basis of the study is research on the culture of protest by А. Epstein, A. Etkind, A. Rosenholm, Irina Savkina, and others. The programmes of art group leaders help shed light on the topic. There are two basic directions of subversive actions of art actionism within Slavic cultures: emancipatory and traditional. The author concludes that their character correlates with the official ideological policy of the state and focuses on the promotion of the artist’s opinion. The dynamism of protest practices is characterised by intermediality and liminality, and their reliance on popular culture makes the path from the sender to a wide audience the shortest. As a result of the analysis of the connection with traditional left revolutionary and artistic practices, it is concluded that art activism intensively uses the memory of the greatest revolutionary events as an artistic decoration and an ideological means of encouraging subversion. The indissolubility of the life and art of art activists gives rise to a new type of artistic creation of one’s own life in the history of Russian culture. The ideological goals of the analysed direction contribute to democratic changes and the conquest of human freedoms.

MAXAMBA and Memory-Making Amid Traumatic Displacement

In this edited interview, psychologists Eric Greene and Nisha Gupta converse with filmmaker and psychologist Suzanne Barnard about her film MAXAMBA. MAXAMBA was created as a sensory ethnographic memory of inhabitants of Lisbon’s Quinta da Vitória neighborhood as they awaited the neighborhood’s final demolition. The film focuses on the daily life of an Indian Portuguese couple who emigrated from Mozambique (a former colony of Portugal) to Lisbon in the 1970s. The husband and wife both work out of their home in the neighborhood. As tailors, they have a close relationship with the other inhabitants, and they are especially integrated into the Hindu community that lives in this neighborhood. In this dialogue, Suzanne describes the film as constructing a virtual or living memory out of coexisting planes of past, present, and future—a memorial process that seeks to honor the everyday life of the couple prior to their traumatic displacement. She also explores how the film attempts to mobilize an intervention in the neighborhood’s representation in the city, and reflects on opportunities and limitations for art activism through the vehicle of filmmaking.