IBB Public Workshop
What’s the role and added value of art in activism?
Explore this in a public workshop provided by Instituto Buena Bista.
Want to participate? Email omar@institutobuenabista.com for more information. Participation is free, but a donation to the institute is always welcome.
Artist in Residence in the Mondriaan fund program Elke Uitentuis is starting her residency period with an interesting assessment of the role of art in activism. Together with the artist the IBB students and participating members of the public will look at the artist’s artistic and activist practice. They will also discuss several art projects of artists like Jonas Staal, Patricia Kaersenhout, Matthijs de Bruijne, the Yes Men, John Jordan and others. This exploration of existing artistic practices will serve as the start up of a discussion about the relationship between art & activism. Questions will be raised like: Do art and activism go well together? What kind of artistic strategies are being used in order to serve what kind of political goals? And how effective are these artistic but also political interventions?
After discussing the wellbeing of the marriage between art and activism we will explore to what extent students are confronted with social or political injustice in their daily lives. We will discuss if they feel the urge to do something about the injustice surrounding them, and if so, what they think they could do about it, and how they could use their artistic skills in order to try to make a change in real life. Based on this in-dept introduction students will be asked to write a pitch in which they argument what kind of political or social issue should be addressed through an artistic/activist intervention and why. All students will be asked to present their pitch and then collectively we will select up to 3 subjects to work with.
In groups we will 1) do research about the chosen subjects, 2) think of artistic interventions that could tackle or make visible the (political) injustice we would like to see changed, and 3) work on a coherent proposal for an artistic/activist intervention. During this process of working towards a proposal, students will present the ideas and developments on several occasions to each other by showing each other visuals and explaining the steps that have been taken in the process of thinking.
