art in america: debating occupy

JUNE /JULY’12 $10.00

ResistanceSanja IvekovicPaul ChanDebating OccupyAmalia PicaSuzanne Lacyplus : A Poster by Ida Applebroog

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Art in America asked curator and writer Nato Thompson to frame some key questions about Occupy Wall Street and its relationship to the art world. We then invited artists, writers, curators and a filmmaker to reply.

NATO THOMPSONChief curator, Creative Time, New York

As spring and summer arrive, Occupy Wall Street has roared back. This cultural movement is happening in physical space, challenging numerous elements of contem-porary life, most prominently wealth inequity, the laws of public assembly, the corruption of the political process and the overarch-ing precariousness that is the rule, not the exception, for Americans.

OWS has numerous artists operating at its organizational core. More than simply acting as graphic artists for the movement (although they are doing this as well ), they are broadening the scope of their creative imaginations and actions to challenge the entire order of things. What does Occupy Wall Street and activism around the world mean to you today? What do you think it means for ar t overall? Do you feel a funda-mental shif t taking place and, if so, how do you articulate that in esthetic, cultural and political terms?

MARTHA ROSLERArtist

A new global movement—against control by the international super-elites and against the dismemberment of workers’ rights and human rights—has awoken the dormant desire for social justice. It has become all too apparent that neoliberalism and its rampant financialization have created a capitalism that eats its young. Now, a vast number—at least 99%!—of young people, immigrants and middle-class and working-class citizens around the world are aware that their futures have been stolen.

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DEBATING OCCUPY

Tip of the Iceberg, designed by Dave Loewenstein, Lawrence, Kan.

All poster images this article courtesy Occuprint.org.

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mobility and punctuated visibil ity. Although a recent, prominent prec-edent was the Zapatistas in Mexico, impoverished Indian peasants mobi-lized under the poetically playful Subcomandante Marcos, I see the occupation movement as the arrival of the conflict between the “creatives” and the city that uses us.

ASTRA TAYLORFilmmaker and writer

Usually when I tell people I’ve been involved in Occupy Wall Street, they ask me if I’m making a docu-mentary film, and they’re usually a little surprised when I say no. I love documentaries and sincerely hope someone is making one about the movement, because I think there’s an astonishing story to be told. But I didn’t want to be the one to tell it. When I went to Wall Street on September 17th, I didn’t want to stand at a remove, behind a camera or conducting an interview. I wanted to be in it, to join the conversation. I

the increased institutional accep-tance, in the U.S. and Europe, of art centered on social realities, and even directly inserted into social processes—an approach that had been anathematized from the Cold War onward.

Occupy’s first step has been a dogged, dug-in spatiotempo-ral visibility, an occupation! In its second phase, tactics have shifted to something of a greater

Artists too! Artists have prob-ably always been inclined to join the ruckus and stand up for global jus-tice, but in an international economy increasingly based on cognitive labor and on the broad culturalization of social and political life, artists are deeply involved in Occupy, here in the States and elsewhere. That very cul-turalization of what we might call the public sphere has its pluses and its minuses, but it certainly accounts for

Top, An Idea Cannot Be Destroyed, designed by Nina Montenegro, Portland, Ore.

Right, Venn Diagrams Don’t Lie, designed by Pat F., Washington, D.C.

Left, Rise Up, designed by lmnop, Brooklyn, N.Y.



think this is it, the big social move-ment of my lifetime (or at least my 30s, if I’m lucky), and there is too much at stake to just observe from the sidelines. That’s not to say there isn’t a place for art, for creative expression and critical reflection—there is. Nonetheless, I think Occupy poses a profound challenge to art-ists and cultural producers who have been frustrated by the direction our country is heading and who iden-tify with the left. Social movements don’t last forever; we can have abstract conversations about the intersection of esthetics and poli-tics another day. The exhilarating, exasperating beauty of Occupy is something to experience firsthand.

NIELS VAN TOMMECurator and critic

During these times of global urgency for change, the following quote by Henri Michaux from his 1971 book Poteaux d’angle sounds unexpectedly fresh: “You must prepare for bodi-less combat, to be able at least to hold your own: abstract combat that contrary to other kinds is learned by daydreaming.” The struggle Michaux refers to is not the struggle taking place in the streets today, but a more internalized combat necessary for coming to terms with the many ideological shifts we have been wit-nessing throughout history. As Nato rightly points out, the stakes for politi-cal and social change are high, but nevertheless I would like to suggest that this is perhaps also a time for the arts to imagine a different strategy: to do nothing at all. This might appear a daunting task, but it is an essential source of freedom when faced with the movement’s rightful demands for change. Along with engaged activists, we are in need of people who master inactivity. This is a call for artists to fundamentally appropriate time, our time, to introduce the esthetic and political possibilities of waiting, and imagine moving to a new age instead of hopelessly attempting to rescue the previous one.

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NAEEM MOHAIEMENWriter and artist

In Occuprint meetings, we are making posters. Someone holds up a poster of a lit match in front of a Cheshire cat. The cat gets lusty cheers. The follow-ing week, the group uses an image of a tie-wearing cat meme and pairs it with various slogans for posters and match-book covers. Every slogan speaks to us: “No cat iz illegal,” “Freelance cat hangs by a thread,” “Freed from cage still on a leash” and “I can haz general strike.” I sketch a clumsy cyborg on an online app, and the next day, all of our group-sourced robots declare them-selves on strike. At one meeting, we had praised the finer points of a classic Solidarnosc poster (multitude, horizon, flag), but punkish humor is more in sync with our moment.

There is still an absence of older art-ists in OWS—those who could make deep links with tactics going back to ACT UP and protests against the Vietnam War. The Arts & Culture work-ing group’s open letter to Mark di Suvero asking that he demand removal of barricades around Joie de Vivre, his sculpture in Zuccotti Park, faced a stony silence. A deradicalization process has made some artists of his generation at ease only with restaging dissent in the past tense. But every time I run into Hans Haacke, he eagerly shares his latest photographs and asks with effer-vescent energy about Occupy, the Gulf Labor Coalition, etc. He reminds me that there are many others out there, ready and eager to listen, guide, help and join.

JOANNA WARSZAAssociate curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale

At liminal moments in history, artists have taken “time off,” abandoning their studios to practice dissent or challenge ideological and economic doctrines. Such times gave birth to Russian Productivism in the early 20th century; Art Demonstration, a public march organized by the group ACT in Armenia, following the fall of the Soviet Union; and the activist Art Workers’

Above, May Day FTW, designed by John Emerson, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Opposite, Occupy Everything Pie Chart, designed by Colin Smith,

San Francisco, Calif.



spontaneously, of their own free will, to have an open exchange. I have been clinging to the hope that creating public spheres is enough. OWS finally caught up with me last year. It is a serious challenge to my ethics, my morals and my identity as an artist and a citizen.

Recently, I heard Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum advise today’s youth: “Try not to be a perpetrator. Try not to be a bystander. Try not to be a victim.” I’m trying not to be any of these.

ALLAN SEKULAArtist

I would say that we are in it for the long haul. And the long haul encompasses periods of extreme reaction as well as eruptions of democratic energy and creativity. We are now living through both simultaneously. The neoliberal managerial model is increasingly dis-credited, even as it extends itself into every nook and cranny of life. Elites are far stupider than they need to be to keep the game going—thus the increasing technocratic brutality and political inanity of official responses to democratic challenges from below. The rest of us are waking up to the fact that we are smarter than we are allowed to be under “normal” conditions. The challenge is to build the “abnormal” conditions under which a new demo-cratic intelligence can flourish.

The “art world” is a small sector of culture in general, but an important one. It is, among other things, the illuminated luxury-goods tip of the commodity iceberg. The art world is the most complicit fabrication work-shop for the compensatory dreams of financial elites who have nothing else to dream about but a “subjectivity” they have successfully killed within themselves. Thus the pervasive necro-philia of the art system. Alfred Jarry spoke at the turn of the 20th century of a “disembraining machine.” We can speak now of a “self-embalming machine.” Hook yourself up to the drip for the antiquarian future. But now we have a chance to disconnect, with a little help taken from and given to our non-artist friends in low places.

PAUL RAMIREZ JONAS Artist

I have been running away from OWS my whole life. I moved to the United States to get away from one of the poorest countries in this hemisphere and enjoy the ultimate luxury: to be unhindered by the inequality, injustice and lack of rights that 80 percent of the world lives in. I don’t know if it was my perception or the change that the United States has undergone in the past 10 years, but I began to see that my new situation was supported by the same inequalities I had tried to escape.

My first impulse was to delegate responsibility. “My work” was not about that. Rather, my students would stand up to this obvious crisis; but too few seemed to care. Reluctantly, I began to make art that could enable diverse people to come together,

Coalition, established in 1969 in New York. Today, we see initiatives stem-ming from Occupy Wall Street, such as Occupy Museums and Artists in Occupy Amsterdam. The current worldwide uprisings against plutoc-racy and for democracy need art not only as an esthetic tool but as a reservoir of progressive, performative and provocative thinking. The protests need art capable of going beyond the usual representation—art that re-contextualizes the status quo, clarifies democratic principles and points out the array of abuses and exploitation both in the art field and in society at large. It seems like the time has come for artists to share their social capital with activists, educators and others on the ground, and for activists to set aside skepticism about the arts. Art is not outside their concerns—it is, after all, part of the problem.

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art in america: debating occupy

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