The Artist As Activist
Beery, Tal. “The Artist As Activist: Preoccupied with Cooption.” Spike Art Magazine, no. 33, 2012, pp. 44–49.
Full text:
The Artist as Activist
The Occupy Movement is the activism of the present day. Like Institutional Critique in the 90s, it also faces the risk of being coopted by institutions and neutralised. But that should not stop activists from working within its framework. They have to recognise the power and influence of institutions and find new methods to deal with them. And, if necessary, to coopt them. By Tal Beery
The sixth part in our series exploring multiple roles in the art world.
Image contribution:
MARTHA ROSLER
From its first days, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) sought to inspire a cultural shift. The urgency of its message combined with the aesthetic consistency of its tactics – including cardboard signs, camping tents, the human microphone*, and hand signals for the consensus process – popularized the movement and helped it spread to almost every major city in the United States and Europe. Many arts and culture groups quickly formed within OWS, each with distinct goals and methods – from puppetry and performance to research and posters. The process of occupation in itself was artful, and in OWS art was a hammer for building a new and more just culture.
Artists also flocked to OWS to address unsustainable trends affecting the New York art world. The arts sector has become an unregulated tax shelter for collectors while wealthy board members abuse their positions at publicly funded museums. Auction houses report record profits while denying workers basic benefits. Hordes of young artists arrive in New York with massive student debt to find few opportunities for employment. OWS drew connections between art world trends and those affecting other sectors, effectively plugging art into a broader context.
I am a member of Occupy Museums, an OWS-affinity group. Occupy Museums took its critique of the New York art world directly to major cultural institutions, which brought the group and its members attention from the press. We began receiving requests for interviews and invitations to lecture and exhibit. We were even invited to participate in the 7th Berlin Biennale (BB7). With attention came claims that we were undermining the movement’s goals in two respects. Some claimed we were using our position as activists to further our careers as artists – using a public move ment for private gain, enacting that which we supposedly denounced. Whereas some arts professionals openly supported OWS, others were more excited by OWS ’s use of art in political struggle and how “contemporary” it was. By having activists working within their frame, institutions could appear hip, democratic, or even radical without taking any significant steps toward change, thus neutralizing the threat our message posed.
In truth, we were preoccupied with these possibilities as well. Until then, Occupy Museums had been an outsider, occupying institutions with general assemblies and demonstrations; accepting the BB7 ’s invitation would mark the first time our activities would be sanctioned by a potential target. Early conversations with associate curator Joanna Warsza assured us that the BB7 would provide a platform to strengthen our message and promote eye-level interactions with the public. But we were shocked to arrive at the “Occupy Biennale”. Although interesting lectures and discussions were held in our ground-floor space, architecturally, it was a sunken pit, a fishbowl. Visitors stood on an elevated viewing platform to observe occupiers going about activism. The occupiers who had organized the space painted the walls with slogans and hung banners to create an Occupy theme park, a “Human Zoo”. The setting was further complicated by curator Artur Żmijewski’s desire to display only effective political action and not “art” per se. Żmijewski, an internationally renowned artist in his own right, is reputed to use people as marionettes and create ethically and politically ambiguous scenarios. We were afraid that we had agreed unwittingly to play a role in his latest piece, an Occupy time capsule and tomb that historicized and deactivated the movement.
Many of our visitors, some of whom were also Occupy activists, encouraged us to flee this checkmate. The BB7 seemed to be using Occupy to bolster its street cred while remaining a polished institution. Our involvement seemed tolerated so long as we did not present a material challenge. The exhibition reduced the movement to certain symbols and slogans, a fashion that marginalized and cheapened Occupy. Despite Żmijewski’s stated aims, it seemed this was a venue for the passive contemplation of the activist aesthetic, where all political speech was equal, dampening the urgency of our message.
Despite these challenges, we focused on the opportunities available and turned to escape this frame with new European partners. Actions at the Pergamon Museum or the Deutsche Guggenheim brought people together to stand against the unethical influence of finance on the arts. Our action at the Deutsche Guggenheim, which is a collaborative effort between the Guggenheim Foundation and Deutsche Bank, called attention to the world’s largest corporate art collection and the many ways the bank invests in work and then artificially inflates its price, doling out prizes and solo exhibitions to appreciate the value of its holdings. At this museum we held a general assembly and then an open discussion on “the museum of the future.” We later impersonated a student group and held a disruptive ceremony on the altar at the Pergamon Museum, calling attention to the history of colonialism and war that resulted in Germany’s acquisition of antiquities. Each action seemed to end in a long negotiation with German police. Our presence at KW, where the BB7 was held, was soon limited to the occasional banner inviting people to actions and to public meetings in the courtyard. Frustrated by the curator’s seeming neutrality, we invited Żmijewski to participate in our actions and take an explicit stance in his official capacity in support of our message. To our surprise, he showed up, participated in discussions, and helped document the actions. Żmijewski showed he was willing to use his influence and role to apply political pressure from within, but it took our prompting and prodding. With his and Joanna Warsza’s help, we organized a meeting with all the staff where workers could openly or anonymously share their grievances. The discussion exposed the fact that some employees earned less than minimum wage, and the budget was later examined to determine possibilities for more equitable pay. We then submitted a proposal to the curators calling for the BB7 and KW to adopt a horizontal, non-hierarchical organizational structure. Since democratic cultures need democratic cultural institutions, the curators and the director would be replaced by working groups using an Occupy-inspired consensus-based approach. After a thrilling negotiation, we agreed on the proposal and moved forward immediately, organizing assemblies and working groups. We wrote joint press releases and used the BB7’s website and press contacts. We met regularly with members of the staff to aid in the transition. The BB7 was now occupied. Although in the end we did not fully implement a horizontal structure, we experimented with these new tactics and challenged the corporate logic of cultural institutions.
With their resources and influence, institutions must be involved in the process of exploring and implementing structural alternatives to improve our society. Institutions are crucial allies, and activists can coopt them. We can work within institutions to expose boundaries and frames and invite those in powerful roles to participate directly in actions and dialogues when it suits movement goals. Activists should negotiate their terms of agreement to push the approval implied by an invitation towards explicit support, either in public statements or in the sharing of resources. When making requests, a rejection can help identify an institution’s political stance. Recording and publicizing responses can encourage open dialogue and expose the limitations and pressures of our current system. The gallery’s aestheticizing influence can undermine urgent speech, but effective tactics can be developed to subvert the role of the exhibition hall and use it to invite and mobilize the public to join actions outside its walls.
As activists within the art world, the fear of cooption must not justify inaction. We can be progressive, adaptive, and mission-oriented. Let’s use every opportunity, make every mistake, and move forward together.