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eportfolio Ida Brandão

Politics,

Art and

Resistance

MOOC promoted by the University of Kent

April 2018

ABOUT

MOOC

Politics, Art & Resistance

Explore how art movements have inspired political activism

What’s the link between art and activism?

This course introduces ideas and practices of resistance, and the relationship between art and politics.

You’ll explore:

  • the socially engaged practices of artists, and how art movements have inspired ordinary people

  • art manifestos, and how to develop your own manifesto

  • how creative practices connect with social and political issues

And you’ll have the chance to contribute an image of resistance to a photo mosaic that will be presented as part of Tate Exchange at Tate Modern.

What topics will you cover?

  • What is ‘resistance’?

  • The relationship between art and politics

  • Writing to resist: The art of the manifesto

  • Life as a work of art

  • Styles of resistance

  • Resistance and Utopia

WEEK 1

Summary of week 1 - What is resistance?

Highlighting the creative element of resistance, we did not start our journey with a definition. Instead, we looked at four ‘movements’: Riley’s escaping centre, Plato’s prisoner who turns around, Havel’s greengrocer who snaps, and the 1000 Gestalten who break through the crusty shells of a life-less life.

In each of these examples, we have identified three key steps or moments, which, we suggest, are elements of resistance:

The initial ‘turning around’, a detachment, an initial commitment. In Riley, this is the red dot first moving away from the centre of the circle. In Plato, this corresponds to the prisoner turning around, away from his chains. In Havel, we see the greengrocer no longer displaying the slogans he never believed in. Neither Plato’s nor Havel’s imagery suggests in any detail what exactly could have caused this initial suspicion that the perceived reality was not really what it pretended to be, that it was in some sense a truncated reality, that there was ‘more’ of something – more justice, more freedom, more reality? The 1000 Gestalten, too, can only enact this moment, as the initiation of a process of individual and communal transformation, but nothing is said about its cause. But the importance of this moment is acknowledged throughout. This moment of turning around, however, does not necessarily entail a new insight. The greengrocer, perhaps, always knew that there was something unreal about the slogans in his windows. When he ‘snaps’, what is new is that perhaps for the first time he acts to overcome the gap between what he really believes and what he really does.

 

The commitment to act creates a moment of uncertainty, of confusion: the red dot has left its centre; the prisoner has left his familiar environment; the greengrocer suddenly finds himself outside the parameters of what is normal, and the Gestalt embarks on the search for a colour that s/he cannot see but feel. This is a moment of ‘liminality’, of in-between-ness, of being both inside and outside, or of being neither inside or outside. At this point, nothing quite seems the same as before and orientation may be lost for some time. What or whom to follow? What is stronger: the temptation to return to an alien and yet familiar situation? Or the temptation to take risks, and to explore more of oneself and of reality? This is the moment of the ascent, where we pursue what initially was only seen dimly, a commitment that requires steadfastness, perseverance, patient endurance and suffering. But it is also the moment where we may begin to feel at one with ourselves.

 

The third moment is the return, the moment when the prisoner has to authenticate what he has seen by returning to his fellow cave dwellers – when he is no longer the same as the others, when he ‘is’ a difference. He is the outside in the inside; transcendence within immanence. This difference now has to be lived, and the prisoner becomes a ‘witness’ to what perhaps only he has seen. The Greek word for ‘witness’ is μάρτυς, mártys, which is the root of ‘martyr’. In Plato’s story, there is a probability that the returning prisoner will be killed; in Havel, the greengrocer’s life will change dramatically and, in fact, so will the lives of his family members and friends. They will all suffer. For the 1000 Gestalten, the ‘return’ is gradually embraced as an opportunity of individual and communal renewal and transformation – a most hopeful scenario. Who are we going to be? Are we turning a blind eye, again, on what we know? Are we going to fit back in? Are we turning into cynics, who know better but sit on the fence? What and how will we share with whom? W

 

What and how are we going to communicate? The cave dwellers will have no conception of what the prisoner may be about to tell them – and in that case, what language will he use? How could he possibly convey even the plausibility of what he has seen? How could he not be misunderstood? It is for this question, of how difference is lived, that creativity is so crucial. Creativity is there to insert difference in a constructive manner, for the benefit of all.

It is time, therefore, to look at creativity in more detail.

WEEK 2

Summary of week 2 - Life as a work of art

In this activity, we have considered a rich tapestry of ideas and concepts, which should help us discuss resistance as an idea and practice later on in this course. In particular, we have:

  • Considered the life of Socrates as a manifestation of resistance, taking his defence speech in his trial as a starting point. We examined how he understood his life as a mission, a vocation, that committed him with the whole of his being. His peculiar activity was a not a sequence of momentary actions, but a way of life, with its own shape and coherence that made it stand out in Athenian society.

  • Identified parrhesia as a distinct mode of speaking, typical of an attitude of resistance. Using the analysis of Michel Foucault, we were able to explore the characteristic features of parrhesia, and asked in what ways, if any, it survives in our contemporary societies.

 

  • Identified the ‘care of the self’ as a further key feature of the philosophic life. We noted how taking care of oneself entailed the deliberate shaping of one’s life in accordance with one’s truest convictions, making it a manifestation of truth.

 

  • Discussed the lives of the cynic philosophers as more radical manifestations of the philosophic life, whereby life itself becomes a scandal, educating the surrounding society through provocation and shock, and giving rise to a tradition of militant and anarchic protest and resistance.

 

  • Concluded with a discussion of the last words of Socrates, showing that they in fact confirmed his teaching, implying that life lived as a witness to one’s deepest conviction is not to be abandoned if the consequences are dangerous or painful, again emphasising that the commitment is to a life rather than a moment.

 

We’ve considered resistance as a way of life; in the next activity, we’ll look at art as a way of life.

Contributions for TATE EXCHANGE

Other interesting images for RESISTANCE

WEEK 3

Summary of week 3 - Styles of resistance

Gene Sharp's Non-Violent Methods - https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/browse_methods

Our first activity in Week 3 provided brief introductions to iconic styles of political resistance – Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela, Gene Sharp – and thereby raised a number of key questions:

  • We considered the notion of action advocated in the Bhagavad Gitaand how it influenced Gandhi to adopt a style of resistance that combined ascetic practices – his ‘care of the self’ – with public service. We learned that his self-transformation and the political change he sought were two sides of the same coin.

  • We found how this style of resistance found its expression in what Gandhi called satyagraha – a holistic, non-violent approach to personal, political and social change. We considered the Salt March as a typical example of a satyagraha campaign and wondered whether it could also be understood as an example of a collective, performative art protest.

  • Moving on to consider Gandhi’s legacy, we noted how Martin Luther King Jr found in Gandhi’s satyagraha a ‘method’ for translating Christian notions of non-violence and love into concrete action.

  • We also looked at how Gandhian ideas fared during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, where the African National Congress initially adopted the principles of non-violence until in 1961 Mandela and others persuaded the movement to create a militant wing, the Spear of the Nation, in order to conduct a campaign of sabotage aimed at government installations and infrastructure. Comparing Gandhi’s and Mandela’s approach, we discussed how the difference between violence and non-violence reflected deeper disagreements concerning the separation of ends and means as well as the relative timing of personal conversion and structural change.

  • Finally, we looked at the influential work of Gene Sharp, who took the pragmatic approach to Gandhi even further and developed a list of 198 methods of non-violent action. In Sharp, Gandhi’s holistic framework of self-aware action collapsed into a list of non-violent actions as tools of political liberation.

 

Still, although there are profound differences even in the small sample of styles of resistance considered in this activity, perhaps it is fair to draw attention to important commonalities too.

 

‘Bearing witness’ is a key element of satyagraha – in fact, this is what the satyagrahi were expected to do, to offer themselves as canvases on which the violence and oppression they suffered would become visible. We saw the same notion at the heart of parrhesia, and we saw how being a witness is far from easy. Work of self upon self is needed to make our lives a true reflection of what we are witnessing. Martin Luther King Jr called this work “self-purification” and considered it a basic step in any non-violent campaign. The adoption of violent methods by Mandela and the ANC does not contradict these notions but reflected Mandela’s assessment that the brutality of the apartheid regime prevented his people from expressing themselves – they were not even in a situation where bearing witness would be of any consequence. Yet, as we noted, the problem of the ‘care of the self’ – the freedom to be free – reappeared as soon as the apartheid regime had collapsed.

Bearing witness, then, has a performative aspect and a community aspect, as we are bearing witness, together, to ourselves and others.

Have we stumbled here on a definition of resistance?

A Brief History of “Happenings” in 1960s New York

 

How to make art with a Jackhammer, conversation with Tania Bruguera

The definition of art

 

Ephemeral art

WEEK 4

Summary of week 4 - Resistance and utopia

We began the final week of our course by juxtaposing and comparing two types of resistance.

  • Resistance offered in the name of the ‘other life’ is the resistance we found in Socrates’s parrhesia and care of the self, in Gandhi’s satyagraha, in Martin Luther King Jr’s agape, in Havel’s living-in-truth. It has an inward orientation, and it dares to stand out and scandalise others.

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  • Resistance offered in the name of the ‘other world’ is the resistance that targets everything – reality perceived as a flawed system beyond reform and redemption, to which the ‘other world’ stands in opposition. The ‘other world’ is the negation of the negation, which will allow for a reality that is richer, truer, fairer, more just. This type of resistance has an outward orientation, pointing towards utopia.

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  • We briefly considered the Occupy movement – or, as we called it, ‘wave’ – and found that its resistance targets everything, the political system as a whole. We distinguished different dimensions of the utopian imagination but found that Occupy’s utopia is in the here and now, in the path that is made by walking.

 

Occupy suggests that utopia is not far or distant, neither in space nor in time. Every creative act is the making of utopia. And should this not make us think of art again? Is the utopian imagination not always at work in the making of art?

Ordem e Progresso, by mexican Hector Zamora - https://lsd.com.mx/artwork/ordem-e-progresso/ - Ordem e Progresso is a new version of a performance-installation presented by Mexican artist Héctor Zamora (Mexico City, 1974) in 2012, in Paseo de los Héroes Navales, in Lima, and, in 2016, at the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris.

 

Seven boats were selected for this new presentation, which was especially produced for the Oval Gallery. Of different kinds and with different features, the boats represent the traditional vessels of Portuguese fishing villages and cities, such as Sesimbra, Ericeira, Nazaré, Aveiro, and Figueira da Foz. The boats, autentic examples of Portuguese artisanal fishing, were selected because of their advanced state of degradation. They were all built between the late 1960s and the early 2000s. Some display national symbols that invoke the period of the Portuguese Discoveries; and others were baptized with names that refer to the traditions and mysticism of the fishing communities, or to the local culture and folklore.

The «Resistance» Padlet - https://unikent.padlet.org/mao21/resistance - password: FLresist2018
What is resistance
Life as a work of art
Styles of resistance
Resistance and utopia
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