JUNE/JULY’12 $10.00
Resistance
Sanja Ivekovi´ cPaul ChanDebating Occupy Amalia PicaSuzanne Lacy
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A Poster by Ida Applebroog
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JUNE/JULY’12 ART IN AMERICA 99
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 THOMPSON
Chief curator, Creative Time, New York
As spring and summer arrive, OccupyWall Street has roared back. This culturalmovement is happening in physical space,challenging numerous elements of contem-porary life, most prominently wealth inequity,the laws of public assembly, the corruptionof the political process and the overarch-ing precariousness that is the rule, not theexception, for Americans.OWS has numerous artists operating atits organizational core. More than simplyacting as graphic artists for the movement(although they are doing this as well), theyare broadening the scope of their creativeimaginations and actions to challenge theentire order of things. What does OccupyWall Street and activism around the worldmean to you today? What do you think itmeans for art overall? Do you feel a funda-mental shift taking place and, if so, how doyou articulate that in esthetic, cultural andpolitical terms?
MARTHA ROSLER
Artist
A new global movement—against controlby the international super-elites and againstthe dismemberment of workers’ rights andhuman rights—has awoken the dormantdesire for social justice. It has become alltoo apparent that neoliberalism and itsrampant financialization have created acapitalism that eats its young. Now, a vastnumber—at least 99%!—of young people,immigrants and middle-class and working-class citizens around the world are awarethat their futures have been stolen.
EXCHANGES
DEBATING OCCUPY
Tip of the Iceberg
, designed by DaveLoewenstein, Lawrence, Kan. All poster images this article courtesyOccuprint.org.
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100 ART IN AMERICA JUNE/JULY’12
mobility and punctuated visibility. Although a recent, prominent prec-edent was the Zapatistas in Mexico,impoverished Indian peasants mobi-lized under the poetically playfulSubcomandante Marcos, I seethe occupation movement as thearrival of the conflict between the“creatives” and the city that uses us.
ASTRA TAYLOR
Filmmaker and writer
Usually when I tell people I’ve beeninvolved in Occupy Wall Street,they ask me if I’m making a docu-mentary film, and they’re usually alittle surprised when I say no. I lovedocumentaries and sincerely hopesomeone is making one about themovement, because I think there’san astonishing story to be told. ButI didn’t want to be the one to tellit. When I went to Wall Street onSeptember 17th, I didn’t want tostand at a remove, behind a cameraor conducting an interview. I wantedto be in it, to join the conversation. Ithe increased institutional accep-tance, in the U.S. and Europe, of art centered on social realities,and even directly inserted intosocial processes—an approachthat had been anathematizedfrom the Cold War onward.Occupy’s first step has beena dogged, dug-in spatiotempo-ral visibility, an occupation! Inits second phase, tactics haveshifted to something of a greater Artists too! Artists have prob-ably always been inclined to join theruckus and stand up for global jus-tice, but in an international economyincreasingly based on cognitive laborand on the broad culturalization of social and political life, artists aredeeply involved in Occupy, here in theStates and elsewhere. That very cul-turalization of what we might call thepublic sphere has its pluses and itsminuses, 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.
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