Editors' Forum: Art, Process, Protest

Q. Protest, an action of urgent dissent, is also a disobedient act that invokes political transformation. However, the scale of protest—as well as the means and mediums used to iterate, organize, conduct, and continue it—is never fixed. Acts of protest can range from a shout in the street to a revolutionary overthrow, from a speech act to a full-scale deconstruction of hegemonic forms. For this editors' forum, we asked a range of scholars and practicing artists around the world to reflect on their guiding concepts and practices as activists and culture workers. How does art draw upon, mobilize, and transform existing forms of cultural power—and what are the limits and challenges of such a practice? How does art function as the arena and context within which political transformations take place? How does art change or become instrumental in enacting social change? This forum discusses the increasingly blurred lines between art and social action.

The seventeen artists, curators, and scholars that have contributed to this forum each explore art activism in a variety of ways, from direct action against the misuse of labor capital in building cultural institutions, to the impact of creating new or alternative pedagogical education structures for some of the world's most vulnerable communities. How does aestheticization reconcile with social impact and change? How can art activism, bound up in the contradictions between aestheticization, spectacle, commerce, and revolution, follow through on desires to imagine social change?