In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Imagining Resistance: An Introduction KIRSTY ROBERTSON AND J. KERI CRONIN W hen we began Imagining Resistance, our aim was to gather a series of essays exploring the role of art and visual culture in activism in Canada.Although this might sound straightforward enough, what became almost immediately apparent is that the topic is a fraught one, cut across with complexities, disagreements, and debate. The porosity of overloaded categories such as art and activism tends to encourage highly contested discussions and arguments not only over the efficacy of artistic forms of resistance but also over the very nature of what defines art and what defines resistance.1 If it can be agreed that there is such a thing as activist art and that it does have some sort of political role to play, does it belong in the art gallery? Does it belong in the streets? If it is art can it be activism? If it is activism can it be art? Although our original aim seemed simple, it actually covered more than a century of rich deliberation and a highly complex history of production , performance, circulation, and scholarship that have not allowed for easy categorization of “activist art”within political movements or within the discipline of art history (or any other discipline for that matter). That is apparent even before one tries to disentangle the differences between political art, activist art, oppositional art, subversive art, resistant art, tactical media, interventionist art, and so on and so forth.2 One might point out, however, that this cacophony of disagreement nevertheless signifies a profound and sustained engagement with the potential for an art of resistance, an unwillingness to completely forsake its possibility , often coupled with utopian imaginings of novel visual and perfomative interventions. The essays in Imagining Resistance examine both the use of a series of diverse artistic practices to activate oppositional politics and the multifarious attempts at co-option that unsettle any easy theorization of the role(s) played by vision, imagery, or performance in resistance. They range from considerations of the spectacle of public protest to the role of local grassroots involvement in the picturing and politics of dissent, and 1 from case studies of specific performances, films, and art works to wideranging theoretical discussions of the role of oppositional visual culture in contemporary society. Our decision to focus on Canada brought up a further series of complications .Why Canada? Arguably, an intense and vibrant history of activist, oppositional, and subversive art practice, combined with Canada’s recent role in the international construction and spread of neoliberal economic globalization,makes it a productive and under-considered site of analysis.The depiction (both internal and external) of Canada as a peace-loving and peacekeeping nation contrasts strongly with events past and present—its participation in military conflict internationally and nationally, violent crackdowns on strikers in Winnipeg in 1919 and Vancouver in 1932, and the surveillance of oppositional activities stretching back to and beyond the First World War. More recently one might point to the treatment of alter-globalization protesters in Vancouver, Quebec City, Calgary, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and elsewhere, the Security Certificate internment of the so-called “Secret Trial Five,”the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s possible role in the deportation and torture of Maher Arar, the international outcry at the taser-induced death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International Airport, recent allegations of threat and coercion in the Ontario Provincial Police’s shutting down of Mohawk-led blockades, and Canada’s military presence in Afghanistan (alongside extensive arms manufacturing for the U.S.-led incursion in Iraq). These events counter any deeply held myth of a peaceful nation. Rather, the prevalence of such actions suggests that these instances are not anomalies but are instead indications of a deep commitment to the politics of control concomitant with the spread of the disciplinary tactics of neoliberalism .3 Resistance is equally present, however, from strikes to anti-Vietnam War actions and support for draft dodgers through to massive protests in 2003 against the possible invasion of Iraq and continued efforts on the part of indigenous peoples to secure land claims and other rights. These contradictions suggest it is past time to bring projects together that have contested and resisted the imposition of disciplinary structures and to draw out the opposition to actions such as those mentioned above.4 A second and more complex question might be, why now, when analysis of the nation state is often eclipsed by the global? Within these pages...

Share