Performance Art as an Activist Tool
Art is most often thought to be politically powerful because of its ability to reach new audiences; in this capacity, art is comparable to political protest as primarily a method of raising awareness. However, an often-overlooked capability of performance art is its potential to arm audiences who are already sympathetic to a cause with the specific knowledge necessary to take action, serving as a sustained form of activism. Two organizations that exemplify the latter strategy are Abortion Access Front’s comedy tour and UCLA’s Sex Squad.
“Everything is political.” This statement is both an acknowledgement of the inherently political nature of existence in a hierarchical world and a direct quote from every person interviewed for this article. “Everything is relational, and everything has a power relation,” Amy Elizabeth Alterman, a PhD candidate in Culture and Performance at UCLA, explained in an interview with the HPR. “So, everything is political.”
Art is no exception. Although there are artists who insist that their work is not political, this claim ignores the stakes of representation; for any artist to deny that their actions have political implications is to deny the fact that media and entertainment shape the way that people view the world and everyone inhabiting it.
It is important to acknowledge a distinction between bursts of protest and sustained activism. Both play crucial roles in political progress, and art can function as either depending on its implementation, but the two styles of advocacy serve different purposes. Protest often consists of sporadic, individual instances of critiquing injustice and is fundamentally an attempt to raise awareness about an issue. Art is therefore a natural fit; its emotional resonance is indispensable in efforts to grab the public’s attention and to change hearts and minds. Activism, on the other hand, requires continued engagement, with a focus on solutions rather than just calling attention to an issue’s existence. That is not to say that art is no longer a suitable tool — in fact, the reality is quite the opposite. Art is most often thought to be politically powerful because of its ability to reach new audiences; in this capacity, art is comparable to political protest as primarily a method of raising awareness. However, an often-overlooked capability of performance art is its potential to arm audiences who are already sympathetic to a cause with the specific knowledge necessary to take action, serving as a sustained form of activism. Two organizations that exemplify the latter strategy are Abortion Access Front’s comedy tour and UCLA’s Sex Squad.— Jessica Morandi, Mar. 7, 2020
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Harvard Political Review website.
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