One of the paradoxes of major art institutions is that they attempt to present themselves as critical of or apart from our current global system of neoliberal capitalism while being driven by and funded by that very system. This paradox results in these institutions being subject to criticism by the very artist and curators who to operate within them, through the artwork displayed in those very same museums in a mode of working that emerges from the conceptual art movement in the 1960s and is generally termed ‘institutional critique’. The limitations, however, of this mode of working, where the artist is reliant on the cultural institution’s willingness to be self-critical quickly become apparent. Gregory Scholette writes about Guggenheim’s cancelling of a 1971 show by Hans Haacke because the artist the work the artist proposed was “pair of data-driven visualizations tracing actual real estate holdings by New York City slumlords”, in his book ‘The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art’ (Scholette, 2022). While Aruna D’Souza, writing about institutional critique for ARTnews, likewise mentions Haacke’s other works and how art institutions have responded to them; ‘Moma Poll’, a work in which the artist asks visitors to the gallery to express an opinion on then-New York Governor and MoMA trustee Nelson Rockefeller’s lack of condemnation for then-President Nixon’s militarism in South East Asia, goes on show despite pressure reported from museum leadership, but a later work, ‘Manet-PROJEKT ’74’ which interrogates how Edouard Manet’s ‘A Bunch of Asparagus’ (the piece around which the group exhibition was to be based) comes into the possession the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne, is rejected by the museum just before the exhibition is due to open, almost certainly because it expose the fact that the piece was donated by one of Hitler’s financial advisers and was likely stolen from its previous Jewish owners during the Third Reich (D'Souza, 2019). This ability for museums to censor work that might call into question its own complicity in oppressive capitalist systems or the ethics of how they receive their money is not unique to Haacke’s work but it illustrates the problems that can occur when relying on a museum or art institution as a space for political or even obliquely political dissent. This mode of working, of criticising the forces of neoliberalism, colonialism etc. naturally brings artists into contention with the major forces of the art world, who are deeply intrenched with those very systems. Institutions sometimes attempt to occluded this fact by engaging with work that is critical of other galleries or museums or by allowing these works to go on display years after they were made, so the bite of their critique has been dulled by time or distance (D'Souza, 2019) but it nonetheless alienates these politically conscious artists from these major art institutions as these institutions become ever more intrenched in neoliberalism.
Scholette marks the departure of politically engaged artists from the advanced or conceptual art that was so influential in the 1960s and the oblique methods of critique that come with it to new modes of working that emerge throughout the 1970s (Scholette, 2022). The 1970s were a time of great political and economic upheaval, and of rapid commercialization, particularly in the world of art. It is this deteriorating economic landscape and the swing to the right of mainstream politics with the emergence of global neoliberalism that the ability of capitalism to reappropriate the artworks and movements designed to be critical of it becomes increasingly pervasive that Scholette points to as the cause for so many artists to search for a way to leave behind their previous modes of working and define a new method of practice for the politically engaged artist: “The new models did not only involve joining a protest group, as was common in the 1960s, but instead, creatively and intellectually labouring in collaboration with others to understand the social dilemmas inherent to art as a type of work” (Scholette, 2022). The collectivist nature of these new modes of working are an integral part of what sets them apart, the act of labouring not (just) with other artists and designers but with those who generally operate entirely outside of the artistic world gives birth to a series of entirely new modes of working, ways that allow a much more direct and uncensored critical stance towards social issues, the systems of capitalism and of neoliberalism than seen in the conceptual mode of working that came before them. In the next sections of this essay I will explore how these artistic collectives have moved away from relying on the consent of these institutions to stage their critique such as seen in the work of Liberate Tate and G.U.L.F., or from relying on the gallery as a space at all and instead focusing their artistic labours into political efforts outside artistic institutions as seen in the Occupy Movement and the work of Extinction Rebellion.
If art institutions are so entangled in the systems of neoliberal capitalism that they cannot be trust to honestly critique themselves then how can politically minded artists, designers and curators attempt to hold these institutions accountable for their participation in and financial dependence on the worst elements of our current capitalist system? Momentarily setting aside the idea that artist should move away from these spaces either entirely or as a platform for political ideas to be addressed later in this essay, one solution to this is to use the platform of these cultural institutions without the consent of their management. This technique, what Emma Mahony terms ‘interstitial critique’ aims to liberate institutions from the hold that corporate sponsors and wealthy trustees have over the philosophical and political outlooks expressed by cultural institutions (Mahony, 2017). This strategy mitigates some of the problems outlined earlier that are encountered by Haacke and other practitioners of intuitional critique with regards to curatorial staff and management refusing to allow works that would damage the reputation of the museum or its financial backers to be displayed by simply presenting their critiques whether or not the
Mahony explores this tactic in relation to the work of groups such as Liberate Tate and BP or Not BP, Reclaim Shakespeare, and other groups formed around removing the ties between fossil fuels and the arts, who, despite often having to navigate around the complicated security measures used by galleries and other cultural institutions (whose purpose in large part is to prevent the work of groups like theirs) have staged anti-fossil fuel performance pieces over several years, starting in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Spill in 2010, in an effort to pressure museums to stop accepting funding from corporations whose enormous profits are built off environmental destruction and the delaying of vital climate action (Mahony, 2017). This method of infiltrating a museum in order to expose its unethical practices is not unique to groups concerned with the climate; Yates McKee discusses the actions of Global Ultra Luxury Faction or G.U.L.F. in the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2014 to bring light to the inhumane labour practices being used in the construction on Sadiyaat Island in Abu Dhabi (McKee, 2016). Sadiyaat, an artificial island, is a luxury destination for both foreigners and Emirati nationals and is slated to house branches of several major cultural institutions such as a branch of the Louvre, the most notable of which in relation to this event is a Frank Gehry designed branch of the Guggenheim Museum due to open in 2025 (Crook, 2021). The workers who are building this artefact of artistic luxury are mostly migrant labourers who work under conditions not far off from modern slavery;
“Tens of thousands of migrant laborers from South Asia work at the island’s construction sites, living in a state of debt servitude to labor recruiters, toiling for unlivable wages, and dwelling in heavily policed work camps. Union organizing is outlawed, and wildcat strikes and disruptions by workers have been met with violent repression and often deportation by the state.” (McKee, 2016).
G.U.L.F used the museum as a staging ground to disperse fake paper bills designed with an image of the proposed museum, the phrase “NO SUSTAINABLE CULTURAL VALUE’” and 1% in place of a denomination. Having invited journalists to cover the action beforehand, the whole event was designed to both stir up media attention and to grab the attention of museum goers, (it was very deliberately staged on a Saturday night, when visitors queue round the block to avoid paying the usual 22$ for tickets) (McKee, 2016). By using the vernacular of the art museum G.U.L.F. not only distribute their message more effectively than they may have been able to through traditional leafleting but weaponize the position of the Guggenheim as a global cultural institution against itself, exposing its seedy underbelly to those who care most about it (artist and art lovers) in a language that fits with the setting. This use of the vernacular of the cultural institution an activist group is critiquing is also something that is also explored by Mahony; “A further facet of their interstitial resistance is the manner in which these collectives use the vernacular of their host institutions as the medium of their performance actions. The Reclaim Shakespeare Company, whose members comprise of classically trained actors, scripted their protests in iambic pentameter and acted them out on stage in Shakespearian costumes.” (Mahony, 2017), and she notes it as a particular strength of this form of art-activism, allowing the viewers or visitors to these cultural venues to engage with the action artistically, in a way that is less alienating than direct protests or picketing (ibid.). This blurring of the lines between the political and cultural spheres is what part of what makes artists so valuable in terms of social movements, something I will explore even more directly in the next section of this essay.
In the introduction to his book ‘Strike Art: Contemporary Art and the Post-Occupy Condition’ Yates McKee lays out an argument that Occupy, the 2011 political movement that made waves around the world as a response to suffering endured by so many after the 2008 financial crash, was in and of itself an artistic project “assuming we reimagine our sense of what art is or can be.” (McKee, 2016). Throughout Occupy the worlds of art and activism collide more directly than any in of the events or artworks I have explored so far, with artists not only participating in a radical protest movement or producing works relating to it but taking on direct roles as organisers and engaging “in every facet of movement work,” (McKee, 2016). This organising work was, as McKee raises, not only done by artists, but artists were an integral part of not only the labour involved with the Occupy movement but in allowing those who would not typically be considered artists to participate in and be influenced by the aesthetics that emerge out of Occupy (ibid.). The presence of both artist and activists involved with the collective organising of occupy allows one to merge with the other, for the artist to become activist and the activist to become artist. This kind of organising, while seen particularly strongly throughout Occupy, is not unique to it and it has emerged in many other forms in the years since. From the Black Lives Matter movement to Extinction Rebellion to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement to The Artist’s Campaign to Repeal the 8th Amendment and more, the melding of art and direct action is something that can be seen across a wide variety of contemporary political movements. In an article for Waging Nonviolence McKee discusses the use of guerrilla projections by Illuminator, a group of artists who emerged out of occupy, and have used their work as a sort of impermanent graffiti to protest the role of museums and cultural institutions such as the Guggenheim in systems of global oppression (McKee, 2014). Climate activist group Extinction Rebellion have used similar guerrilla visuals along with dramatic performance pieces in their protests and as tools of nonviolent disruption, the success of which is discussed by Scholette as reflective of the increasing overlap between the roles of artist and activist (Sholette, 2022).
This particular way of working is the one that both blurs the line between art and activism more than ever before but it is also, of the methods the discussed here, the most directly confrontational to the forces that it opposes. While this is in many ways a good thing, it also results in a harsher backlash on its participants. Jeff Sparrow, writing for the Guardian, draws a direct parallel between a rising number of anti-fossil fuel protests and anti-protest laws being passed by governments (Sparrows, 2022) while Scholette discusses the government censorship of artists from Belarus, Syria, Cuba, Turkey and elsewhere (Sholette, 2022). These laws, though sometimes hidden behind ideas of ‘disturbing the peace’ in countries where the outright banning of public dissent is less feasible, all come from the same desire to shield systems of neoliberalism (and governments that support them) from critique, an idea that has been played out across the entirety of this essay.
What also becomes clear through the exploration of these methods of artistic activism, is artists ability to respond to efforts of censorship by evolving new methods engaging with societal and political issues whether inside the cultural institution or outside of it. It gives a hopeful answer to the question raised by Scholette about whether “contemporary art activism summons a seemingly unquenchable force for social justice, which explains its expanding durability today?” (Sholette, 2022). Artists will always be involved in the critique of oppressive forces, and that involvement amplifies and concentrates messages of activist movements in a way that offers some resiliency to neoliberal co-optation and censorship while elevating the chances of affecting a material change in our political landscape.
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