Yesterday I mused about museums; today I’m thinking about artists. There is so much written about how artists engage in the political process that it is hard to choose what to highlight. In the end, I’ve decided to focus not so much on the making of art with political content, but the ways artists actually influence politics by entering into the public sphere.

My earliest awareness of artists’s political actions was in the 1960’s and 70’s around the persona of Joseph Beuys who taught and worked close to where I then lived. Among other things he was a co-founder of the Green Party, and his lectures focused on the need for space for creative thought which would help bring about structural change in society. His vision of the artist as a social actor has been enormously influential.

Here are some examples of others following later: As mayor of Tirana, Albania, Edi Rama, a former painter, decided to change the city with color (as well as a huge project of planting new green spaces.) The TED talk below has a short video on the project, and it is amazing. It changed the urban, the social and eventually the political landscape, quite literally. https://www.ted.com/talks/edi_rama_take_back_your_city_with_paint

Then there is Tania Bruguera, who announced that she would run for President of Cuba in 2018. Never mind that you can’t run for that office in Cuba…it is the political gesture of entering the public sphere as an artist to promote change. The link below gives an interesting overview of a life devoted to political rebellion.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/10/tania-bruguera-cuban-artist-fights-free-expression-160930124023219.html

An important support network for artists as activist is provided by the Creative Time Summits, annual conventions that gather international artists, writers, philosophers and political activists for thematically structured conferences. Their goal is to promote social change through art activism. Last year they met in D.C. before the election, inviting input to the theme Occupy the Future from citizens and grass root movements working within as well as disrupting the electoral process.  This year they met in Toronto to discuss Of Homelands and Revolutions, with a particular focus on indigenous people leading ongoing movements across continents.

The link gives a programmatic overview http://creativetime.org/summit/toronto-2017/

Here is one of their (timely) projects that caught my attention. It’s called Pledges of Allegiance – a serialized commission of sixteen flags, each created by an acclaimed artist. “We realized we needed a space to resist that was defined not in opposition to a symbol, but in support of one, and so we created a permanent space. The flag seemed an ideal form to build that space around both practically and symbolically,” says Creative Time Artistic Director Nato Thompson. Each flag points to an issue the artist is passionate about, a cause they believe is worth fighting for, and speaks to how we might move forward collectively. Conceived in response to the current political climate, Pledges of Allegiance aims to inspire a sense of community among cultural institutions, and begin articulating the urgent response our political moment demands.   

Pledges of Allegiance officially launched on Flag Day, June 14th. Each month a new flag will be raised on a flagpole atop Creative Time’s headquarters at 59 East 4th Street, and at partner sites nationwide. Here you can see the different flags so far and learn about the contributing artists:

http://creativetime.org/projects/pledgesofallegiance/