Table Of ContentArt and Activism in the Age of Systemic Crisis
This book examines how renewed forms of artistic activism were developed in the wake
of the neoliberal repression since the 1980s.
The volume shows the diverse ways in which artists have sought to confront systemic
crises around the globe, searching for new and enduring ways of building communities
and reimagining the political horizon. The authors engage in a dialogue with these
artistic efforts and their histories—in particular the earlier artistic activism that was
developed during the civil rights era in the 1960s and 1970s—providing valuable historical
insight and new conceptual reflection on the future of aesthetic resilience.
This book will be of interest to scholars in contemporary art, history of art, film and
literary studies, protest movements, and social movements.
Eliza Steinbock is Assistant Professor of Cultural Analysis at Leiden University’s Centre
for the Arts in Society
Bram Ieven is Assistant Professor in Modern Dutch Literature and Culture at Leiden
University’s Centre for Arts in Society
Marijke de Valck is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Utrecht University
Cover image: Paradise sign on Sharm El Skeikh beach. (Video courtesy of Marouan
Omara and Johanna Domke).
Routledge Research in Art and Politics
Routledge Research in Art and Politics is a new series focusing on politics and government as
examined by scholars working in the fields of art history and visual studies. Proposals for mono
graphs and edited collections on this topic are welcomed.
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-in-
Art-and-Politics/book-series/RRAP
Constructing the Memory of War in Visual Culture since 1914
The Eye on War
Edited by Ann Murray
Contemporary Citizenship, Art, and Visual Culture
Making and Being Made
Edited by Corey Dzenko and Theresa Avila
Socially Engaged Art in Contemporary China
Voices from Below
Meiqin Wang
The Danish Avant-Garde and World War II
The Helhesten Collective
Kerry Greaves
Migration, Diversity and the Arts
The Postmigrant Condition
Moritz Schramm, Sten Pultz Moslund and Anne Ring Petersen
Social Practice Art in Turbulent Times
The Revolution Will Be Live
Kristina Olson and Erec J. Schruers
Modernity, History, and Politics in Czech Art
Marta Filipová
Italian Modern Art in the Age of Fascism
Anthony White
WPA Posters in an Aesthetic, Social, and Political Context
A New Deal for Design
Cory Pillen
The Political Portrait
Leadership, Image and Power
Edited by Luciano Cheles and Alessandro Giacone
Art and Activism in the Age of Systemic Crisis
Aesthetic Resilience
Edited by Eliza Steinbock, Bram Ieven, and Marijke de Valck
Art and Activism in the Age of
Systemic Crisis
Aesthetic Resilience
Edited by Eliza Steinbock, Bram Ieven, and
Marijke de Valck
First published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 Taylor & Francis
The right of Eliza Steinbock, Bram Ieven and Marijke de Valck to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Steinbock, Eliza, 1980-editor. | Ieven, Bram, editor. | Valck,
Marijke de, editor.
Title: Art and activism in the age of systemic crisis : aesthetic
resilience / edited by Eliza Steinbock, Bram Ieven, Marijke de Valck.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020025258 (print) | LCCN 2020025259 (ebook) | ISBN
9780367219840 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429269189 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Arts–Political aspects. | Art and social action.
Classification: LCC NX180.P64 A76 2021 (print) | LCC NX180.P64 (ebook) |
DDC 701/.03–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025258
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020025259
ISBN: 978-0-367-21984-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-26918-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Taylor & Francis Books
Contents
List of Figures vii
List of Contributors viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: Taking Aesthetics from Resistance to Resilience 1
BRAMIEVEN,ELIZASTEINBOCK,ANDMARIJKEDEVALCK
PART I
Resilience: Searching for New Weapons While Fleeing 7
1 Resilience Thinking, Storytelling, and Aesthetic Resilience 9
MARIJKEDEVALCK
2 But Does it Work in Theory? Androcentric Blind Spots and Omissions 24
HILARYROBINSON
3 Learning from Documenta? Aesthetic Resilience and the Politics of
Institutionalized Art 39
BRAMIEVEN
4 Blackout: The Necropolitics of Extraction 49
T.J.DEMOS
5 Movement of Movements: Resilient Strategies in the ‘Global South’ 62
KITTYZIJLMANS
PART II
Global Conjunctions of Aesthetic Resilience 75
6 Of Tricksters and Zombies: Re-imagining Outsideness in Contemporary
Russian Activist Art 77
KSENIAROBBE
7 An Alloy Made from Art and Activism, in North Macedonia 92
JONBLACKWOOD
vi Contents
8 Drones and Streets: On the Image Composition of the Tahrir and Gezi
Occupations 104
BEGÜM ÖZDEN FIRAT
9 The Resilient City: When Social Activism Meets Media Arts in Hong Kong 117
ISAAC LEUNG
10 Art-activism in Decolonizing a South African University Space 130
ZETHU MATEBENI
PART III
Artistic Practices of Embodied Resilience 143
11 Feminist and Anti-Racist Graffiti: Disrupting Public Space in the
1970s in Britain 145
NA’AMA KLORMAN-ERAQI
12 The Black Radical: Fungibility, Activism, and Portraiture in These Times 158
SYRUS MARCUS WARE
13 Practicing Aesthetic Resilience through Collaboration 169
KERI WATSON
14 Embodied Narratives: Dance, Corporeality, and Creative Processes 179
ANA CRISTINA BOHRER GILBERT
Index 190
Figures
6.1 Installation The Horizon Community Memorial Centre by Kirill
Savchenkov, exhibited at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art,
Moscow in 2016. 80
6.2 Monstration participants with the slogan “We Can’t Repeat” in St
Petersburg on May 1, 2018. This slogan reverses the patriotic rallying cry
“We Can Repeat” referring to the Soviet victory in WWII that has
become popular in recent years. 84
6.3 Screenshot from the video Palace Square. 100 Years After by Chto Delat. 86
8.1 Snapshot from Mikala Hyldig Dal’s image list of a Google search for the
keyword “Tahrir,” which she conducted on January 1, 2013. 109
8.2 Taksim, June 9, 2013. 111
8.3 Cleaning up Gezi Park on June 2, 2013. 114
10.1 Robed sculpture of Sara Baartman at the University of Cape Town
Library, November 2018. 133
11.1 Vanley Burke, “Graffiti—White is Good” from Handsworth from Inside
series 1968–1982, 1981. 147
12.1 Syrus Marcus Ware, Activist Portrait Series: portrait of Queen Tite
Opaleke, Toronto, 2016. 164
12.2 Syrus Marcus Ware, Activist Portrait Series: portrait of Josh Vettivelu,
Toronto, 2016. 164
13.1 Installation view with Reverend Robert Graetz in conversation with
Barbara DeMichels (a student enrolled in the course), Silhouettes of
Courage: Marching to Equality, Goodwyn Gallery, Auburn University at
Montgomery. 171
13.2 Installation view, Resilience: Remembering Pulse, UCF Art Gallery,
University of Central Florida, 2017. 175
14.1 Ana Cristina Bohrer Gilbert, photo collage I of Te encontro lá no
Cacilda, 2018. 181
14.2 Ana Cristina Bohrer Gilbert, photo collage II of Te encontro lá no
Cacilda, 2018. 182
14.3 Ana Cristina Bohrer Gilbert, photo collage I of Pulsar, 2018. 184
14.4 Ana Cristina Bohrer Gilbert, photo collage II of Pulsar, 2018. 185
Contributors
Jon Blackwood is a reader in contemporary art at Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon
University, Aberdeen. He has written extensively on modern and contemporary art in
the countries of the former Yugoslavia and has curated exhibitions internationally. He
divides his time between Aberdeen, Skopje, and Sarajevo.
Ana Cristina Bohrer Gilbert is a psychotherapist, photographer, and independent scholar.
She holds a PhD in Public Health and developed postdoctoral research in Cultural
Studies on disability. She is the author of Vértice do Impensável: um estudo de nar
rativas em síndrome de Down and other publications on the subject.
T. J. Demos teaches at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the director of its
Center for Creative Ecologies. He writes widely on contemporary art, global politics,
and ecology, and is the author of Decolonizing Nature: Contemporary Art and Poli
tical Ecology (Sternberg, 2016) and Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and
Environment Today (Sternberg, 2017).
Begüm Özden Fırat is Associate Professor at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul.
She works across visual culture, urban sociology, and social movements studies. Pub
lications include Commitment and Complicity in Cultural Theory and Practice (Pal
grave Macmillan, 2009), Cultural Activism (Rodopi, 2011), and Aesthetics and
.
Resistance in the age of Global Uprisings (Iletis¸im, 2015).
Bram Ieven is a cultural critic and a university lecturer at the Leiden University Centre
for Arts in Society (The Netherlands). His research focuses on contemporary aesthetic
theory and art in relation to the public sphere.
Na’ama Klorman-Eraqi received her PhD from SUNY Binghamton in 2014. She is a lec
turer in the Art History Department at the University of Haifa. Her publications
include the monograph The Visual Is Political: Feminist Photography and Counter-
cultural Activity in 1970s Britain (Rutgers University Press, 2019) and articles in Pho
tography and Culture and Feminist Media Studies.
Isaac Leung is a practicing artist, curator, and scholar. In 2013 Leung was appointed as
the Chairman of Videotage, one of Asia’s first non-profits for media arts. He works as
Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts of Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Zintombizethu Matebeni is a scholar-activist whose work and numerous publications
advance African Queer Studies. She is Associate Professor at the University of the
Western Cape where she teaches Sociology. Zethu is also visiting professor at the
List of contributors ix
Centre for Women and Gender Studies at the Nelson Mandela University, South
Africa.
Ksenia Robbe is Assistant Professor in European and Russian Literature and Culture,
University of Groningen. Publications include Conversations of Motherhood: South
African Women’s Writing Across Traditions (UKZN Press, 2015) and Post-Soviet
Nostalgia: Confronting the Empire’s Legacies (Routledge, 2019). Her work theorizes
intersections between postcolonial and post-socialist imaginations in a global context.
Hilary Robinson is Professor of Feminism, Art, and Theory, Loughborough University,
UK. She was Dean, College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, and Head,
Art & Design, University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. Publications include Visibly
Female (Camden, 1987), Reading Art, Reading Irigaray (I. B. Tauris, 2006), Feminism
Art-Theory 1968–2014 (Wiley, 2015), and Companion to Feminist Art (Wiley, 2019).
Eliza Steinbock is Assistant Professor of Cultural Analysis, Leiden University. They are
the author of Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment, and the Aesthetics of
Change (Duke, 2019), convener of the conference “Art & Activism: Resilience Tech
niques in Times of Crisis” (Leiden, 2017), and project-leader of “The Critical Visitor”
consortium, developing intersectional approaches for inclusive heritage (2020–2025).
Marijke de Valck is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Utrecht University. She is
known for her work on film festivals, and co-founded the Film Festival Research
Network. Her publications include Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to
Global Cinephilia (AUP, 2007) and Film Festivals: History, Theory, Method, Praxis
(Routledge, 2016).
Syrus Marcus Ware is a Vanier scholar PhD candidate at York University in the Faculty
of Environmental Studies, visual artist, activist, curator, and educator. Syrus uses
painting, installation, and performance to explore social justice frameworks and Black
activist culture, and he has shown widely in galleries and festivals across Canada.
Keri Watson is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Central Florida
where she teaches courses in modern and contemporary art and the history of photo
graphy. Her research focuses on representations of race, gender, and dis/ability in the
art of the United States.
Kitty Zijlmans is Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory/World Art Studies
at Leiden University. Her fields of interest are contemporary art, art theory, and
methodology. She is especially interested in the ongoing intercultural processes of the
art(world) and collaboration and exchange with artists in the context of Artistic
Research.
