,In my internet searches on artistic activism and examples of it, I stumbled across something interesting that I'd never seen before in my time as an artist: The Center for Artistic Activism. The center has branches throughout the world, including the U.S., Netherlands, Kenya and South Africa, which shows that social and political activism and its ties to art is an important global talking point. The center's goal is to "explore, analyze and strengthen connections between social activism and artistic practice." The website even says that art is more than what I would describe as a type of isolated tactic but rather a "philosophy" or "practice" in and of itself. People are actually looking at artistic activism as a PHILOSOPHY, which directly ties into the title of this course and our fundamental questions: What is art? What is its purpose? This center is trying to claim that, in some ways, art NEEDS to be used to promote sociopolitical agendas. Artists, it claims, are major players in social revolutions or societal change. The center even has a School for Creative Activism to train artists in this practice. It teaches cultural strategies and practices effective for past protesters and organziers, ways to plan campaigns and protests that utilize visual and other creativity, ways to recognize strengths within communities (especially artistic ones), and build a network of artists to make organizing more creative and effective in a world saturated by media and "spectacle" — which Benjamin would call art that "distracts us" or is simply "entertainment" rather than enriching in any way. This center and its school wants to draw upon mass distraction and our attraction to mass media that is meant to dazzle and use it in artwork and organization to draw people toward a cause. The school teaches "creative ways to engage politics," presumably, in my opinion, to get a larger mass of people involved through channels like social media, art galleries or modern music. Thus, the organizers or campaigners broaden their appeal, which is a key reason for using art for the sake of activism/protest.
Link to the center's website: https://artisticactivism.org
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