ON ACTIVISM
The oath taken at the point of becoming a police constable in England and Wales. Background image: Jenny Holzer’s ‘Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise’.
We're often asked about elements of activism within our collaborative practice as RAKE. Although each of us works separately within different fields of activism, we tend to discover some tension or discomfort when answering these questions. Our shared interests and political engagement are some of the main influences behind the work we make as RAKE - where the themes we address seek to challenge oppressive power structures - but whether our practical outcomes, and visual art in general, can ever really be considered ‘activism’ is something we regularly discuss.
Protest and civil disobedience have a long history of achievement, and so many of the freedoms and privileges we enjoy today are the results of direct action. Despite being criminalised, surveilled, attacked and policed, grassroots movements or events, from the Suffragettes, the Freedom Riders and Stonewall - through to Smash EDO, Extinction Rebellion and Palestine Action, have won vital human rights and environmental victories by purposefully and consciously breaking the law. Of course, when oppressive laws have no moral authority, ‘breaking the law’ becomes legitimate; particularly when some of the worst and most violent atrocities in human history have been legal.
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It’s no coincidence that the KKK has never been considered a domestic terrorist group by the US government and yet the Black Panther Party was labelled the ‘most dangerous threat to America’ - or that over 1,000 XR activists were recently taken to court (again) while far-right anti-maskers regularly storm London with an inconsistent scattering of arrests. Striving for a better future by challenging the status quo (whether or not nonviolently) has been consistently over-criminalised. Recent events have once again confirmed that activism and people power can be extremely effective; and have highlighted the importance of fighting back against a broken system. In the words of Assata Shakur, “nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”.
The Cambridge English Dictionary describes activism as “the use of direct and noticeable action to achieve a result, usually a political or social one”. While political art is usually, by its nature, ‘noticeable’; whether it can be defined as ‘direct’ is another matter. In The Author as Producer (1934), Walter Benjamin makes a distinction between cultural production which is used to express an attitude towards a political situation, and that which takes a position within politics. Banners on the frontline of protests, or ad-hacks on buses and billboards, are effective ways of expressing political opinion to a wide audience - and are certainly ‘noticeable’. But history has shown time and time again that simply expressing political opinion as a standalone act rarely changes anything. Visual art which takes a position within politics is art that actively and directly produces alternatives or affects changes to oppressive institutional structures. Works by Zanele Muholi and Poulomi Basu are examples of visual media made with a strong activist agenda that have enabled real, lasting societal or policy change. However, it is rare to get such powerful results from visual media alone.
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It can be frustrating for artists who want to translate elements of activism into their visual work to find that, unless they are a member of the community they want to work with, or are personally affected by the pressing need for direct action, this agenda is near impossible; both ethically and practically. However, there are other ways to channel activism into visual expression from a position of privilege. Instead of solely focusing on those affected by injustice and oppression, it’s often more helpful to question the systems that are closer to home; how our own communities, governments or we as individuals are complicit in this suffering. To research, interrogate and visualise the shortcomings, prejudice or violence within our own society - ‘our own backyard’ - can not only be a powerful method of drawing attention to major political imperatives, but also fall within our responsibilities to challenge the very systems that we benefit from.
RAKE strives to actively subvert the ever-shifting boundaries of art as a discipline - and to direct our practice towards, one day, becoming a useful and effective instrument for implementing social and political change - but it’s still important for us as individuals to distinguish between this work and our activism. Visual art has the potential to bring about radical political change; when created in partnership with community organising, people power and other direct forms of action; but not simply as an alternative to these. Direct political action will always be supported and inspired by visual art, but the struggle must be continued on the streets, beyond hierarchical art institutions, for real change to occur.
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