Here in 2019, while living in ‘American End Times,’ during the
horrific and criminal Trump administration, I’ve seen many calls for ‘Activist
Art’ to protest the inevitable Republican achievement of the destruction of the
United States of America and end of Democracy as we knew it.
Yeah, right. Like art is going
to change anything.
Remember the Women’s March, AKA the ‘Pussy Hat’ protest of 2016? How’d that work out? Did you see any changes? Nope.
Like ‘Artist-Activists’ they achieved nothing except feeling good about
themselves and seeming like they’re ‘doing something.’ Sure, it showed a lot of unhappy people but
little else.
If you’re an artist who thinks you can create artworks that will
affect social change you’re wrong. Sure,
you’ll feel like you’ve contributed to the resistance but politicians don’t
give a damn about your symbolic gestures.
Yes, there is some ‘protest art’ that has withstood the test of time and
is recognized as indicative of the time in which it was created but that art
didn’t cause any real changes and had no bearing or influence on anything
significant at the time.
‘Activist Art’ may impress your dim professor at Art School, or
perhaps it’ll sway some Grant-giving committee because nobody receives free money merely to make pretty pictures but society-at-large
doesn’t care. It doesn’t even register
with ‘art consumers.’ Your activist art
may be absolutely fucking brilliant but it’s little more than a fart in a
hurricane when it comes to any social influence.
Art is metaphor, art is symbol, a lot of art isn’t obvious and requires
some mental work from the viewer to interpret.
Do you really think that a dumbass Trump-supporter is going to
comprehend the subtleties of your oh-so profound artistic protest? No!
Hell no, no way! The very people
the ‘activist artist’ needs to influence are the stupidest among us. Not
only will they not get it, they’ll work hard
not to. These are the willfully
ignorant, watchers of Fox News, flat-Earthers, climate-change deniers, the ‘poorly
educated,’ and are generally fucking morons.
This isn’t hyperbole. I’ll give
you a profound, and deadly example:
Remember the World Trade Center bombing of 1993? Probably not because it wasn’t a big enough terrorist
act to get attention. Nah, a little
smoke coming out of the underground parking garage didn’t register in our
collective consciousness. But what about
September 11, 2001? You know, 9/11? Everybody
remembers that act of terrorism don’t they?
And why? Because four airplanes were
hijacked simultaneously and two of them were flown straight into the World
Trade Center Towers. Yeah! Fully loaded, fully fueled passenger planes
crashing directly into the two tallest buildings in the country finally got
America’s collective attention! The
World Trade Center terrorists of 1993 were just as pissed-off as the 19 skyjackers
of 9/11 but it took a huge, audacious act creating a scene reminiscent of a Godzilla movie to get Americans’ heads
out of their lazy, consumerist asses long enough to get their attention. Yup, that was America’s wake-up call. Nothing subtle about it.
So if it takes big airplanes flown into office buildings to make
Americans understand the need for social change do you actually think your art is going to make a damn bit of difference?
NO!
You might be applying some artificial significance to your work by
positioning it as ‘activism’ but you’re not going to change society.
ART IS NOT A SIGNIFICANT FORCE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE.
Do you really want to affect society?
Do you really want to ‘make a difference?’ Here’s how:
Vote.
Get yourself elected
to political office.
Fight in the
revolution.
Making ‘art for social change’ isn’t going to cut it. Symbolic gestures do little. At the absolute
bare minimum, go vote because nobody’s going to change their political views
based on your artwork.
