Performance Action

Performance Action looks to advance the understanding of how art activism works
in practice, by unpacking the relationship between the processes and politics that
lie at its heart. Focusing on the UK but situating its analysis in a global context of
art activism, the book presents a range of different cases of performance-based art
activism, including the anti-oil sponsorship performances of groups like Shell Out
Sounds and BP or not BP?, the radical pedagogy project Shake!, the psychogeo-
graphical practice of Loiterers Resistance Movement, and the queer performances
of the artist network Left Front Art. Based on participatory, ethnographic research,
Performance Action brings together a wealth of first-hand accounts and interviews
followed by in-depth analysis of the processes and politics of art activist practice.
The book is unique in that it adopts an interdisciplinary approach that borrows con-
cepts and theories from the fields of art history, aesthetics, anthropology, sociology,
and performance studies, and proposes a new framework for a better understanding
of how art activism works, focusing on processes. The book argues that art activism
is defined by its dual nature as aesthetic-political practice, and that this duality and
the way it is manifested in different processes, from the building of a shared collec-
tive identity to the politics of participation, is key towards fully understanding what
sets apart art activism from other forms of artistic and political practice. The book
is aimed at both specialist and non-specialist audiences, offering an accessible and
engaging way into both new empirical and theoretical contributions in the field of
art activism, as well as wider subjects such as participation in the arts, collective
identity, transgression, prefiguration, and institutional critique.

Paula Serafini is a cultural politics scholar, artist, and educator. Her work is con-
cerned with the relationship between aesthetics and politics, particularly in rela-
tion to contemporary cultural practices and institutions and environmental and
social justice movements. She is currently a Research Associate at CAMEo Re-
search Institute for Cultural and Media Economies, University of Leicester, and
holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Analysis (King’s College London), an MA in
­A nthropology & Cultural Politics (Goldsmiths College), and a BA in Art History
and Cultural Management (Universidad del Salvador, Argentina). Her previous
publications include journal articles in Third Text and Anarchist Studies, and the ed-
ited collection artWORK: Art, Labour and Activism, co-edited with Alberto Cossu
and Jessica Holtaway (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018). She has curated
projects and exhibitions in London and Bath, and is involved in a number of art and
editorial projects in London and Buenos Aires.
Routledge Studies in Political Sociology

Performance Action
The Politics of Art Activism
Paula Serafini
Performance Action
The Politics of Art Activism

Paula Serafini
First published 2018
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2018 Paula Serafini
The right of Paula Serafini to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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To my grandparents
Contents

List of figures ix
Acknowledgements xi

Introduction 1

1 ‘Harmonic disobedience’: Constructing a collective

identity in an activist choir 26

2 A Viking longship: Participation in performance action 45

3 From transgression to prefiguration: Performance

action as a blueprint for social change 64

4 Breaking barriers: Bodies, institutions, and codes 87

5 Loitering in the city: Psychogeography as art activism 99

6 New narratives: Rethinking activism through art in the

youth project ‘Voices that Shake!’ 115

7 Breaking the mould: Art activism and art institutions 141

8 Towards a theory of art activism 163

Afterword 193

Index 195
List of figures

1.1 Art Not Oil collective performance at the National

Portrait Gallery, 21 June 2014. Image by the author 35
1.2 Shell Out Sounds singing at Parliament Square with
Occupy Democracy activists, 21 December 2014.
Image by the author 39
2.1 BP or not BP?’s BP Viking longship inside the British
Museum, London, 15 June 2014. Image by the author 53
2.2 BP or not BP?’s BP Vikings performance at the British
Museum, London, 15 June 2014. Image by the author 59
3.1 Shell Out Sounds doing a second edition of Carols,
nor Barrels outside the National Gallery, London,
21 December 2014. Image by the author 75
3.2 BP or not BP? performing at Tate Britain, London,
19 January 2014. Image by the author 77
5.1 Psychogeographical walk with Loiterers Resistance
Movement, Manchester, 2 June 2014. Image by the author 104
5.2 Image taken during a walk with Loiterers Resistance
Movement, Manchester, 2 June 2014. Image by the author 109
6.1 Group workshop during the Shake! course Surviving
the System, London, October 2016. Image by the author 117
6.2 Shake! participant sharing her poetry on the final day
of the course Headspace, Bernie Grant Arts Centre, 2014.
Image by the author 124
6.3 Drinking tea and sharing readings during the Shake!
course Foodfight at Spotlight, August 2015. Image by the author 131
7.1 Liberate Tate performing Time Piece at Tate Modern,
London, 13 June 2015. Image by the author 146
7.2 Banner signing in solidarity with Aboriginal Australian
activists during a BP or not BP? performance action at the
British Museum, protesting against BP’s sponsorship of the
exhibition Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilisation,
19 July 2015. Image by the author 153
8.1 Strategy-aesthetics-prefiguration triad of art activism 188
Acknowledgements

This book is the result of seven years of research, teaching, and practice on
art activism. The ideas and proposals presented here were shaped by the
people I met along the way, and by countless conversations, shared a­ ctions,
and collaborative research that took place during this period. My first thank
you therefore goes to the artists and activists whose work is featured in this
book, as well as those with whom I have had the pleasure of making art,
and those who were generous enough to contribute their time and thoughts
for this and other research projects. I am sincerely grateful to Platform and
Shake! for welcoming me into a unique project whose uncompromising
courage I admire so deeply. Farhana Khan, Sai Murray, Zena Edwards,
and everyone at Platform are among the most inspiring people I have met. I
am also deeply grateful to friends and comrades in Art Not Oil, a campaign
that has grown and achieved so much in the last few years. I especially value
formal and informal exchanges with members of Shell Out Sounds and BP
or not BP?, and in particular Chris Garrard for his sensibility and his com-
mitment to art that strikes a chord.
I also want to acknowledge the influence of Jess Holtaway, Marc Herbst,
and Alberto Cossu in my work. The research, experimenting, and sharing we
have done together as part of the PLANK research network has been incred-
ibly stimulating. I am grateful as well to my friends with whom I shared the
first steps into academia: Photini Vrikki, Kate Mattocks, Aysegul K­ esimoglu,
­Jeremy Matthew, Sally Chen, Steven Parfitt, Jou-an Chen, and Spela ­Drnovsek
Zorko, without whom I would not have made it to the other side.
I am deeply grateful for the guidance and advice of my PhD supervisor
Tim Jordan who always went the extra mile, and for the support of everyone
at the Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries at King’s C ­ ollege
London where I conducted most of the research featured in this book. I also
thank my current colleagues at University of Leicester for w
­ elcoming me so
warmly into a thriving and always exciting research environment, in par-
ticular Mark Banks, Doris Eikhof, Stevie Marsden, Isobel Woodlife, and
Jennifer Smith Maguire.
I extend my gratitude to Neil Jordan and everyone at Routledge for their
support in this project. Also, I am grateful to Richard Dyer, Editor in Chief
xii Acknowledgements
for Third Text and Taylor & Francis Group (www.tandfonline.com) for per-
mitting the partial republication of my article ‘Prefiguring Performance’,
originally published in the journal Third Text in 2015, and to Katherine
Harris at Lawrence & Wishart for permitting the partial republication of
my article ‘Beyond the Institution’, originally published in the journal Anar-
chist Studies, also in 2015.
Finally, I thank my friends, new and old, especially Xixi Zheng, María De
Vecchi, and Geraldine Brandan. And most importantly I thank my amazing
family—parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and more—and in
particular my sister Cecilia Serafini and my partner Philipp Katsinas for
their unconditional love and encouragement.
Introduction

The last decade (2008–2018) was marked by the financial crisis of 2008 and
the wave of revolutionary uprisings and social and political unrest that
sparked in the Middle East and subsequently spread across countries and
continents (Mason 2012). While several movements struggled against re-
pressive regimes in countries such as Libya and Egypt, others in countries
such as the UK, Spain, Italy, and Greece organised against the implemen-
tation of austerity measures and neoliberal economic policies. This period
also saw the emergence of the Occupy movement in the US and then in cities
across the globe, demanding a more equal distribution of wealth and an end
to the mechanisms that reproduce inequality. The last five years have seen
yet another surge of protest movements of transnational dimensions, many
of which are still fighting for freedom and equality and against austerity, but
also addressing issues such as racism and institutional violence (Black Lives
Matter), climate change (Climate Marches and affiliated movements), and
gender violence (Ni Una Menos). Recent years have also seen the emergence
of protest movements linked to specific political events, such as marches op-
posing the rise of Donald Trump in the US and the Brexit referendum in the
UK, and the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong against proposed reforms
to the electoral system. Several of these protests were in turn intertwined
with wider movements for equality and freedom.
But alongside these movements there were also numerous other practices
of resistance taking place that did not make the global news or fit into a
narrative of ‘waves’ of global protest due to scale, marginality, or not fit-
ting the ‘event’ logic. These include new as well as long-standing movements
such as the 2011 Public Service Unions’ strike in Botswana, movements in
­Argentina working against the economic and social effects of neoliberal
policy, and mothers of the disappeared organising for justice in Mexico.
All of these struggles and movements share one thing: the proliferation
of creative tactics, striking images, and theatricality. Student protests in the
UK featured giant shields in the shape of books, a tactic borrowed from
Italian activists. Tahrir Square in Egypt became a site for street art and for
communal singing (Wahdan 2014). Occupy, a movement that had several art-
ists at its core, stood out for the aesthetics of its DiY (Do it Yourself) camps,
2  Introduction
but also engaged in creative interventions in the shape of performances,
eventually setting up the subgroup Occupy Museums (McKee 2016). Cli-
mate Marches across the world featured striking visuals, costumes, and
props, most notably in 2014. And the ‘pussy hats’ (pink knitted hats made in
response to the misogynistic remarks of then-presidential candidate Donald
Trump1) brought craft making to the political arena, providing previously
un-­politicised publics an opportunity to participate in a feminist movement.
While many of these tactics are new, art and creativity are not uncommon
in activism and social movements (Tucker 2010, Reed 2005), and many crea-
tive forms of protest still relevant now had in fact been perfected during a pre-
vious wave of local and global movements in the late 1990s and early 2000s,
known as the alter-globalisation movement (Graeber 2002:66). This previous
wave of protests has also inspired a rich body of literature on creativity and
social movements (e.g. Juris 2008, Shepard 2011), which has without a doubt
not only influenced a new generation of activists, but has also shaped the way
social movements are approached by several scholars today. But despite the
fact that the connections between art and creativity and social movements
have been well acknowledged and documented in the past decade, and to
some extent before, there is still a significant gap in the theoretical and meth-
odological approaches to this subject. This is particularly the case when it
comes to producing contemporary studies that are interdisciplinary and that
can speak to both the aesthetic aspect of these movements and actions and
the organisational dimension. It is this gap that this book wishes to address.

Approaches to art activism

The relationship between art and politics and the role of art as a vehicle
for social change have long been objects of interest for art historians, phi-
losophers, and cultural theorists alike, from Benjamin’s (1970) work on the
artist as producer and the politics of the means of production to Rancière’s
(2007, 2010) deliberations on politics and aesthetics and T.V. Reed’s (2005)
seminal work on the culture of social movements. Within a broad range of
literature on art and politics, which spans topics such as the politics of aes-
thetics, the social nature of art, the politics of art institutions, and the art of
social movements, there has been a body of literature dedicated to what we
can define as activist art, or art activism. Lippard famously describes activ-
ist art as a practice that “operates both within and beyond the beleaguered
fortress that is high culture or the ‘art world’” (1984:341), is not confined to
a particular style and “is probably best defined in terms of its functions”
(ibid:342), and “is, above all, process-oriented” (ibid:343). Activist art—or
art activism, as I will refer to it from now on—differs from political or crit-
ical art in that it is not just criticising social and political structures; it is in-
volved in trying to effect change (Lippard 1984, Groys 2014). Art activism is
however an elusive term, which has been used to refer both to the work of
artists mobilising to change society (and/or the cultural sector in particular)
and to the creative and artistic tactics of activists operating outside of the
 Introduction  3
cultural sector altogether. Variants of this term also include artistic activist
art and artivism, which different authors have often used interchangeably.
The subject of this book is the practice of art activism, and I use this term to
refer to practices that employ artistic forms with the objective of achieving
social and/or political change, and which emerge from or are directly linked
to social movements and struggles. While adhering to Lippard’s description
and understanding of this practice, I concentrate here on practices that are
linked to or emerge out of grassroots projects as opposed to the institutional
art world, shifting focus away from the art world, which is still at the centre
of much literature on the topic (e.g. Lippard 1984, Sholette 2011, Jelinek 2013,
Thompson 2015, McKee 2016).2
Of particular interest when speaking of art activism is a wave of writings
that sprung up around the time of the alter-globalisation movement and
continues to date, in large part originating from the US, where activists/
artists/­cultural workers—on many occasions turned scholars—have docu-
mented the stories of spectacular interventions, mass performances, direct
action projects, and other creative initiatives for social change, and have
also produced manuals for the cultural revolution (e.g. Duncombe 2002,
2007, Reed 2005, Holmes 2009, Shepard 2011, Sholette 2011, 2017, Boyd and
Mitchell 2012, Thompson 2015, McKee 2016). Several of these works have at
the same time developed important theoretical perspectives on issues such
as the state of the cultural sector and the position of art workers as political
subjects.3
While this wave of publications makes up the bundle of ‘contemporary
classics’ on art activism, and has introduced concepts that have shaped
our way of looking at creative resistance—many of these works will be
drawn upon throughout this book—there is nonetheless a lack of theoris-
ing on the internal processes and micro-politics of art activism, an issue
that is at the core of this study. In order to address this gap, I argue, it is
not only imperative to shift focus towards the internal everyday processes
and ­m icro-politics of art activist practice, but it is also necessary to do so
through an interdisciplinary lens that can provide a deeper understanding
of how aesthetics and politics interact in the practice of art activism. To that
end, I propose an interdisciplinary framework that goes back to essential
concepts and theories on aesthetics and politics and the social nature of
art, as well as perspectives from social movement studies and from perfor-
mance theory and sociology of the body. These last two perspectives will
be particularly important in terms of looking at experiences and processes,
as I will demonstrate in what follows, and are suitable for the kind of em-
bedded ethnographic methods this study is based on, which I will describe
further along this introduction.

Politics and the public sphere

Politics, argues Castoriadis, “concerns the overall, explicit institution of
society and the decisions that concern its future” (1993:105–106). In the
4  Introduction
context of this book, which looks specifically at the processes of art ac-
tivism, it is useful to consider certain understandings of politics and the
political that can be useful for framing the kinds of phenomena and
­processes I will be investigating. Amin and Thrift, for instance, put for-
ward an understanding of the political as “how the desire for a differ-
ent future can be threaded into people’s lives as both a set of existential
territories and an expressive allegiance so they believe that they, too,
can have a stake in the world” (Amin and Thrift 2013:x). They propose
looking at politics “not as a stable field but as a field whose form and con-
tent are continually redefined” (ibid:6). The present study is not a work
of political theory and does not employ a political theory framework.
However, keeping in mind this understanding of politics and the politi-
cal is important, as what I will do here is look at the different processes
through which politics are enacted, and explore the politics and experi-
ences of these processes. I am adopting a position which acknowledges
that “difference and disagreement are central to existence” and “[p]olit-
ical projects […] cannot stay fixed” (Amin and Thrift 2013:xii); in other
words, what could be described as an agonistic vision of society and of
the public sphere (Mouffe 2000).
The public sphere was famously theorised by Jürgen Habermas
(1991), who claimed the public sphere emerged in the eighteenth century
in ­Europe and the US. It was “an arena outside of the state and the family,
[…] where unimpeded conversation took place and new forms of criticism
of existing power could be voiced” (Tucker 2010:18). While Habermas
gave mention to the physical spaces where the public sphere was enacted
(salons and coffee houses, for instance) his focus was on its discursive
element of it, namely the role of the written word. The public sphere and
public spaces as discursive and physical arenas for aesthetical-political
action will be discussed in this book in relation to cultural institutions
as contested spaces, the re-signification of public spaces, and issues of
access, meaning who has a voice in these public arenas. ­C hapters 6 and
7 in this book will expand on the public sphere and look at critiques to
Habermas’s model, namely his failure to conceive of subaltern publics as
opposed to a homogenised one. This critique was developed by theorists
such as Nancy Fraser (1990), who argued subaltern publics are realms
created by disenfranchised groups where they can raise issues of identity
and generate solidarity links in a way that is not possible in the dominant
public sphere (Tucker 2010:19). Indeed, as Butler argues,

one reason the sphere of the political cannot be defined by the classic
conception of the polis is that we are then deprived of having and using
a language for those forms of agency and resistance undertaken by the
dispossessed.
(Butler 2015:79)
 Introduction  5
In his analysis of art and politics, Rancière (2010) equates the political act to
the aesthetic act, considering them both to be ways of disrupting consensus
(Rancière 2010:140). He describes consensus democracy as a form of democ-
racy in which people are reduced to subjects, and politics is perceived as an
affair handled by professional politicians. But actual politics, he claims, is
the activity that can overturn this ‘proper’ distribution. The act of d­ issensus,
a breaking of the consensus, argues for equality that reverses this unequal
distribution of political—and artistic—participation. Rancière sees the
­political act as a particular instance—a speech ­situation—in which the sub-
ordinate or excluded stand up for themselves. This act is litigious, because it
exposes and contests the arbitrary hierarchy in society and the fact that only
privileged voices can be heard. By allowing the unrepresented to speak, the
political act generates a redistribution or sharing of the ­sensible (Rancière
2010:139). This is particularly complex in the context of social orders that
officially presuppose and promote equality, but at the same time repress it.
Rancière argues that “politics invents new forms of collective enunciation”
(ibid:139), while aesthetics create new forms of individuality. “Art and pol-
itics each define a form of dissensus, a dissensual re-­configuration of the
common experience of the sensible” (ibid:140).
This idea of dissensus can be compared to the notion of transgression, as
the act of dissensus looks to disrupt the consensus and transgress the distri-
bution of the sensible in the public sphere. This book will look at the mean-
ing and experience of transgression in a variety of contexts, adhering to
what can be understood as a postmodern perspective on social movements
that “privileges difference over unity and historical breaks over continuity
and emphasizes transgressive behaviours and ideas” (Tucker 2010:52). How-
ever, this will be done keeping in mind that transgression should be under-
stood as one way of enacting politics and not the only way, as this would
limit the repertoire of action, neglecting certain forms of politics that are
not regarded as transgressive but that can be key aspects of resistance (those
non-spectacular, everyday community-based acts of solidarity in situations
of oppression, for instance).
This book will argue that in addition to transgression, prefigurative pol-
itics is very much entrenched in contemporary art activist practice. Prefig-
uration can be understood as the implementation ‘in the now’ of processes
and ways of relating that we wish to see in a future, ideal s­ ociety (Maeck-
elbergh 2016). It can also be described as “world-making” ­capacity, “the
ability not just to produce a program in the future but also to open up new
notions of what the future might consist of” (Amin and Thrift 2013:9). Amin
and Thrift (2013) argue that there are three political arts that movements
of the left should invest in developing: invention, organisation, and affect.
This book tries to understand how these arts are developed by different con-
temporary movements, looking at their prefigurative capacity, internal pro-
cesses and negotiations, and personal and collective affective experiences.
6  Introduction
Art, aesthetics, and sociopolitical engagement
Arnold Berleant claims that the body is always involved in aesthetic activity,
whether in a more active way—as in participatory or interactive art—or in
everyday and personal creative acts. He proposes that experience is always
embodied, and therefore proposes that when looking at the experience of
art we think of a form of aesthetic embodiment as opposed to the Kantian
(1978[1790]) aesthetic experience. This approach to the experience of art
adds “intensed focus, charged meaning, and perceptual power, for embod-
iment is highly perceptual” (Berleant 2004:86). In Art as Experience (2005
[1934]), John Dewey proposes integrating art into the experience of every-
day life by freeing it from the limited realm of the museum. Like Berleant,
Dewey places emphasis on experience rather than artefact when describing
the value of art. This perspective is also espoused by contemporary theorists
in the study of participatory arts (e.g. Kester 2011).
In his study of the aesthetics of social movements, Tucker argues that

Aesthetics can be transformative and transgressive, “defamiliarizing

the world” and inventing a sense of new political and social possibilities.
Like its sister activity play, it can take to the streets, parks, and other
public venues and inform a vision of social life that opposes capitalist
and bureaucratic instrumental reason in favor of a qualitatively differ-
ent social, political, and personal world.
(Tucker 2010:7)

He argues that looking at aesthetic politics is important in both the practice

and study of contemporary activism and social movements, as “­Aesthetic
politics appeals to and relies upon identification with emotions, visual styles,
and images when constructing political activities and ideas” (Tucker 2010:5).
Tucker adds that the last century is characterised by a distinctive aesthetic
politics that is opposed to “instrumental rationalization and the capitalist
commodification of experience and pleasures”, and is concerned with “emo-
tion and symbolism rather than moral meanings”. As a result, it “allows for
particular types of strategies”, including performance-based ones (Tucker
2010:45), a point to which I will return later in this introduction.
Acknowledging the potential of art as transformative experience, the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen the emergence of artistic
practices that are geared towards the social. The 1970s, for instance, were
an important moment for community arts (Poll 2010), and the 1990s and be-
ginning of this century saw the rise of socially engaged art. Socially engaged
art is the term used to refer to art projects that are participatory and engage
with specific communities, and through this work intend to bring about
short- or long-term change at a local scale. It is, in a way, a type of ‘critical’
(or ‘political’) art because it tends to criticise the structures and effects of
capitalism (Bishop 2012), but it is more commonly aligned to a reformist
political position as opposed to a radical or transgressive one.
 Introduction  7
These artists aim at producing art that takes one step outside the art
i­ nstitution and into other spheres, and in this way blurring the boundaries
that separate art from life. The engagement with communities is the reason
why this type of practice is sometimes referred to as ‘activist art’. But even
if they take place within communities and outside the physical space of art
galleries and museums, these projects are still conceived by artists within a
professionalised art world, and hence are commissioned, funded, and sup-
ported by these same institutions (Jelinek 2013:27).
After socially engaged art, and following this path towards inserting art in
everyday contexts, came what is known as social practice. Sholette (2015:95)
speaks about the rapid expansion of the field of social practice due to its
ability to create connections between the visual arts and a variety of other
practices that we can consider social (or intervening the social sphere), in-
cluding different forms of research and everyday practices such as walking
and cooking. He adds that “by working with human affect and experience
as an artistic medium social practice draws directly upon the state of society
that we actually find ourselves in today: fragmented and alienated by decades
of privatization, monetization, and ultra-deregulation” (Sholette 2015:109).
Practices that fall into the categories of socially engaged art and social
practice do on occasion blur with art activism, as these are not fixed dis-
tinctions. Regardless of which category they fit, engaged, participatory
practices have been at the centre of a debate between autonomy and social
embeddedness for the transformative potential of art, a debate that is over
a century old and that has been revisited by scholars of socially engaged
practices. In order to deconstruct this debate, I will first return to the work
of Jacques Rancière, this time focusing on his ideas on aesthetics.

The transformative potential of art

Jacques Rancière defines aesthetics refers to “a specific regime for identify-
ing and reflecting on the arts: a mode of articulation between ways of doing
and making, their corresponding forms of visibility, and possible ways of
thinking about their relationships” (2004:10). For Rancière, aesthetics is the
domain of the sensible, and his work on aesthetics and politics is concerned
precisely with how the sensible is distributed. He describes the distribution
of the sensible as

the system of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultane-

ously disclose the existence of something in common and the delimi-
tations that define the respective parts and positions within it […] This
­appointment of parts and positions is based on a distribution of spaces,
times, and forms of activity that determines the very manner in which
­something in common lends itself to participation and in what way
­various individuals have a part in this distribution.
(Rancière 2004:12)
8  Introduction
The distribution of the sensible is important in a study of political action
because it “reveals who can have a share in what is common to the commu-
nity based on what they do and on the time and space in which this activity
is performed” (Rancière 2004:12).
Aesthetics for Rancière “determines the place and the stakes of politics
as a form of experience” (Rancière 2004:13). And, argues Charnley, “For
Rancière, the experience of the aesthetic in art is one of autonomy”, one that
acts as a motor for “calling into question the social and political ­constraints
of the state” (Charnley 2011:41). In her reading of Rancière, Charnley ar-
gues that Rancière identifies two poles for political art: a strand that seeks
to blend art and life, and art that puts forward a social critique from its
­position within the autonomous art sphere (Charnley 2011:42). She adds that
“Rancière often seems wary of work that attempts to bridge the gap be-
tween art and life, insisting that this practice must end in disappointment”
(­Charnley 2011:38).
Adopting a similar position to Rancière’s, key theorists of participatory
art Bourriaud and Bishop both reject activist art as predictable and f­ utile
(Kester 2011:31), and claim that it sacrifices aesthetics for the sake of social
change (ibid:59). These critics believe that art, in its autonomous realm, has
a capacity for transforming subjectivities that is unique to its experience
and should not be compromised by placing art at the service of activist pro-
jects. This strand of thought rejects the idea of art being ‘instrumentalised’
for social or political ends, and celebrates art’s autonomy as a guarantee of
artistic freedom. But, argues Kester, “By maintaining such an absolute di-
vision between the sequestered realm of art practice (textualized, detached,
authorially-regulated) and social or political engagement (which is always at
risk of compromise)”, this perspective fails to contemplate “the possibility
that social interaction or political engagement itself might transform subjec-
tivity or produce its own forms of insight” (Kester 2011:59).
Kester’s position opens up the idea of a kind of practice that is commit-
ted to social change but which does not abandon the quest for aesthetic
experiences. Following this line of thought, Charnley argues that there is
a third strand of “politicized collaborative art, where aesthetic autonomy
and ­socio-political claims are superimposed. The question remains how
this contradiction can be understood as the starting point for the politics of
these works, rather than as some kind of negation of it” (Charnley 2011:50).
The question posed by Charnley, which lies at the core of this book, is
whether art can dissolve the boundaries between itself and the social, while
still putting forward a strong and powerful critique that uses the language of
artistic practice. Here I will look at a series of art activist practices as both
grassroots activism and art, arguing that the tensions between aesthetics
and politics are indeed a crucial aspect of this kind of practice, but that
prefigurative approaches to art activism can begin to dissolve some of these
tensions and achieve forms of art making that are embedded in politics and
using art as a form. In this book, I will challenge the distinction between art
 Introduction  9
and activism, following Kester’s position, and go one step further, examin-
ing the relationship between aesthetics and politics in different aspects of
art activist practice, in order to argue that the production of subjectivities
emerging from this context is a distinct one.

Social movement theory

An interdisciplinary framework for the study of art activism should include
theories and approaches from the field of social movement theory. This will
prepare the ground for an understanding of art activism's organisational
politics, and the ways in which it is defined by its relation to wider social
and movements. The theories that have been built around social movements
offer differing and sometimes seemingly contradictory positions, valuing
or focusing on one aspect of social mobilisation over another. To grasp
this complexity the study of social movements has generally been broadly
­divided into two traditions: resource mobilisation t­ heory (RMT)—largely
based in the US—and new social movement (NSM) theory—­European
based and/or influenced (McDonald 2002, Della Porta and Diani 2007).
­A lberto Melucci explains these two traditions for studying collective ac-
tion in the following way: the European, he states, focuses on the processes
behind the formation of collective action, while the American, on the other
hand, proposes an “analysis of the actual mobilization process” (Melucci
1996:16).
RMT emerged in the 1970s, with the work of sociologists such as Charles
Tilly (1978) and John D. McCarthy and Mayer Zad (1977, 1979). It is mainly
concerned with the acquisition and mobilisation of resources within move-
ments towards achieving political goals, and looks at movements as organi-
sational structures led by rational individuals. It reacts to previous theories
of collective behaviour which viewed collective action and social movements
as irrational, often as no more than ‘mobs’. Within this strand some scholars
focus more on economic aspects, and others on political ones. McAdam et
al.’s (2001) work has been key towards rethinking RMT into a wider ap-
proach that is often referred to as ‘Contentious Politics’. The method em-
ployed by McAdam et al. is to conduct a series of comparative analyses of
social movements in order to identify recurrent mechanisms and processes,
and explain how these facilitate the development of movements. They pro-
pose an interdisciplinary approach, and a unification of the analysis of all
contentious politics—social movements, strikes, revolutions, and so on.
McAdam et al. (2001) propose looking at different examples of conten-
tious politics throughout history, and identifying similarities in the way in
which certain mechanisms developed and combined in order to give place to
processes, which in turn may develop into episodes. The problem with this
approach is that it assumes that mechanisms are similar or identical across
a variety of times, locations, and sociopolitical contexts, conceiving of them
in universal terms, as fixed categories that can translate from one episode
10  Introduction
to another. In a study of art activism that looks at process, the concept of
mechanism is useful, but this conception does not allow an in-depth con-
templation of the role of culture in how mechanisms are shaped, something
I will return to towards the end of this book. Neither does RMT contem-
plate the role of emotion in social movements, being a reaction to previous
theories that viewed protesters as irrational actors (Goodwin and Jasper
2004). For these reasons, the contribution of structural theories emerging
from RMT to studies like the one I propose is limited, and it might be more
useful instead to look at cultural constructionist approaches emerging from
NSM theory.
NSM theory identifies a turn towards cultural and identity politics in
social movements that emerged in a post-industrial society. NSM scholars
propose looking at movements as cultural as well as social, focusing on the
analysis of collective identities and symbols. This strand of thought not only
adds to the understanding of social movements, but also leads to a deeper
understanding of social and cultural change, given that “movements arise
out of what is culturally given, but at the same time they are a fundamental
source of cultural change” (Johnston and Klandermans 1995:5). Main ex-
ponents of this approach are Alberto Melucci (1985, 1989, 1996) and Alain
Touraine (1981). Melucci (1996) acknowledges and emphasises the differ-
ences between various social movements and the contexts within which they
are conceived. He argues that because of these differences, existing analyt-
ical tools are on many occasions inadequate for a thorough analysis. Like
McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Melucci sees the notion of social movement
as an analytical category. He also argues that movements are not units, but
rather the product of multiple and varied processes. Unlike McAdam and
Tarrow, however, he states that “[n]o phenomenon of collective action can
be taken as a global whole since the language it speaks is not universal”
(Melucci 1996:21).
The notion of a social movement is an analytical category. It designates
that form of collective action which (i) invokes solidarity, (ii) makes mani-
fest a conflict, and (iii) entails a breach of the limits of compatibility of the
system within which the action takes place” (1996:28). A central aspect of
this strand of thought in the study of social movements is the concept of
collective identity (Bernstein 2005:54), which is formed in the context of col-
lective action. Understanding collective identity is important in the study of
art and social movements, because it provides insight into the reasons why
people join movements, stay, and leave; the way movements are perceived
by the public, and the way movements and activism are experienced. Ger-
baudo and Treré explain that the concept of collective identity remains to
this day a key question for activists and researchers, “one which is decisive to
understand the emergence, persistence, and decline of protest movements”
(­Gerbaudo and Treré 2015:866). In the case of art activism, as I will explore
in Chapter 1, collective identity is also a lens through which we can learn
about the relationship between aesthetics and politics in art activist practice.
 Introduction  11
Theories emerging from and inspired by NSM theory offer a valuable
framework for the study of art activism because they consider culture not
only in terms of the ‘content’ of political actions—for example, values and
­message—but also in terms of its capacity to shape a set of skills, tools, and
habits from which to construct “strategies of action” (Swidler 1986). This
perspective on culture is fitting for an analysis of artistic practices within the
context of activism, since I will be conceptualising these as strategic, political
practices that serve to communicate and reproduce a movement’s identity and
ideology, but that also stand as political actions in themselves. It is important
to note, however, that this approach only acknowledges the roles of emotions
in social movements superficially, and does not fully engage with theories on
bodies and embodiment, which I will argue are necessary in order to conduct
a study of performance-based art forms in activism. Combining this focus on
symbols, codes, and identity with a focus on the embodied experience as de-
scribed by McDonald (2006) with a focus on the embodied experience, as I will
discuss in what follows, will make for a comprehensive framework that will
be suitable for the study of social movements today, and especially those that
involve ­creative and artistic practice as modes of expression and direct action.

Embodiment, emotions, and resistance

Kevin McDonald (2004, 2006) argues there has been a shift from older
forms of organisation to new experiences in social movements, allowing
an ‘embodied intersubjectivity’. He proposes the concept of the ‘embodied
movement’ as a way of addressing the failure of instrumental and expressive
approaches in exploring experiential aspects of movements. In order to un-
derstand the background of McDonald’s concept of embodied movements,
however, it is necessary first to look at how embodiment has been developed
by disciplines such as philosophy and sociology. Embodiment is described
as “the physical and mental experience of existence”. It is “the condition of
possibility for our relating to other people and to the world” (Cregan 2006:3).
It follows that “[e]mbodied social relations exist both as the context […] of
and as an outcome […] of given social formations” (ibid). Embodiment is
therefore a crucial aspect of our development as individuals and social be-
ings, and a prerequisite for collective action. The notion of embodiment was
a result of a long philosophical tradition of thinking about the mind and
the body, rejecting previous dualistic understandings of mind and body as
separate entities, and embracing a view of human beings as neither “minds
nor, strictly speaking, bodies, […] but rather mindful and embodied social
agents” (Crossley 2001:3). Phenomenologist Merleau-Ponty (1962), explains
Crossley, argues that “our bodies are not objects of experience for us, but
rather our very means of experiencing” (Crossley 2001:16).
According to Merleau-Ponty, society is not the context in which we sit-
uate objects, nor is society something conceived inside individuals’ heads.
Rather, it is found in the interactions among people, where we also find the
12  Introduction
meaning of the things we do (Merleau-Ponty 1962:303). Bodies are central
to sociality because instead of incorporating or embodying the social, they
are inherently social in their material composition. But the way that indi-
viduals relate to one another has changed throughout time. The move from
traditional to modern and postmodern societies has produced an increased
abstraction and a reinterpretation of embodiment. This abstraction opens
bodies to rationalisation and processes of commodification (Cregan 2006).
If we consider this in relation to contemporary politics and struggles against
oppression and for basic rights of subsistence, it is safe to say that resist-
ance and opposition to commodification, surveillance, and objectification
have become central to struggles around bio-politics—described by Butler
as “those powers that organize life” (2015:196)—and the politics of the body.
Regardless of their content or message, embodied political practices such as
performances can therefore be understood as forms of direct action against
the disembodiment of contemporary societies and the parallel surveillance
and control over bodies.
The body has indeed a long history of being understood and used as a
tool for resistance and subversion (Doyle 2001). Under authoritative re-
gimes, economic austerity, and with a lack of prospects in life, the body
may be the one thing over which individuals can maintain at least some
control. This idea is akin to Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World (1968), in
which the medieval carnival is presented as a space for celebration where
bodily excesses such as drinking, eating, and dancing make up a form of
subversion against the oppressive powers of feudal lords and the church.
The idea that the carnival as a model of embodied, popular subversion has
been adopted by social movements has been developed by numerous schol-
ars (e.g. G
­ raeber 2007, Tucker 2010), and indeed “There is now a large and
increasing body of writing which sees carnival not simply as a ritual feature
of European culture but as a mode of understanding, a positivity, a cultural
analytic” (Stallybrass and White 1986:6). Without assuming that all car-
nivalesque is intrinsically political, it is worth keeping in mind the poten-
tial of carnivalesque aesthetics as vehicles for transgression and liberation
(­Stallybrass and White 1986), particularly in the case of practices that thrive
on mass theatrical and satirical expressions of dissent and those that centre
the body in their transgression of social norms, as I will discuss in Chapters
2 and 4 in this book.
Considering the political potential of embodiment and embodied actions,
McDonald (2004, 2006) calls for a turn in social movement theory towards
the embodied experience, as opposed to the predominant focus on collective
identity. In the first place, as McDonald points out, this focus is needed in
the study of contemporary social movements because movements are in-
creasingly breaking with the concept of ‘we-ness’ and challenging the notion
of collective identity as the main basis for collective action. This is not to
say, however, that there is no sense of collective identity at all within these
movements, or that embodied experiences cannot be shared and collective.
 Introduction  13
It means, rather, that collective identity is no longer central for the develop-
ment of a movement, and that personal experience and individuality have
gained new roles in the sphere of political action (McDonald 2006). Looking
at embodiment, argues McDonald, is the right approach for studying these
kinds of experiences.
In addition to this, many aspects of collective political activity are deeply
embodied. Marches, for instance, are highly symbolic rituals—for example,
marching on May Day—but at the same time they are embodied practices,
as this kind of political activity relies on walking (Bonilla 2011). In these
cases, the embodied experience is further enhanced by the collective: the
multitude, the collective singing or chanting, and the coordinated route are
all forms of expression and communication through embodied practice.
As Juris explains, “activists perform their networks through diverse bodily
movements, techniques, and styles, generating distinct identities and emo-
tional tones” (Juris 2008:89).
The embodied experience is also crucial for the formation of personal
identities, and this is a process that can take place in the context of social
movements. McDonald, borrowing from Melucci (2000), argues that the
modes of action most common to contemporary movements are increasingly
constructed and shaped by forms of embodied communication (­McDonald
2004:486). But the embodiment of political action not only allows the indi-
vidual to connect with others through embodied forms of communication,
or to challenge the increasing abstraction in social relations. It also allows
her to claim a certain control over her body, in the sense of making use of
the body as a political tool. This is particularly relevant in the case of polit-
ical actions such as occupations, sit-ins, and ‘die-ins’, in which the body is
politicised by its materiality and presence in a space. In these activities there
is a collective embodiment of a political message, which is made of individ-
ual bodies that together amount to something greater. As Butler argues, it
is the space in between bodies where the political act is found (Butler 2011).
By restructuring the dynamics of a space through the embodied experiences
that take place there, activists can change not only the use, but also the
meaning of a space, as following chapters will argue.
Strictly related to the role of embodiment in social movements is the place
for emotions and affect. It was only recently that scholars have once again
begun to place emotions at the centre of studies of protest, acknowledging
that emotions do not amount to irrational behaviour, and considering both
the culturally constructed aspect of emotions and the more primal and uni-
versal aspect. This task has been mostly pursued by scholars coming from
an RMT background, responding to the already-mentioned lack of theori-
sation around culture and emotion in this tradition.
James Jasper notably argues that “emotions are as much a part of cul-
ture as cognitive understandings and moral visions are, and all social life
occurs in and through culture” (Jasper 1998:398). It is therefore of great im-
portance that emotions are considered when studying the cultural aspect of
14  Introduction
activism and social movements, and also that we understand how emotions
develop. In a first instance Jasper argues that emotions are “culturally
constructed  […] rather than being automatic somatic responses” (Jasper
1998:399). Emotions, he adds, “involve beliefs and assumptions open to cog-
nitive ­persuasion”, and “are also tied to moral values” (ibid:401). H ­ owever,
he later a­ cknowledges that primary (reactive) emotions like surprise or an-
ger are more universal and connected to bodily states, in contrast to second-
ary ones like shame or compassion which depend on a cultural construction
and shared meaning. Jasper then introduces the concept of affect, which is a
long-term feeling—for example, trust, love, or respect. According to Good-
win, “[a]ffects are positive and negative commitments or ­investments—
cathexes, in psychoanalytic language—that we have toward people, places,
ideas, and things” (Goodwin et al. 2004:418). Affects have also been con-
ceptualised as a way of relating to others, for instance, in the case of a con-
tagious smile or yawn. Affect can thus be said to place the individual in
a circuit of feeling and response with others (Tomkins 1963 referenced in
Hemmings 2005).4 Affective and reactive emotions are integral to protest as
they are to any social action. Moreover, feelings are what drive us into act-
ing upon something, and “there would be no social movements if we did not
have emotional responses to developments near and far” (Jasper 1998:405).
Sara Ahmed explains that “emotions do things, and work to align individ-
uals with collectives – or bodily space with social space through the very
intensity of their attachments” (Ahmed 2004:26). In art activism emotions
and affect are important in relation to individual and collective experiences,
as they are in the building of narratives.
Emotions can lead people to become involved in social movements, cause
them to stay, or make them want to stop participating, and activists also ap-
peal to emotions strategically in order to incite people to take action (­Jasper
1998, Gould 2004). Furthermore, it is important that we look at emotions
and experience because the actions involved in activism and protest are of-
ten risky, intense, passionate, and they usually revolve around issues that are
emotionally charged for participants. Emotions are also an integral part of
both the expression and construction of identities, given that “the strength
of an identity comes from its emotional side. Identities can be cognitively
vague, for instance, yet still strongly held” (Jasper 1998:415).
Emotions are embodied because “they entail some combination of sen-
sation, behaviour and disposition […] Emotion thus entails an articulation
of bodily activity and worldly social context” (Crossley 2001:45). As Ahmed
argues, “it is through the movement of emotions that the very distinction
­between inside and outside, or the individual and social, is effected in the first
place” (Ahmed 2004:28). Finally, it is important to also consider how cul-
ture, rituals, and art are key to building and maintaining certain ­emotions,
since they contribute to making movements enjoyable. “The richer a move-
ment’s culture –with more rituals, songs, folktales, heroes, denunciation of
enemies, and so on – the greater these pleasures” (Jasper 1998:417).
 Introduction  15
The most notable limitation to this framework is that even though a
focus on emotions allows a closer look at the subjective experience of ac-
tors, it usually does not “provide a sufficient sense of conscious awareness.
Agency remains elusive” (Jasper 2004:2). Nevertheless, neglecting the role of
­emotions would result in an important lack in the study of social movements
as a whole, and more importantly, a key lack in the understanding of the
embodied experience of art activism.

Performance theory and performance as a medium

Art activism can adopt a variety of forms and media. It is true, however, that
among contemporary activist groups in the UK, there is a widespread trend
for engaging with the performing arts, whether theatrical performances,
spoken word, walking as art, or music. It might be argued that this is due to
the fact that performance—and specifically performance art—

has become a highly visible—one might almost say emblematic—art

form in the contemporary world, a world that is highly self-conscious,
reflexive, obsessed with simulations and theatricalizations in every as-
pect of its social awareness.
(Carlson 2007:74)

Furthermore, performance is a live art form, and as such, a form suitable

for political action. Indeed, many forms of politicised contemporary per-
formance art, such as feminist performance, originated from a tradition of
performative political struggle, such as the civil rights movement in the US
(Preciado 2009:116).
Performance links image and emotion through an embodied act (Juris
2008:65). It is an embodied expressive practice that can be open to participa-
tion, it can take place anywhere and relies more on the body than on exter-
nal materials and instruments, it can be unexpected, and due to the verbal
and body languages that compose it, it is a practice that allows narratives,
pedagogical pieces, as well as highly symbolic work. Most importantly, per-
formance has a twofold political potential, which lies on the one hand in
the fact that it is a staged reflection on the society we live in (Turner 1987),
and on the other, in how it promotes an embodied sense of agency among
performers and participants (Juris 2008:76).
But when looking at performance-based practices as art activism, it is
­important to clarify the perspective we are adopting, given the different ways
in which performance has been theorised. Richard Schechner explains that,

There are two main realms of performance theory: (1) looking at human
behaviour—individual and social—as a genre of performance; (2) look-
ing at performances—of theatre, dance, and other “art forms”—as a
kind of personal or social interaction. These two realms, or spheres, can
16  Introduction
be metaphorically figured as interfacing at a double two-way mirror.
From one face of the mirror persons interested in aesthetics genres peep
through at “life”. From the other side, persons interested in the “social
sciences” peep through at “art”. Everything is in quotation marks be-
cause the categories are not settled.
(Schechner 1985:296)

Following from Schechner, Peter Caster argues,

That “double-mirror,” […] offers a means to read activism and per-

formance forward and backward, as staged activism and activist per-
formance. By activist performance, I mean a production explicitly
acknowledging itself as theatre and framed by dramatic convention that
associates itself with a particular social project. […] Staged activism, on
the other hand, even if it employs theatrical strategies of representation,
asserts that what the audience experiences is really real.
(Caster 2004:114)

Caster explains what he means by ‘real’ by referring to the difference be-

tween an actor playing a character on death row and an actual person on
death row calling in from prison as part of a play. He emphasises the crucial
difference between someone telling their own story and the representation of
a story. But focusing solely on the presentation versus representation of the
subject dichotomy risks overlooking the importance of context, processes,
and dynamics of a performance as a political act. In this book I argue that
what characterises a performance as an activist act, or a ‘performance ac-
tion’ (Serafini 2014) is the ‘realness’ of the activism taking place in the form
of a performance, and this realness is dictated by a series of factors, such as
the intentions and strategic objectives of actors involved and their position
in relation to wider social movements. A performance action can be about
the direct presentation of voices, but it is also about confronting power,
about location, and about the connection between that action and a wider
struggle.
When looking at performance actions, it is worth noting that the line
between theatre and performance art is sometimes blurred. Performances
by the same groups can vary from being strictly scripted to no script at all,
and performers sometimes choose to adopt characters (Verson 2007:180),
while other times perform an artistic action ‘as themselves’, as in the ex-
ample provided by Caster. This second approach to performance moves
away from the tradition of theatre, inviting a comparison with some
strands of happenings, performance art, and body art, which argue for
a presentation of the artist and a ‘real’ action or situation, as opposed to
a representation of a character and a script (States 1996:8). In either case,
performance in the context of activism is never just representation; it is
also a political act—for example, an occupation or intervention—carried
 Introduction  17
out by activists (Serafini 2014). In these complex instances, “multiple
selves coexist in an unresolved dialectical tension” (Scherchner 1985:6),
and it is this distance between performer and character that allows a polit-
ical, aesthetic, or personal commentary to be inserted in the performance
(Scherchner 1985:9). This space between performance and life, according
to Shaughnessy, is “a space for intervention and change” (Shaughnessy
2005:201).
Besides theatrical performance and performance art, activists resort to
other types of embodied performance-based artistic practice such as sing-
ing, dancing, and music performances. These all tend to share a collective
quality (Shaughnessy 2012), a sense of the body as a means of expression and
enjoyment (Shepherd 2006), and a sense of duration, which will determine
the place and time when the action takes place, and the kind of interaction
with the audience. Street et al. (2008), for instance, speak of the role of music
in political participation. They situate music as an instrument for motivat-
ing and conducting political action (Street et al. 2008:276), as well as a mode
of creating knowledge and reinforcing collective identities (ibid:274). George
McKay also recognises the role of music as an embodied practice generat-
ing movement and contributing to mobilisation, and points out the poten-
tial that music has for claiming or transforming the public space (McKay
2007:2). This position sees both the formal aesthetic characteristics of music
and its embodied nature as having an inherent political power.
In addition to the relevance of the embodied aspect of performance, it
can be argued that the political potential of this practice is linked to its
performative aspect (Parker and Kosofsky Sedgwick 1995). I will explore
the role of performativity in performance actions in the following chapters,
particularly Chapters 3, 4, and 6. But a final thought on performance-based
practices as activism comes as a response to Jelinek’s thoughts on the artis-
tic media and genre of radical art. She argues,

[B]y and large, art that questions market norms or norms that maintain
the status quo continues to be made using a limited range of media,
namely the dematerialised or new media. There is also a correspond-
ing limitation to the range of processes: relational, dialogic, multiple-­
authored or community-located being the primary modes legitimated.
(Jelinek 2013:104)

These kinds of processes, she says, are clichés in politically engaged artis-
tic practices, which prevent both artists and publics from acknowledging
the potential for resistance and subversion in other forms of art, such as
painting. She also argues that what is ‘radical’ and what ‘works’ as radical
art depends on the context of the art practice. For example, we cannot say
that participatory performance or graffiti are inherently radical methods
or media because their radicalism will depend on the context, content of
the work, and dynamic of the artwork—for example, participatory art
18  Introduction
might be open to the public but at the same time maintain hierarchies
or operate within certain power relations. Although Jelinek’s point on
context is by all means true, there is an important thing to note. The
practice of art activism emerges from both art and activism. This means
that the choice to resort to certain kinds of open, live media is not a mere
symbolic cliché, but rather an aesthetic and political choice. Recurrent
strategies such as performance are predominant, as my following chap-
ters will show, because they allow a space for performative instances of
self-transformation, as well as prefigurative forms of art making and or-
ganising that are in line with grassroots political and social work, which
other practices that are less open to collective, embodied experiences
might not.

Art activism in the UK

While this book is concerned with the processes and politics of art activism
on a wider scale, it is mostly based on interviews and observant participa-
tion carried out in the UK. The UK has a rich tradition of popular protest
and of intersections between artistic practice and politics (Poll 2010; Bishop
2012). Looking back to the 1980s and early 1990s, for instance, we can see
cultural and political movements which combined rave culture, a DiY ethos,
and environmental concerns (McKay 1996, 1998), such as the joyful protests
of Reclaim the Streets (Jordan 2002, Juris 2008). The late 1990s and early
2000s in turn saw a series of alter-globalisation events which drew on street
theatre, music, and the carnivalesque, and in this period the UK was the
stage for a number of landmark protests and actions, including the ludi-
crous tactics of Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (Fremeaux and
Ramsden N/A), and the J18 Carnival against Capital (Tancons 2011). The
legacy of these collective, embodied, performance-based forms of protest
is still present in the UK, and has inspired the practices of many contem-
porary movements and groups reacting to climate change, racism, and the
austerity measures following the 2008 economic crisis, including some of
the groups featured in this book.
This rich history, still present in the current landscape of creative pro-
tests, makes the UK a fruitful place for conducting research on art activism.
At the same time, and even though the research I have conducted is ethno-
graphic, this book does not focus on the particularities of the UK context,
but instead uses insights gained from analysis of a variety of UK-based art
activist practices in order to begin to suggest a theory of art activism that
can be built on, applied, and contextualised to other regions. While many
elements and processes will be conditioned by the particular UK context—
and in many cases London specifically—the ideas and concepts that emerge
from this study should still be in many ways applicable to art activist prac-
tices elsewhere, as I will demonstrate through comparison with practices in
other locations.
 Introduction  19
Key questions, methodology, and structure
The issue with past research on art activism is ontological as well as meth-
odological. On the one hand, there are numerous studies that focus on issues
relevant to art activism—such as participation and collective identity—but
their object of study is either institutional artistic practice or social move-
ments. This poses an ontological problem, as theories that are built on and
for the analysis of these two fields as separate and distinct are not always
suitable for the analysis of the in-between practice that is art activism. On
the other hand, studies that have addressed art activism more directly mostly
do so from a limited disciplinary perspective, posing in this way a methodo-
logical problem, as I argued earlier in this introduction. This book looks to
address these issues, building on key theories from the arts and the study of
social movements and activism, but acknowledging the limitations as well as
the strengths of past studies, and suggesting an interdisciplinary perspective
that might be useful in the study of other art activist practices as well.
This study is concerned with the internal processes and politics of art ac-
tivism, and looks to fill a gap in the field by applying an interdisciplinary per-
spective that can consider the aesthetic and the organisational and political
aspects of this kind of practice. The main questions I set out to explore are:
How does art activism work in practice? What is the relationship between
the aesthetic and the political aspects of art activism and how are these two
facets negotiated? What characterises the experience of art activism? How is
the work of art activists conditioned by the spaces and frameworks in which
they operate? And finally, through which processes, if any, does art activism
allow instances of personal, collective, and structural change?
It is important to state that even though this book looks at the tensions
between aesthetics and politics in art activist practice, this does not mean,
that I am establishing a theoretical position that sees aesthetics and politics
as always distinctively separate. It means, rather, that looking at art activ-
ism from the inside requires adopting the perspective of those who practise
it. And while we can engage in theoretical discussions on whether aesthet-
ics and politis are separate, and under what circumstances they merge (see,
for instance, my discussion of Rancière earlier in this introduction), this
book will argue and demonstrate that in practice art activists often speak
about aesthetics and politics as two aspects of their practice, and that the
tension between these two aspects is present in various facets of and pro-
cesses within that practice. Focusing on how aesthetics and politics merge,
overlap, and are in tension with each other will therefore allow us to better
understand the nature of art activism.
The bulk of the research presented in this book was conducted between
2012 and 2015. I carried out long-term ethnographic research in London and
short-term research in Derby, Manchester, and Bristol. During this time
I took part in performance actions, psychogeographic walks and protests,
interviewed activists, and took on the role of art and activism facilitator for
20  Introduction
the radical pedagogy project Shake! I followed a tradition of politically en-
gaged ethnography (Shukaitis et al. 2007, Juris and Khasnabish 2013) that
is committed to the fair presentation and representation of participants’
voices, as well as a deepened awareness of issues of power and positionality
(Punch 2012). While the findings presented here are mostly the result of this
period of intense ethnographic and desk-based research, I have included
more recent events and developments related to my main case studies, and
also referenced newly formed groups in the UK and elsewhere.
This book will look mainly at contemporary cases of art activism in the
UK. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 will focus on Art Not Oil, a coalition of groups
and organisations that stand against oil sponsorship of arts and culture in
the UK. I will particularly concentrate on Shell Out Sounds (an environ-
mental choir singing against Shell and for a fossil-free culture) and BP or
not BP? (an activist theatre troupe that stages interventions at organisations
such as the British Museum and the Royal Shakespeare Company) and will
refer to the work of Liberate Tate (a collective staging performance actions
at the Tate galleries). These groups are significant because they are among
the most high-profile examples of performance-based activism in the UK.
Their performance-based approach is at the avant-garde of the environmen-
tal movement, and also, their strategic use of cultural institutions as both
targets and platforms of dissent has become, as subsequent chapters will
show, a growing trend in both the US and the UK (and most recently also
France and the Netherlands) in the wake of a movement for museum liber-
ation. Through an analysis of these groups’ processes and the experiences
and narratives of their participants, Chapter 1 will look at the development
of collective identities in art activism, Chapter 2 will look at participation
as a creative and political act and develop a framework for understanding
participation in performance actions, and Chapter 3 will address the re-
lationship between transgression, performativity, and prefiguration in the
development and staging of performance actions.
Chapter 4 will in turn look at the work of Left Front Art, a network
of radical queer artists that work in partnership with trade unions, and
Liz Crow, an artist whose work explores, among other themes, disability,
austerity, and structural violence. This chapter will explore contemporary
understandings of the personal as political and examine the relationship
between personal and structural transformations through the perspec-
tives of embodiment, performativity, and transgression. Chapter 5 will
look at walking and psychogeography as art activism through the case
of ­Manchester-based group LRM, focusing on issues of ethics, aesthet-
ics, and public space. Chapter 6 presents the case of the art and activ-
ism youth programme Shake! in order to examine the tensions between
aesthetics and politics and between the individual and the collective in
a radical pedagogy context. Chapter 7 returns to the work of Art Not
Oil and focuses on the relationship between art activists and art institu-
tions, developing ideas on the public sphere, site-specific practice, and
 Introduction  21
institutional critique, and situating Art Not Oil within an international
museum liberation movement. It also references the work of the anti-­
capitalist festival P A N D E M I C as an example of art that not only
works outside the institutional framework, but stands directly in opposi-
tion to it. Finally, Chapter 8 brings together the key findings from previ-
ous chapters in order to suggest the foundations for an interdisciplinary
theory of art activism that focuses on process, and that looks at how the
tension between aesthetics and politics is manifested in the different facets
of this practice. Here I will propose that the tensions between aesthetics
and politics can be better understood if we look at the strategic and the
prefigurative as two related aspects in the political approach of the groups
in question, and that embracing prefiguration as an overall approach to
art activism, including both aesthetic and political aspects, can allow for a
greater balance between the facets that are in tension.

Notes
1 See, for instance, Jessica Bain’s article on Pussy Hats: www.independent.co.uk/
news/world/americas/feminism-donald-trump-pussy-hat-protest-­washington-
women-a7557821.html.
2 I choose to use the term art activism as opposed to activist art or other variants
of the term as it does not assign weight to one or the other component of the
practice. ‘Activist art’ or ‘artistic activism’, for instance, seem to imply an ac-
tivist flare in art practice or an artistic note in activism, respectively. This book
argues that there are particularities to art activism as a practice that is both art
and activism, and therefore this term is better suited for the kind of analysis I am
pursuing.
3 It is worth noting the predominance of work written by white male authors in
this substantial list. As a matter of fact, while there are indeed many women and
non-binary people involved in these movements in the US, as are people of col-
our, the written works that have gained most attention and achieved the status of
‘contemporary classics’ of art activism have mostly been written by white men.
This homogeneity should be considered as it speaks of the power dynamics in
the world of art activism and the scholarship surrounding it.
4 The concept of affect has been theorised and contested by many scholars, and
can therefore take on meanings different to those presented here. For more on the
theorisation of affect see Gregg and Seigworth’s The Affect Theory Reader (2010).

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1 ‘Harmonic disobedience’
Constructing a collective
identity in an activist choir

Introduction (Hallelujah)
Shell Out Sounds is an activist choir that formed in 2013 to protest against
Shell’s sponsorship of the Classic International Series of concerts at South-
bank Centre in London.1 This sponsorship deal had been in place since 2007,
and came to an end in 2014, when Southbank Centre announced it would not
be renewed for the new season. After this deal came to an end, the group con-
tinued to perform occasionally, targeting other Shell-sponsored institutions
such as the National Gallery. Shell Out Sounds is part of the Art Not Oil
­coalition, a coalition of activist groups that protest against sponsorship deals
between cultural institutions in the UK and fossil fuel companies.2 Art Not
Oil opposes the way that fossil fuel companies attempt to generate a ‘social
license’ to operate by sponsoring culture, ‘green-washing’ their image, and
diverting attention from the industry’s record of environmental damage and
negative impact on communities across the globe (Platform 2011, Evans 2015).
I joined Shell Out Sounds on June 2013, after responding to an open call
on Facebook for an afternoon of protest singing at the Southbank Centre.
I met the group at 12:00 pm at a practice space in a theatre nearby. When
I arrived, there were already around ten people there. Soon we were fifteen,
plus two people who were filming the event. I found the group as a whole to
be open and friendly. It looked as if many of those there did not know each
other, so before we started singing we introduced each other. We were asked
to say who we were, what we did, why we were there, and if we had any previ-
ous experience with singing. Some people were activists, some musicians or
singers, and many were involved with choirs. Myself and two other women,
however, seemed nervous about singing. I even confessed that even though
I really enjoy singing, I had not really sung since my last school play fifteen
years ago. In contrast to this, the more professional and experienced singers
said they were not nervous at all.
We followed introductions with some warm-up exercises in order to
loosen up the body. This was also intended to make people interact with
each other, as we made funny noises to the person on our right. Soon
 ‘Harmonic disobedience’  27
afterwards we began practising the song for the day: a reworked version of
Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah:

I dreamed we’d seen the earth before,

It was green, and it pleased us all,
But you don’t really care for humans, do ya?
It goes like this, you drill and dig
You frack the rock and you crash your rig
The tar sands are a poison, Hallelujah
Hallelujah
The Delta is a darkened place
A blackened soil you won’t replace
Still you lie but still we see right through ya
The river burns, no tree is spared
The oil it flows and the gas it flares
The pipeline’s oil and broken, Hallelujah

Hallelujah
You’ve broken the ice and snow
To a land we hoped you’d never go
It’s time to stop the madness now, but do ya?
You saw the graphs some years before
Now some say 6 degrees or more
The Arctic should stay frozen, Hallelujah

So we went down to the concert hall

With the name of Shell upon the wall
But art and oil don’t mix we can assure ya
It goes like this, a song, a plea
’Til our concert halls are fossil free
Our voices will be singing Hallelujah!
Hallelujah.3

The song, directed at Shell, positioned the fossil fuel company as a conscious
inflictor of environmental damage, aware of the consequences of its actions
and the warnings given by the scientific community, but still going ahead with
its activities. The song also positioned the ‘we’—the singing protesters—in
opposition to Shell’s activities and announced that the singing would con-
tinue until Shell’s sponsorship of Southbank Centre came to an end. In this
way, the song acted as a lyrical manifesto, which explained what the struggle
was about and how the enemy would be confronted. Furthermore, the direct
accusations acted as an open denunciation of the company’s business model,
28  ‘Harmonic disobedience’
exposing what they do and how their practices damage the environment, thus
acting as a way of communicating information on environmental issues.
As we began practising the song, Greg, who was one of the people fa-
cilitating the rehearsal, stressed the importance of harmonies. Different
people took on different parts of the song and played around with various
arrangements, creating complex and haunting sounds. We collectively dis-
cussed what arrangements sounded better, and made aesthetic decisions as
a group. For instance, we decided to begin the song with humming, and
to sing parts of it in a softer voice, creating a crescendo effect towards the
chorus. At the same time, however, tasks such as distributing parts brought
up issues of individuality and artistic selves, as there were two singers who
seemed to want to take the solo part. This made evident a tension between
the collective identity of the group built around singing together towards
one goal, and the individual identities of certain participants as artists, who
also wanted to make the most out of an opportunity to sing.
The first time we sang the song I felt electricity in the air. The melody it-
self was powerful, and the various harmonies, with multiple voices blending
in and out, intensified the beauty of Cohen’s melody. But also, the lyrics
referring to the devastating effects of fossil fuel extraction carried a very
grim and sad message; a message that was countered by the hopeful act of
singing in protest against the destruction of the environment. As a result,
the feelings evoked were conflicted, as the song was made up of a beautiful
and powerful melody, a haunting arrangement of harmonies and a dark set
of words brought together in a defiant performance.
After almost two hours of rehearsing we left the practice space and
walked together towards our performance venue, Southbank Centre. The
­programmed concert for that day at Southbank Centre was the last one
of the Shell Classic Season for that summer. It was a piece about post-
war economics and violence, and it was sponsored by Shell. The banners
we had with us read ‘Shell: art not in your name’ and ‘Art is a means for
­survival-Yoko Ono’.
Once we were at Southbank Centre, we had to decide whether to perform
inside the venue or outside. The decision was complex, as there were many is-
sues to take into account. In the first place, where would we be able to gather
a larger audience? Second, what would look better on photography and video?
And third, what would the implications of singing in different parts of the venue
be in terms of the relation to the space, the staff members, and the public? How
transgressive did we want to be, and how transgressive would it be to carry out a
singing intervention in a space that is privately owned, but still open to the pub-
lic? In the end we decided to do two performances of the song: one inside and
one outside the venue. This choice was made collectively. However, there was a
singer who did not want to go inside and chose to stay outside for that part. She
was concerned that performing inside the venue without explicit permission
from security staff was risky, and as she said, ‘too political’.
This singer’s position provided me with further insight into the differ-
ent backgrounds of the people joining the action, and their motivations
 ‘Harmonic disobedience’  29
for doing so. As mentioned previously, some singers came from an activist
background, and did not sing professionally. Others, such as the singer in
question, were inclined to join because they met other members through
their participation in a choir, and even though they might support the causes
that the choir fights for, they did not have a background of involvement
in political activities—hence they were hesitant about how transgressive or
‘political’ they wanted the action to be.
Throughout the various performances there were three people filming and
one recording audio with us. While we sang, we gave out leaflets—which
included the lyrics to the song—and tried to interact with the public. We
performed the song a few times, inside and outside the Queen Elizabeth Hall
(one of the venues at Southbank Centre). In the end, we realised that per-
forming outside was better, as the weather was good and we had a greater
chance of interacting with people. When we did our first performance inside,
the people sitting at the vestibule café did not pay much attention, while dur-
ing our performances outside passers-by engaged more, and even clapped
along and stopped to take pictures. Nevertheless, only a couple of passers-by
ended up joining the choir. Due to the special harmonies, solos, and changes
to the lyrics we had made during the practice, it was a difficult song for peo-
ple to join in with on the spot. These complexities made the piece more beau-
tiful but less accessible, which contradicted the initial purpose of choosing a
familiar melody so that anyone could potentially join in.
Including all performers who were at the rehearsal, some that met us there,
and a few members of the public who joined in, we were a total of twenty
people singing. A few passers-by also came to talk to us and congratulated
us. Southbank Centre staff did not interfere in any way. After the action
concluded, several photos and a video were up on Facebook and Twitter
within a few hours. The action was self-described as a ‘guerrilla choir’, and
images of the event were also shared by the social media accounts of other
Art Not Oil groups.
This first experience as part of the Shell Out Sounds choir brought up
several interesting questions that would continue to arise in future actions
and planning meetings with this group and with others. In the first place,
I was intrigued by the constitution of the group’s identity as a choir and
as an activist group, as well as by the dynamics of participation. How did
the group see itself? What were people’s motivations for taking part in
this particular kind of protest? What were the potential and limitations of
participation? In addition to this, using song as a medium meant that this
political act was communicated through two channels: on the one hand, a
discursive and symbolic channel constituted by the lyrics of the song, and
on the o ­ ther  hand, the bodies and voices of people, communing through
harmonies, and occupying the site and surroundings of the contested cul-
tural venue. How did these two channels complement each other? How did
performing bodies carry and communicate a political message?
Using song as a form of protest within a musical venue also highlighted
other issues around the objectives and potential outcomes of this kind of
30  ‘Harmonic disobedience’
practice. The performance, being unsanctioned and criticising the institu-
tion’s sponsorship deal, positioned the group in an antagonistic relationship
with said institution, even if the actual target of the environmental group is
the fossil fuel company and not the arts centre. But also, at the same time as
a critique was communicated, an alternative mode of producing and sharing
music was put into action in the very context where the programmed con-
certs take place: a form of musical performance that is not professionalised
and that is participatory—though this is also complex, given the mingling
of professional and amateur singers and those seeking solo opportunities.
This poses interesting questions around the possibilities for prefiguration
within this and other art activist groups’ practices, which I will discuss in
the following chapters.
In the remainder of this chapter, I will focus on the issue of collective iden-
tity in art activism, and explore this through the practice of Shell Out Sounds.
I will ask: do they see their work as art or as activism? What do they understand
by art and its potential for change? And how do they negotiate their artistic
and political objectives? Adopting a position that looks beyond the ‘instru-
mental uses’ of music and considers how music can shape political objectives
and the experience of political actors (Street 2003:126), I will borrow mainly
from Melucci’s (1996) theory of collective identity as well as from other works
on collective identity and narrative (Johnston and Klandermans 1995, Polletta
et al. 2011, Prins et al. 2013) in order to look at how this process develops in
the context of a group that uses performance as a form of political action, and
investigate how useful this framework is for the specific study of art activism.

The collective identity of movements

As argued in the introduction to this book, new social movement theory is
a strand of social movement theory (SMT) that looks at the cultural aspect
of movements and collective action. One of the key concepts to emerge from
this strand of thought is the collective identity of movements, notably devel-
oped, among others, by Alberto Melucci (1985, 1989, 1996).
Collective identity in the context of collective action can develop around
a number of things, be it social traits, belonging to organisations, or shared
experiences or values. Identity is important for an individual in order to
make sense and give meaning to their actions. It is also an essential aspect
of movements, because “collective identity creates a shortcut to participa-
tion. People participate not so much because of the outcomes associated
with participation but because they identify with the other participants”
(­K landermans et al. 2002:236). However, the construction of identity is not
only the product of psychological mechanisms; there are also social pro-
cesses involved. Della Porta and Diani argue that identity does not nec-
essarily come before action, but is in a way parallel to it and transformed
by it. In the context of social movements, they claim, rituals such as yearly
marches and commemorations have an important role in shaping these iden-
tities, and they also act as a form of communication. Protests, for instance,
 ‘Harmonic disobedience’  31
“have a ritual dimension, which often assumes a powerfully dramatic and
spectacular quality” (Della Porta and Diani 2007:110).
Melucci, for his part, sees “collective identity as an interactive process
through which several individuals or groups define the meaning of their
action and the field of opportunities and constraints for such an action”
(1996:67). He goes on to argue that emotional investment is a crucial part
of collective identity, since it allows individuals to feel part of a common
unity. Emotions like passion, love, and hate are important because “there
is no cognition without feeling and no meaning without emotion” (1996:71).
Melucci’s thoughts on identity and emotions are continued in his analysis
of collective experience, which he argues involves emotions as well. The
construction of the collective is also necessary for the emotional balance of
activists. The creation of a ‘we’ and an ‘us against them’ helps to maintain
levels of morale and unity. In relation to this, Della Porta (2005) speaks of
the formation of ‘tolerant identities’, which are formed in the context of het-
erogeneous transnational movements. The emergence of shared identities
among heterogeneous groups evidences the importance of the ‘us’ against
‘them’ division, which can be observed in many contemporary movements
such as Occupy (the 99% vs. the 1%).
At the same time, Melucci (1996) argues that while in the past social
­actors were mostly mobilised as members of organisations, today due to
factors like higher educational levels, mass culture, and the generalisation of
citizenship rights, individuals have become self-standing subjects of a­ ction.
He adds that the identity of the individual and how it is formed proves to be
crucial for the development of the subject as an actor, and that it is ­access
to resources and the ability to act and choose within a society that allows
a person to think of themselves as an individual and construct their own
identity. Not being able to access these resources—meaning economic re-
sources, education, civil participation—and become an actor in society,
however, stops the individual from fully constructing their identity, and may
in turn result in a motivation for mobilisation towards gaining access to
these same resources.
The question of identity—both individual and collective—is not only nec-
essary in order to understand what happens inside social movements, but it
also explains how social movements develop. Contrary to Della Porta and
Diani (2007), Melucci (1996) argues that mobilisations are often started by
those who already have an identity and wish to defend it. These are later on
joined by those who do not have a defined identity and join the movement in
a quest for such an identity. In addition to this, he argues that those that mo-
bilise themselves are groups that are in some ways central—in terms of geo-
graphical location, educational/cultural level—but marginal in others—for
instance, employment or access to the political system (Melucci 1996:310).
This argument, however, will not apply to all contemporary movements,
especially if we move towards the Global South. In the case of indigenous
women in Chile for instance, mobilised groups are marginalised in terms of
location, rights, gender, and access to the political system (Richards 2005).
32  ‘Harmonic disobedience’
Only on some occasions might they be partially central—for example, a mo-
bilisation in the capital city. Finally, collective identities can be thought of
as complex phenomena that are in constant mutation and thus defy static
descriptions. Collective identities are shaped by a fragile dependence on the
itinerant relationships of individuals to movements, on constantly evolving
visions for change, on ways of organising that change over time, and on shift-
ing power relations outside and within movements (Holland et al. 2008:97).
Another aspect that is key to the development of movements and collec-
tive identities is ideology. A “child of the Enlightenment” (Eagleton 2013:1)
ideology is a contested term with a complex history, and has been theorised
from political, philosophical, and psychological perspectives. Locating the
term in the context of social movements, Melucci argues that “[i]deology is
a set of symbolic frames which collective actors use to represent their own
actions to themselves and to others within a system of social relationships”.
It includes a “definition of the actor her/himself, the identification of an ad-
versary, and an indication of ends, goals, objectives” (Melucci 1996:349).
Ideology can be understood as “a fairly broad, coherent, and relatively du-
rable set of beliefs that affects one’s orientation not only to politics but to
everyday life more generally” (Benford and Snow 2000:613), and is integral
to the formation of identity, as a form of definition and reiteration of one’s
aspirations and one’s place in relation to society.
In the context of social movements, ideology and identity are produced
and reproduced through the use of language and symbols. The importance
of these is clearly articulated by Melucci:

Contemporary movements strive to re-appropriate the capacity to name

through the elaboration of codes and languages designed to define re-
ality, in the twofold sense of constructing it symbolically and of regain-
ing it, thereby escaping from the predominant forms of representation.
[Movements have] refused the predominant communicative codes and
they have replaced them with sounds, idioms, recognition signals that
break the language of technical rationality.
(Melucci 1985 as referenced in Melucci 1996:357)

In relation to this, another important aspect of social movements that

contributes not only to collective identity building, but also to the organ-
isation and sustainability of movements is the construction of narratives.
Polletta explains that looking at narratives and storytelling in the study
of social movements can provide key insights into how movements re-
cruit members and what kind of impact they have on mainstream politics
(Polletta 1998). People’s stories provide us with insight into their under-
standing of themselves and the world around them (Polletta et al. 2011).
Looking at the role of stories and narratives in the formation of identities
is important, as Prins et al. note, because “Although researchers taking a
social constructivist perspective on identity agree that identities are con-
structed and negotiated in interaction, few studies have examined just
 ‘Harmonic disobedience’  33
how that construction and negotiation between group members actually
occurs” (2013:95). Here I will look at two different kinds of narratives:
the ones activists build around their own practice—which as I will show
later are linked to ideology and constitute a key aspect of the collective
identity-building process—and the outward-facing ones activist groups
construct strategically as a way of positioning their practice in the public
realm. Instead of conducting an analysis of narratives that is based on
structure, I will focus on themes and the connections between narratives
and ideology, and narratives and strategy.
In what remains of this chapter, I will look at the processes behind the
­construction of a collective identity for the environmental choir Shell Out
Sounds. Drawing from interviews, anecdotes, and an analysis of the internal
processes and interactions of the group, I will bring out the complexities of
how collective identity is built, exploring, as I do this, how the tensions be-
tween the aesthetic and political aspects of the group’s practice become visible.

(De)constructing the collective identity of Shell Out Sounds

Shell Out Sounds can be described as an open, grassroots group that upholds
values such as horizontality, equality, and participation. It has a ­diverse
membership, made up of long-time activists, art professionals, singers, and
artists, all concerned—at least on some level—with environmental issues.
There is a small core of around five people who remain a constant part of the
group and have been there since the beginning or shortly after, and there are
others who flow in and out with less consistent involvement. Even though
the maximum number of core or organising members at the same point does
not normally exceed six, there are around twenty more people on a mailing
list who are keen on singing and take part in actions with varying frequency,
sometimes participating in the planning stages of performances as well. The
process of planning an action entails the email conversations with ideas,
and the meetings, which usually act as rehearsals too.
Shell Out Sounds uses music as a channel for political communication
and action, building on a long tradition of music as a site of resistance.
“From the folk songs of rural England to the work songs of slaves, from
anti-war protest songs to illegal raves, music has given voice to resistance
and opposition” (Street 2003:120). But Shell Out Sounds being constituted
as a choir is not unrelated to the fact that their initial space of intervention
was the Royal Festival Hall, a concert hall at Southbank Centre. As Danny,
long-standing Shell Out Sounds member explains,

[P]eople go there to listen to music. So if we speak to them in the idiom

or in the language which they are expecting to hear, basically, I think it’s
got a lot more chance of penetrating than if it’s … you know, just shout-
ing at them. ’Cause that’s what happened at the Southbank, people used
to turn up in grim reaper outfits and get arrested every time. And then
when they started turning up singing, they weren’t arrested anymore.4
34  ‘Harmonic disobedience’
The way in which music intersects with politics in the practice of Shell Out
Sounds is a specific one: the group puts forward a political message through
their lyrics, but they also conceive of the act of singing as a physical inter-
vention in a strategic space, making their performances into activist actions
or performance actions (Serafini 2014). This particular approach can also be
seen, for instance, in the activism of Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping
Choir, who have for years been staging spectacular singing interventions
at multiple private and public spaces (Lane 2007), including shopping cen-
tres, museums, and most recently branches of banks that are involved in
the funding of the Dakota Access Pipeline in the US. It could also be seen
in the singing of Solidarity Sing Along, a choir that emerged as an offshoot
of the 2011 Wisconsin uprising, also in the US (Paretskaya 2015). The choir
made its demands for citizen rights through political lyrics but also through
the physical occupation of spaces, pressuring local authorities through a
long-term, part-time occupation that called for rights while exercising these
same rights in the public act of assembly (Butler 2015) and singing.
In terms of the content of the songs that Shell Out Sounds performs, these
are usually remade versions of familiar tunes, which are given new lyrics in
order to reflect the aims and political stance of the group. An example of
this has already been given in the reworded version of Leonard Cohen’s Hal-
lelujah, and other notable examples include the remaking of the Spiritual
classic Wade in the Water—now Oil in the Water—and a whole repertoire of
environmental and anti-Shell Christmas carols. As a protest choir, the act of
singing and the sound of song are crucial in terms of defining the aesthetics
and identity of Shell Out Sounds. As described in the case of Hallelujah,
songs are performed as a choir, sometimes featuring solo parts. As a way of
making pieces more complex and beautiful, songs always feature harmonic
arrangements, and sometimes a guitar (on one occasion there was also an
accordion!). Regarding the importance of harmonies, one of the core mem-
bers of the group, Greg, says:

I find it less satisfying to sing things in unison. I think musically it’s

much less exciting to sing if everyone sings a tune. […] I think harmony
does something. […] With different projects I’ve experienced it has an
extraordinary impact. It is something about voices blending, creating
a form, and the fact that [it has] enormous potential to reach people.5

In addition to harmonic arrangements, another aspect to consider in rela-

tion to the aesthetics of Shell Out Sounds is the choice of tone. The group’s
repertoire of songs includes earnest lyrics about destruction and pollution,
some other upbeat satirical songs ridiculing Shell, and also songs of hope
for a better future. The voice levels and tones—as well as body posture
and movement—for each performance is related to the lyrics and message
at hand, and due to the variety of approaches to the matter the group has
adopted in their performances, the soundscapes have not been consistent
 ‘Harmonic disobedience’  35
throughout, resulting in flexible and morphing aesthetics. The changing
tone in performances is one of the elements of Shell Out Sounds’ actions
connected to the constant negotiation of aesthetics and strategy, as ideas
for beautiful celebratory performances clash, as I will describe later, with
suggestions of more transgressive and shocking ones (Figure 1.1).
In the case of Shell Out Sounds, as in other activist groups and move-
ments, the constant coming and going of participants, the varying levels of
commitment, and the different backgrounds and identities of members are
factors that together amount to a fluid collective identity that is always un-
der renegotiation. But in addition to this, in this particular case the nature
of the group is both artistic and political, since it is a protest group and a
choir. There is, therefore, a further key negotiation that is exclusive to the
collective identity-building process of art activist groups: are we first a group
of artists or an activist group? Is our identity narrated and built around
our mode of action, which is singing, or around our views on oil sponsor-
ship? Art activist groups find themselves halfway between art and activism.
Their practice, it can be argued, is a hybrid, and as a result the collective
identity of the group is not only a result of the above-mentioned processes
and negotiations, but also has a clear dual aspect. Due to this dualistic na-
ture, different members have opposing views on the collective identity of
the group and on the nature of its actions—even if groups have an ‘official’
position on whether they call themselves artists, activists, or something else.
Considering participants’ varied perspectives on their own practice is key
towards a deepened understanding of art activism, especially if we are to

Figure 1.1  A rt Not Oil collective performance at the National Portrait Gallery, 21
June 2014. Image by the author.
36  ‘Harmonic disobedience’
avoid generalised arguments that homogenise differences in experience for
the sake of arriving at universal conclusions (Thompson 2015:64).
Danny from Shell Out Sounds explains:

There’s always been a kind of … a dichotomy I guess between us as art-

ists and us as activists, and I’ve always been in the latter camp. I think
we are activists using art, and not artists using activism. And that’s kind
of what I worry about is, if it becomes a platform for people’s artistic
expression … uhm, then things can get lost. You know what I mean, the
power of the message can get lost.

Danny often refers to Shell Out Sounds’ performances as acts of ‘harmonic

disobedience’, emphasising the disobedient character of the group’s actions.
But Greg, who is also a long-standing member of the group, offers a differ-
ent view, and describes Shell Out Sounds as a community choir. In response
to this statement, I asked Greg: “If Shell Out Sounds is a community choir,
what community is it representing?” He replied: “People who want to make
a change […] we are a community of people who meet around the desire to
see an oil-free Southbank.” Greg therefore defines the group first in terms of
its artistic element (the singing), but then acknowledges the political incen-
tive behind the group. While recognising both elements, his definition dif-
fers from Danny’s, and showcases the dual and arguably fragmented nature
of Shell Out Sounds’ collective identity.
Greg also commented that he thought it was a shame that some people
think Shell Out Sounds “are quite a raggedy group, they are not really singers.
They are activists who use singing as a tool.” He is not entirely happy with the
level of musical quality the group has managed to achieve, but he still sees the
group as a choir, not a group of activists using singing. Interestingly enough,
at the same time he argues that because the choir never achieved this ideal
level of musical quality, the fact that the group turned up again and again to
sing in protest was the most valuable thing they have done so far. In this way,
he acknowledges that the most successful facet of the group has been the
strategic one, despite his personal focus on artistic quality.
Flesher Fominaya explains that for Melucci,

[c]ollective identity as a process involves cognitive definitions about

ends, means and the field of action; this process is given voice through a
common language, and enacted through a set of rituals, practices, and
cultural artefacts. This cognitive framework is not necessarily unified
or coherent but is shaped through interaction and comprises different
and even contradictory definitions.
(Flesher Fominaya 2010:395)

This idea of a fragmented cognitive framework rings particularly true in

the case of Shell Out Sounds, as participants put forward understandings
 ‘Harmonic disobedience’  37
of the group’s collective identity that are contradictory, emphasising
­either the political or the aesthetic aspect of the practice. In their study of
­Moroccan-Dutch youth, Prins et al. argue that “[i]dentification as a Muslim
transcends both the Moroccan and the Dutch identification” (2013:83), sug-
gesting in this way that there are different levels of identity. The boundaries
of some identities such as ethnicity, they add, are less defined, while others
such as religion offer a fixed set of rules and behavioural mandates. This can
be useful in understanding activists’ different forms of identification with
the group, as artists or as activists. However, in this case it can be argued
that neither form of identification is more fixed than the other, and this is
precisely what creates tension in the building of a collective identity.
There is another factor that further problematises the positioning and
framing of art activism as a hybrid practice. This is the fact that even though
aesthetics and politics are connected, merged, and overlap on many levels
in practices and spheres ranging from politics, to the media, and creative la-
bour, the language and terms of reference employed in the West for describ-
ing and attempting to deconstruct these connections seem to perpetuate a
distinction between aesthetics and politics, and a need for one of the two to
win over the other. This explains the variety of terms such as ‘political art’,
‘creative activism’, ‘activist art’, etc., which place emphasis on either the ar-
tistic aspect or the politics. Acknowledging this tension, artist activist John
Jordan explains:

[A]rt activism is that which is just on the edge between art and activism,
and you’re always gonna have the gravity of both those worlds trying to
pull you down. So you’re gonna have the gravity of the art world trying
to go ‘come on, if you just make it more beautiful, more artistic, more
poetic’ and then you got the activism world going ‘come on, come on, you
can be more radical, you can be more full on, it can be more creative’.6

If we cannot abandon the underlying assumption of aesthetics and politics as

separate phenomena, and both theory and practice perpetuate this separa-
tion, we can think of art activism as an ‘in-between’ as well as dualistic, and in
this way position it as a specific kind of practice that differs from other artistic
practices and from other forms of activism, and that is therefore governed
by the juxtaposition of processes, frameworks, and objectives from these two
fields. This way of looking at art activism relates to Sholette’s (2016) under-
standing of art and politics as a spectrum, in which we have artists doing
political art or activism on one end, and activists doing creative protest on
the other. But instead of striving to identify the exact location of different
practices within a spectrum, I argue that looking at these kinds of practices as
‘in-between’ the two ends allows us to focus on what the in-betweeness means
(i.e., the messiness, the tensions, and the negotiations between aesthetics and
politics). In this way, we can avoid falling into the trap of conducting an anal-
ysis that is only informed by a social movement perspective, or by an arts one.
38  ‘Harmonic disobedience’
Collective identity and ideology: when ideas clash
Shell Out Sounds’ collective identity and the differing narratives expressed
by the group’s members are shaped by the ideological positions of mem-
bers, and more precisely, their ideological position on the role of art in
society and the links between art and political action. This became evi-
dent, for instance, in the planning of an action for early 2014. One of the
members, Greg, proposed staging a spectacular procession at Southbank
Centre. He suggested a celebration of nature inspired by one of the con-
certs from the Shell Classical Season, which was taking place on March 16
and would feature Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, an ode to nature. As
a response to this theme, Greg proposed creating a celebratory piece fea-
turing not only singers but also musicians. He envisioned a carnivalesque
procession with brass instruments and animal masks taking over the whole
of the Royal Festival Hall—one of the venues at Southbank Centre—and
celebrating the beauty of nature and of all that which is endangered by
pollution, climate change, and the devastating effects on the environment
generated by the business model of companies like Shell. He suggested
having musicians and singers descending from different staircases at the
top of the Royal Festival Hall and coming together into a large marching
band in the foyer.
When he proposed the idea, Greg made it clear that he did not want this
performance to be about Shell, but about nature and life. It would be on the
one hand an occasion of mourning for the damage that has been done to
the environment by oil companies, but also a celebration of all that is beau-
tiful in nature, thus aligning itself with the tone of Mahler’s symphony. The
group’s opposition to Shell, suggested Greg, could be mentioned in a flyer
explaining the background to the performance, but he argued it should not
be explicitly mentioned through song, costumes, or banners, as this would
disrupt the aesthetics of the action. Greg’s proposal got some support from
members who thought it was a very exciting idea. However, other members
such as Danny had reservations about it, as they wanted Shell’s doings to re-
main the focus of any action developed by the group, and wanted Shell Out
Sounds to continue to carry out its role as a group with a specific mission:
sharing information about Shell, protesting against Shell’s actions and its
sponsorship deals, and contributing to the defamation of its brand. Greg’s
argument was that changing strategies for once, and adopting a more pos-
itive and celebratory aesthetic, could open up new possibilities, such as en-
gaging with new audiences. This potentially positive outcome, however, was
countered by the suggestion that this kind of action was not bold or trans-
gressive enough, and hence would not be effective in pressuring Southbank
Centre into dropping Shell, or giving Shell bad publicity. Greg responded
to this by pointing out that a celebratory kind of performance could still
be transgressive, as the space and moment for the procession would once
 ‘Harmonic disobedience’  39
more disrupt the day of an official concert performance as in most previous
actions. He added that most importantly, the music and the grandiosity of
the procession had potential for transgression in themselves, and therefore
there was no need for more confrontational techniques and explicit refer-
ences to Shell.
In the end, this project was not taken forward due to lack of planning time.
But the proposal created an interesting debate around the different tones that
a singing protest could take, around the locus and nature of transgression—
which I will be discussing further in Chapter 3—and also provided an in-
teresting insight into the tensions present within the collective identity of
the group. While Danny claimed that a very clear message against Shell
and a guerrilla approach would be more effective, Greg placed emphasis on
the aesthetic elements of the action, believing that a celebration of nature
with a separate and more discreet reference to Shell could achieve better re-
sults as both a transgressive action and a way of inviting deeper reflections
on environmental issues. Greg’s proposal for a procession supports an un-
derstanding of art as a language that can produce change through engaging
audiences with beautiful and grand performances, which are eye-catching
and have a potential for transmitting universal truths through the language
of music. Danny’s conception on the other hand is that art can be a power-
ful tool for direct action, as singing in protest at Southbank Centre is not
only a collective, enjoyable, creative act, but also an effective way of pro-
testing at a site where other forms of protest are more likely to be censored
(Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2  Shell Out Sounds singing at Parliament Square with Occupy Democracy
activists, 21 December 2014. Image by the author.
40  ‘Harmonic disobedience’
This disagreement showed a fundamental difference in the way that mem-
bers of the same group think about art and its potential for social change,
an issue that is usually taken as a given, shared understanding among art
activists, but that in reality is highly contested. It brings to mind ­Melucci’s
writing on ideology and how it acts as “a set of symbolic frames which
­collective actors use to represent their own actions to themselves and to
others” (Melucci 1996:349). What this particular incident suggests is that
in this context there is not only the need to negotiate artistic and strategic
­objectives as a collective, but that different individuals’ ideas on the nature
of art and its potential for protest within an art activist group can also gen-
erate tensions in the planning of actions, and contribute in this way to an
unstable collective identity that is in constant negotiation.

The artist vs. the collective

In the context of art activist groups such as Shell Out Sounds, the develop-
ment of an aesthetic-political action will require several stages, in which
issues such as message, form, logistics, and political objectives are discussed
and agreed on. A collective identity in these instances will guide collective
action, and how decisions regarding the best way to proceed are taken as a
group. In some instances, as when discussing the message to be transmitted
by an action, the discussion will build on a shared understanding of certain
specific environmental and political issues and goals, even if personal posi-
tions around these issues vary. In other instances, as when deciding the har-
monies for a song, the shared knowledge and love of music is the common
denominator for actors. But this shared love of music is also rooted in each
participant’s individual artistic identity. With this in mind, I will now look
at how individual identities intersect and interact with collective identity-
building processes, suggesting that this interaction, specific to art activist
groups, is in fact a key factor in this process.
As mentioned earlier, Shell Out Sounds is made up of a diverse group of
people, some who are professional or experienced singers, and some who
are not. As a result, the levels of musical knowledge and proficiency are
not equal among all participants, and the fact that some are not able to
understand and reproduce certain codes and jargon makes the issue of a
collective identity based (even if partially) on the act of singing all the more
complex. My own position as a music enthusiast with some training in play-
ing instruments, but no previous training in singing, resulted in frequent ex-
clusion from specific decision-making processes on the issue of how a piece
would be performed—for example, how many parts? Will we have solos?
Will someone sing the bass part? Which parts will be sung in unison and
which in harmonies? In addition to this, the artistic identity of individuals
creates a point of tension when there are members who heavily identify with
the artistic side of the group and much less so with the political or activist
side of it.
 ‘Harmonic disobedience’  41
On the day of the Hallelujah performance in June 2013, one of the par-
ticipants was very keen on doing a solo, but someone else was keen as well.
This meant that on top of deciding if there would be solo parts, it was impor-
tant to decide who would sing the solo parts and how these parts would be
­allocated. After some discussion, awkward ‘oh you should do it’ exchanges,
and attempts to try different arrangements, the first participant who was very
enthusiastic about the solo got to sing the part she coveted. Issues of charac-
ter and diplomacy were part of the process and these cannot be d ­ ismissed,
as they are an integral aspect of the internal politics of any activist group.
However, what this also comes to show is that the stronger identification with
the singing aspect of the group that some of the participants had, d ­ etermined
the direction in which planning conversations would go. The desire for a solo
part that a few singers expressed meant that allocating parts, which was an
aesthetic aspect of the action, became a major planning point, while other
points which fell under strategy and political objectives became less relevant
at that point. The dual aspect of the group as a choir and activist group, and
consequently, its complex collective identity, give place to opposing forms
of individual identification with the group: some identify with it more as
­activists, some more as artists. As a result, the group moves from having
a set of political objectives and priorities that define its collective identity
to also including collective and individual artistic objectives, and the dis-
proportionate investment of certain members in the latter aspect results, on
some occasions, in a neglect of the initial political objectives.

Conclusion
In this chapter, I carried out an exploration of collective identity in art activ-
ism by looking at the internal processes and interactions of Shell Out Sounds
and the ideas and experiences of art activists involved with this group. Tak-
ing new social movement theory and concepts such as identity, ideology, and
narrative as a basis for my analysis, I was able to identify three main charac-
teristics of the process of collective identity building that are specific to Shell
Out Sounds as an art activist group. The first is a lack of cohesion in the
way that members describe their practice, some positioning the group as an
activist group, and others, on the other hand, as a community of artists. The
second is a clash in ideological positions on the political potential of art, an
issue that was manifested in the planning of performance actions. And the
third is the presence of artistic individualities that conflict with collective
political and strategic planning. In relation to this latter point, we can think
of how the individual and the collective are reflected in the embodied act
of singing. While singing in unison brings people together in a horizontal
arrangement of diverse voices, harmonies and solo parts mark difference.
The collective identity of social movements and protest groups, as argued
earlier, is in constant transformation and negotiation, and hence it is useful
to look at collective identity as a process, rather than as a characteristic of
42  ‘Harmonic disobedience’
movements. The same applies to the narratives that participants build and
that feed into this identity; “to say that a collective narrative exists is not to
say that it is inflexible or unchanging. Like identities, narratives are subject
to debate and change” (Prins et al. 2013:87). While this is true of all social
movements, what my analysis of Shell Out Sounds suggests is that groups
that engage in artistic practice as a mode of action not only experience the
dynamics and tensions common to grassroots activism, but are also defined
by the duality of their practice, as artistic and political. This duality brings
about a series of tensions, found in the different ways in which participants
identify with a group, the way they narrate their own experiences and express
their understandings of their collective practice, and their conflicting ideo-
logical positions on artistic practice as a mode of political action. Tensions
therefore arise not only around the relationship between the individual and
the collective, but also around artistic and political objectives, and these two
dichotomies are intrinsically related. Art activism, it follows, presents a par-
ticular set of negotiations and tensions that are specific to this ‘in-between’
dualistic practice, and that define the way in which the process of building a
collective identity will develop.
The particularities of how a collective identity process functions when a
group or movement is conditioned by an artistic commitment serve to show
how when it comes to understanding this process in different contexts there
is a gap in theories of collective identity derived from SMT. The idea of col-
lective identity derived from SMT—new social movement theory to be more
specific—is developed as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ category fit for understanding
the process of building a collective identity in all kinds of (new) social move-
ments. But the specific case of art activist groups shows that there are cer-
tain issues and processes common to this kind of practice that determine
how collective identity develops, and that these are not fully analysed or
recognised by these theories.
The findings on this matter based on the specific case of Shell Out Sounds
were confirmed by instances of observant participation and interviews con-
ducted with people from other art activist groups. The artistic side of art
activist practice is in many cases a draw for participants, and for a few it is
more so than the actual political objectives the practice seeks to achieve. At
the same time, I have also encountered activists who are not particularly
fond of art practice, but are aware of how art can be a strategic tool in certain
contexts and are hence involved in the planning and staging of performance
actions. Finally, conversations around the political potential of aesthetics
and the different ways in which art can be a powerful tool for social change
were common among all the groups with which I have conducted research.
The ambiguous nature of art inevitably creates a space for a variety of opin-
ions on how art intersects with activism, and hence this ongoing tension
between artistic and political objectives weighed in different ways by partic-
ipants of the same group, as described in this chapter, ends up becoming a
defining trait of most art activist collectives. Despite some clichéd phrases
 ‘Harmonic disobedience’  43
commonly used when speaking about art—which many of us are guilty
of using—and in spite of any official description of their practice that any
group might have, the individual narratives provided by members around
the role of the arts in society and politics and around the nature of art activ-
ism have always been rich, and full of contradictions.
By focusing on the tensions between artistic and political objectives, I
was able to show that examining the process of collective identity building
is necessary in order to understand the complexities of activist groups that
use performance as a form of protest and direct action. While ­t ensions
between the aesthetic and the political—in this case, the strategic element
of the group’s practice, more precisely—became increasingly evident
throughout, tensions between individual subjectivities and the collective
also began to emerge, and will be further explored in the chapters that
follow.

Notes
1 See http://shelloutsounds.org/.
2 Art Not Oil has its origins in a campaign created by the group Rising Tide UK
in 2004, and later became a coalition including other groups such as BP or not
BP?, Liberate Tate, Platform, Science Unstained, BP Out of Opera, and UK Tar
Sands Network. At the time of writing, Art Not Oil is expanding to include a
greater number of groups and organisations. See www.artnotoil.org.uk/.
3 Shell Out Sounds (2013).
4 Danny Nemu, personal interview (2014).
5 Greg, personal interview (2014). Greg is a pseudonym.
6 John Jordan, personal interview (2014).

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2 A Viking longship
Participation in performance
action1

Introduction
In social movements there is more often than not power in numbers. Events
such as marches, occupations, and protests count on a large number of bod-
ies together in one place in order to generate a strong impact, and the success
of an action is often measured in these terms—10,000 marched, 1,000,000
marched—regardless of the later consequences—or lack thereof—that
these events might have on social and political issues, public policy, or cor-
porate practice. To this end, protests, especially when carried out in public
spaces, tend to be open participatory events, trying to attract as many par-
ticipants as possible. Artistic protests in particular often rely on the element
of spectacle (Duncombe 2007, Farrar and Warner 2008), and a large num-
bers of participants is on many occasions a means of achieving this kind of
aesthetic shock. Furthermore, participation can sometimes be linked to a
group’s mission and values of inclusivity and horizontality. But building a
practice that is fully open to participation has its challenges, and the way
that the elusive concept of participation itself has so far been theorised from
an art theory perspective often leaves us with more questions than answers.
In this chapter, I will refer to specific performance actions (events that are
both performances and forms of protest linked to campaigns or movements)
as well as interviews and conversations with members of UK-based groups
Shell Out Sounds (a protest choir) and BP or not BP? (an activist theatre
troupe), both part of the anti-oil sponsorship coalition Art Not Oil. I will
look at how participation develops in the context of performance actions
that target oil-sponsored cultural institutions, exploring the different forms
that participation can take as well as the tensions that arise when partic-
ipation comes into conflict with other aspects of these actions. I will also
consider the embodied aspect of participatory performance actions, and
from this I will begin to suggest a new understanding of participation that
considers both its creative and political facets, and that challenges previous
understandings of participatory art that have so far failed to acknowledge
the particularities of art in an activist context.
46  A Viking longship
Participatory art
Participatory art is that in which the people participating constitute the artis-
tic medium and material of a piece (Bishop 2012:2). In the context of institu-
tional art practice, the artist is a producer of situations, and the audience—or
part of it—is regarded as a co-producer or participant, instead of as spectators
(Shaughnessy 2012). Participation has become a regular style and tool for “re-
orienting the relationship between individuals and art institutions and ques-
tioning the power structures that have been associated with notions of single
authorship” (Brown 2014:1). Claire Bishop (2012:11) refers to artist Jeanne von
Heeswijk’s thoughts to argue that participation as a form of art and com-
munication has been adopted by artists because the model of producer and
passive viewer of images has been co-opted by the commercial world. There
is a search, therefore, for a different type of interaction in art making that
can fight passivity and alienation. In the context of art activism, participation
is key for a number of reasons. In the first place, as argued earlier, there is
power in numbers. Second, activist actions in public spaces usually aim at
getting the general public involved with a certain issue and sometimes also
‘recruiting’ more people. It is therefore only logical that many performances
carried out by activists are open and participatory. And third, in the case of
performances, a democratic and open participatory nature aims at creating
an emancipated, politically aware, and active subject (Bishop 2006). It also
looks to promote equality by dismissing the hierarchical concept of the au-
thor, and finally, it looks to strengthen social bonds through collaboration.
Participation, following this line of thought, could therefore be seen as a
potential channel for the enactment of a kind of prefigurative politics. We
can think of participatory performance action as a form of collective action,
and “collective action is a ‘form’ which by its very existence, the way it struc-
tures itself, delivers its message” (Melucci 1996:76–77). This idea is mirrored
by Benjamin’s thoughts on the work of art. Benjamin (1970) argued that the
politics of an artwork lie in its means of production more than on its content.
In art activism the means are part of the message, and this notion is relevant
when analysing participatory performance as a method for political action.
But most theories on participatory art refer to art that takes place within
the framework of the art institution. Nicholas Bourriaud (2002) famously
coined the term ‘relational aesthetics’ to describe work that is participa-
tory and that aims to build micro-utopias by reconfiguring social relations.
Bishop argues that these conceptions, however, have been more power-
ful as ideals than as real transformations (2012:2). Indeed, as argued by
­Stallabrass, in institutionalised participatory art,

Active participants tend to be few, elite, and self-selecting. Secondly, in

these temporary utopian bubbles, no substantial politics can be arrived
at, not least because even among those who do attend, real differences
and conflicts of interest are momentarily denied or forgotten. A merely
gestural politics is the likely result.
(Stallabrass 2004:1811)
 A Viking longship  47
In a critique of Bourriaud’s (2002) framework of relational aesthetics,
Bishop asks: “If relational art produces human relations, then the next
logical question to ask is what types of relations are being produced, for
whom, and why?” (Bishop 2004:65). This question is particularly relevant
if we consider that most participatory artworks fall under the category of
‘socially engaged art’, or art that engages with specific communities and
social issues. For his part, Kester (2004, 2011) continues to champion forms
of art that are relational and participatory, but changes the discourse
­towards ­collaboration and dialogue. He advocates art projects that don’t
take ­participants as resources but rather include them in a conversation.
Kester moves away from Bourriaud’s institutionally bound perspective, and
away from Bishop’s scepticism over the aesthetic validity of socially engaged
art (Charnley 2011). But even though the projects championed by Kester
are closer to activism, pedagogy, and other social practices, and take place
within communities and outside the physical space of art galleries and mu-
seums, these projects are still conceived by artists within a professionalised
art world, and hence are commissioned, funded, and supported by these
same institutions (Jelinek 2013:27).
This brings up two major issues. In the first place, socially engaged par-
ticipatory art projects designed by artists—especially when coming from
outside the communities they work with—may give place to complex power
dynamics with participants. The notion of inserting oneself into a commu-
nity and transforming participants is problematic because it can acquire an
‘evangelical’ tone (Shaughnessy 2005:209), depriving people of their agency
for self-transformation. Second, artists are conditioned by the rules of the
institutions which dictate what art is valuable and what is not, what is re-
garded as a successful project, and how much support a project receives. It is
important to note, once again, that the above perspectives on participatory
art are based on institutional art practices, which differ in context and pro-
cess from art activism. In this chapter, I will therefore look at participation
in the context of art activism, and ask: How does participation take place
in activist performance actions? What is at stake when deciding to make a
practice participatory? And in what ways does participation in performance
actions differ from participation in an institutional context? I assume here
a position that does not see participation as a style or approach that can be
applied in the same way to a variety of contexts, but rather an idea that will
be shaped by particular frames of reference (Brown 2014:3).

Participation vs. quality

In the case of Shell Out Sounds, an activist choir protesting against the links
between Shell and the Southbank Centre (as well as other cultural institu-
tions in London), wide participation in actions is not only encouraged, but
also actively sought. The group usually puts out open calls, uses social media
channels, and tries to engage with passers-by during performances in order
to recruit more participants for future actions. This is not only to help create
48  A Viking longship
a mass movement but also very necessary, since commitment levels in
the group vary—being an activity most have to juggle with work, study,
and/or family obligations—and hence numbers fluctuate from action to
action.
Shell Out Sounds encourages participation in specific performances, but
is also open to new organisers who can contribute to planning actions. One
of the group’s defining traits is that it is a collective that does not hold au-
ditions and is open to anyone who would like to join. In addition to this,
as Greg from Shell Out Sounds explains, the group has a type of soft lead-
ership that is fluctuating and based on people taking on responsibilities
voluntarily, which he sees as a positive thing.2 Members of the group see
the openness and flexibility of the choir as some of Shell Out Sounds’ main
assets. However, this means that there is difficulty when trying to main-
tain a fixed number of singers that can attend regular rehearsals before ac-
tions, beyond a few regular main organisers. This type of dynamic poses
certain challenges in terms of the artistic goals of Shell Out Sounds, given
that several members are fully committed to delivering high-quality music
performances in addition to the political goals the group strives for. But is
it possible to achieve the desired level of aesthetic quality and consistency
in singing without regular rehearsals? And second, if quality is a concern,
should the choir be open to everyone who wants to join, regardless of their
experience and artistic talent?
Conversations around the intention to create good-quality pieces and
the open nature of the choir were ongoing during my time spent with the
group as a researcher and member, and gave place to instances of negotia-
tion almost every time the group was planning an action. For instance, on
one occasion due to a concert date approaching fast, one of the members
mentioned there was a decision to be made: should there be an open call for
this, or is it best to go for a smaller ‘tighter’ performance?—that is, more re-
hearsed, and more solid in terms of being sung by the regular, more experi-
enced singers, who would be able to harmonise and develop songs into more
polished pieces with multiple layers. In another instance, when planning
the performance action Oil in the Water at the Royal Festival Hall, there
was discussion about bringing in a professional singer, given that the group
would be singing a Spiritual piece, which some argued would sound best if
led by an experienced Spiritual singer.
As Greg admits, focusing on the artistic quality of actions can be a prob-
lem when trying to run an open group:

I’m obsessed with doing it well, and in Shell Out Sounds […] you can
say you want it to be a kind of excellence or amazingness, but that
can alienate people who are very passionate but not committed to
music, ’cause they believe that participation is all, and […] the sound
you make is secondary to the fact that you are all coming together to
make this.
 A Viking longship  49
On this same matter, Danny from Shell Out Sounds says:

I think basically you want your group as large as possible, but you need
to be clear, ‘I’m sorry, mate, you can’t sing. You should be handing out
flyers on this one’.3

Remembering a Shell Out Sounds carolling event in December 2013, Bridget

from the same group says that:

It would be good as well if we had, or had had more people […] who are
really strongly musical, and not just singing, able to kind of compose
and lead […] It could feel a little bit more professional I suppose, with
professional musicians.4

Members’ concerns with the quality of the singing problematise the

idea of the choir as open and inclusive, as this suggests a turn towards
a differentiation in the roles of participants—making the act of singing
an exclusive activity—or towards a professionalisation of the choir, en-
couraging more ‘strongly musical’ people in particular to join. When the
artistic objectives of the group become a priority, this sometimes con-
tradicts the values of inclusion and horizontality that the choir intends
to reproduce as a non-­h ierarchical group. This is evidenced by Greg’s
comments, in which he compares Shell Out Sounds to Liberate Tate, an
art collective staging performance art pieces that is also part of the Art
Not Oil coalition:

Liberate Tate is like fifty people carrying out the idea of a small group
of people. And actually it’s what they do that I aspire to, which is why …
my relationship to this group [Shell Out Sounds] is complicated, and
makes me possibly a difficult person to be in the group […] I did a two-
year community music course, and yet I wanted to be the one who’s
making the thing that needs to be like art, in the sense that it reaches
you and gives you an emotional impact. I mean there’s emotional im-
pact in lots of people singing carols together, I mean ’cause that can
be moving. But I want the thing that is like… that makes it musically.
Which means I am kind of in the wrong place.

Another factor that is important to consider in relation to participation is the

specific artistic medium of performance actions. Different forms of perfor-
mance, be it performance art, theatre, or singing, are more or less accessible
to participants, and due to their characteristics can pose different kinds of
challenges towards achieving a pleasing aesthetic product in the context of
activist actions. In all cases, the complexity level of a performance piece—
be it music, theatre, or performance art—might need to be compromised
in order to adapt to limited rehearsal time and accommodate participants
50  A Viking longship
who join in on the day. But as Greg once pointed out, singing requires more
skill than taking part in a silent piece of performance art, and it is more
difficult to get talented singers on board than to get a person who is willing
to take part in a group performance art piece. Groups like Liberate Tate do
not require any particular talent or skills from casual participants, and can
achieve a high visual impact by focusing on choreography, use of colour,
and symbols. In the case of singing, it is sound which is the focus, and which
has the potential to create a long-lasting impression. If  the  singing talent
and experience of participants is not ‘good enough’, then the group will not
achieve the level of artistic quality sought, and will need to rely on shock
quality in order to make an impact on audiences, targeted institutions’ staff
members, and other stakeholders, as opposed to making a lasting impres-
sion through what is perceived as artistic excellence.
On the same issue however, Danny points out that in comparison to act-
ing, which is the medium of preference for activist theatre troupe BP or not
BP?, singing as a group can be less intimidating than taking an acting role
in a theatrical performance. He explains that

[N]ot many people are happy to go out in front of a crowd of strangers,

and sometimes hostile strangers, and start belting out iambic pentam-
eter. But in a crowd of people doing a call and response song, people
are quite up for it. And I kind of think that the choral singing, it could
become massive. I could imagine a thousand people on the Southbank
singing over the river, towards the city of London. You can’t really do
that kind of thing with theatre.

Danny’s visualisation of a massive choir shows the importance of numbers

in generating a spectacular action, in which the expertise and talent of par-
ticipants take a back seat. This tension between massive actions and smaller
‘tighter’ ones was recurrent in my observations, and manifested differently
in the work of each group. While the desire to achieve ‘quality’ is always
present, it is in constant negotiation with strategy and logistics and with
the intention to have an open participatory practice, and this negotiation
will take different shapes according to the specific action being planned,
and the goals in place. While some performances might benefit from a re-
hearsed script, choreography, or song by a small number of people carrying
a specific message, at other points filling up a cultural space with hundreds
of people will call attention in a different way, potentially creating both an
‘ethical’ spectacle (Duncombe 2007) and a situation open to participation.

Participation as a strategy: the BP Viking funeral

An example of a mass performance in which participation was a defining
element and an objective from the start was the case of the BP Viking fu-
neral organised by BP or not BP?, which took place on 15 June 2014 in the
context of the Vikings exhibition at the British Museum, sponsored by the
 A Viking longship  51
fossil  fuel  company BP. This example will offer a different perspective on
participation, and will be particularly useful to examine as a contrast to the
kinds of constraints under which Shell Out Sounds operated as a protest choir.
For this performance action, BP or not BP? held a Viking funeral, in which
the evil ‘BP Vikings’ were buried and then ejected from the museum. In order
to attract participants, the action was advertised beforehand on social media
with the announcement that BP or not BP? would bring a longship into the
British Museum, and the general public was invited to join in this venture.
For this action, I was involved in the planning stages, developing a script
for the performance alongside other participants. At an early planning meet-
ing held with five other group members, we agreed that we wanted this per-
formance action to be participatory and large, including as many people as
possible. Also, we wanted something for people to do, so the objective was
not to gather a large audience, but to recruit participants who could take on
tasks and in this way be integral to the performance as a whole, adhering to
Bishop’s (2006) description of a politically aware and emancipated subject,
but with the intention of adding agency and political participation to the
mix. We split into two groups in order to think through different aspects of
the performance, and that is when my group came up with the idea of the
human longship. This ship would be made up of rows of people held together
by their arms, marching at the same pace, creating the shape of a ship using
their bodies. We also decided to incorporate some props in order to make the
concept of the ship more obvious to spectators, so we discussed masts and
figureheads we could hold as the ship moved around. Eventually, sometime
closer to the date a prop specialist from the group also made an outer coat
for the ship out of fabric that was painted like wood, and carried ‘BP Viking’
logos on it. As people formed the shape of the ship, those standing at the
edges would carry the cloths and surround the whole structure in them, pro-
viding a more visually convincing representation of a ship.
On the day of the action a group of around twenty-five gathered in a re-
hearsal venue. Some of those who were present began practising the move-
ments of the ship, and roles were assigned to some people who would lead the
ship once inside the museum, and instruct the participants joining last minute
the ways in which they could join the performance action. As the group prac-
tised the ship movement and tried to get it right, we focused on how to hold on
to each other and how to walk, and had to learn to use our bodies collectively
in order to master such things as turning. It was interesting to hear comments
from other participants who were watching. Someone mentioned that if peo-
ple smiled, laughed, or looked distracted, it did not really look like a ship, as
human emotions emphasized the fact that it was made up of people. P ­ utting
on a stern face, on the other hand, would convey the feeling of a Viking ship
and of a funeral procession, thus making the whole ship representation more
believable, and drawing attention away from the bodies that constructed it.
Once inside the museum, and after enhanced security checks that caused
delays, denied entrance to some, involved the confiscation of props, and ended
in the arrest of an activist dressed as a Viking, a few people decided to take
52  A Viking longship
charge and make the action take place anyway. One of the actorvists (a term
normally employed by BP or not BP? members) called for attention from the
public and began to tell the tale of the ‘BP Vikings’. A few people in Viking
costume then joined the scene, and as the performance progressed, the ac-
torvists made calls to the larger group and to the audience at different points
throughout, signalling them to get into poses. The cry of “Midgard”—the
human realm in Norse mythology, which must be defended from the BP Vi-
kings—called for participants to get into a defensive pose as if holding a shield.
The cry of “Ragnarok”—the end of the world, where BP is leading us and that
we are fighting against—called for participants to raise their weapons (be they
props or imaginary) up high, as though preparing to strike. These calls were
repeated several times throughout the performance, as well as a ‘horn call’ that
people could join in by using their hands as a horn. Information about these
poses and actions, as well as other details, had been sent by email beforehand
to those people who had responded to the open call on Facebook.
After this first part of the performance, it was announced that there would
be a funeral procession for the BP Vikings. Participants and spectators were
then asked to come closer to the lead performers, and a few BP or not BP?
actorvists began to place people into rows, explaining how the longship
would be taken forward. Then the fabric that made up the ship’s outer layer
was lifted, and the longship began to move forward, from a spot close to the
entrance of the British Museum’s Great Court, towards the back of the same
Court. As we marched in unison, we began a call and response song:

BP, BP
(BP, BP)
Won’t let me breathe
(Won’t let me breathe)
We are the rising waves
(We are the rising waves)
The climate grows in me
(The climate grows in me)

As the longship moved across the hall, the mood it projected was solemn.
Since the group’s drum had been confiscated, we began marking rhythm by
stamping, setting in this way both the pace for movement and singing and
the tone of the performance.
The collectively built human longship was an embodied statement, ini-
tiated by BP or not BP?, and put together by the will and belief of a larger
group of people. It transmitted an earnest message about BP through the
language of performance, and through the embodiment and projection of
solemnity. At the action debrief, everyone from the group agreed that sing-
ing had had a major role in keeping the performance together. It merged
with the stamping and gave the procession rhythm, and the beautiful mel-
ody sung in unison made the performance both interesting, and it seemed,
enjoyable for museum visitors (Figure 2.1).
 A Viking longship  53

Figure 2.1  BP or not BP?’s BP Viking longship inside the British Museum, London,
15 June 2014. Image by the author.

In its procession, the longship moved forward until finishing a half-turn

around the rotunda in the Great Court, and then came to a halt. There,
the ship was deconstructed, and the BP Vikings laid down on the floor,
as if ready for burial. One of the performers explained there would now
be a burying ritual, and invited people to bring forward offerings. Some
people laid the Viking’s own weapons and shields on them—these were
made out of cardboard and bore BP logos. Others, mostly experienced
performers, recited poems in celebration of the death of BP. ­A fter the
burial, the initial plan was to carry the BP Vikings outside the museum.
However, improvisation and participant initiative led to the ship re-­
morphing and advancing towards the exit, while the chant was repeated.
Once outside the Vikings posed for photos, and as the participants took
over the stairs of the museum, other forms of improvised protest chants
started taking place:

Whose museum? Our museum!

Whose planet? Our planet!
When I say BP you say: No thanks!
When I say sponsorship you say: No thanks!
Whose future? Our future!

The action succeeded in recruiting non-members of the group to take part,

several of them joining in with Viking poses and taking on roles as part of the
ship. Many of them were people who had signed up in advance, and once at
54  A Viking longship
the museum one could already spot participants sporting paper Viking hats
as per the emailed instructions, despite many of these being confiscated by
security upon arrival. But also, some people who felt compelled to join were
museum-goers who were caught by surprise. In total, there were around 100
people actively involved in the performance and around 100 more museum
visitors who became spontaneous audience members, or arguably, as my
next section will propose, became participants in a way as well.

Types of participation in performance action

In theatre, as in live art, participation can take different forms. A play, for
instance, can be seen as being participatory when there is interaction with
an audience, and in performance art and live art, work is regarded as inher-
ently participatory when it makes use of people as a medium for the artwork
itself (Bishop 2012). But as Kaija Kaitavuori (2014) points out, writings on
participatory art have so far failed to acknowledge and analyse the different
forms and levels that participation can take. Looking at participatory art
in an institutional context, Kaitavuori proposes a topology of participa-
tion that distinguishes between the following features: first, whether partici-
pants are taking part in the production of the work or in its display. Second,
whether participants are following the artist’s instructions and merely re-
acting to their prompts, or whether they have the opportunity to choose
how to participate. The combination of different forms of interaction with
the work and the stage at which participants intervene, argues Kaitavuori,
leads to four classifications of participants: targets (reactive participation
in the display only); users (active participation in the display only); material
(reactive participation in the production stage); and co-creators (active par-
ticipation in the production space). This framework could be challenged in
that it is sometimes difficult to make distinctions between the production
and display phases of certain pieces, as it is to distinguish between partici-
pants that are following artists’ instructions and those that engage with the
piece freely—considering that certain pieces can give the illusion of agency
but participation is still determined by the dynamics of the institutional art
space. However, this framework is useful for thinking about how participa-
tion can take different forms, and it provides a way in for thinking about
how this might be different in the context of art activism.
Following from Kaitavuori’s (2014) framework, I find it necessary here
to make a distinction between collaboration and participation, terms that
are often employed interchangeably but which can be used as a way of dif-
ferentiating between those taking the initiative and developing a concept
for a piece, and those that participate in it, however involved they might
become. I employ here an understanding of collaboration that implies par-
ties or actors coming together to develop a project or action, and an under-
standing of participation as the act of joining an existing project, initiative,
or event. Informed by the work of Shell Out Sounds and BP or not BP?
 A Viking longship  55
described  here as well as by the work of other art activist groups, I have
identified three types of participation that we can encounter in the specific
case of p­ erformance-based activist actions, and that apply to people who
are participants, as opposed to organisers of an action.5
Moving outwards from the collaborating core of an action (those involved
as organisers), the first form of participation is casual participation by peo-
ple who see open calls or receive invitations to take part in actions. They
are not involved in the planning stages, but may be regular participants and
have some insider information about what the action is about, and what is
going to happen—as in the case of people who signed up via social media
to take part in the BP Viking funeral. In this case, information about Vi-
king poses and other specifics had been distributed by email to people who
signed up in advance. This knowledge of aspects of the performance and
other things such as the starting time, the theme, and the dress code gener-
ated a marked difference between this kind of participant and others who
held no information in advance.
The second type of participation can be described as spontaneous partici-
pation, and is the kind of participation by passers-by who were surprised by
the performance and were drawn to join in. This dynamic is more or less fre-
quent according to the type of performance and what is expected from people.
If we compare BP or not BP?’s performances with those of Shell Out Sounds,
for instance, we can see how the fact that each group uses different art forms
determines the ways in which spontaneous participation can take place. As a
protest choir, Shell Out Sounds is limited to musical performances, and par-
ticipation in one of their performance actions will most likely entail singing.
This can be intimidating to passers-by who do not know the lyrics and ar-
rangements to a song, and as a result the group does not usually succeed in
including a great number of passers-by in their actions.6 BP or not BP?, on
the other hand, put on theatrical performances. While taking a lead role in
one of their performances might entail a speaking part, it is also possible for
casual and spontaneous participants to join in without taking such a role. The
participatory approach to theatrical performance that BP or not BP? adopt
means that participants do not necessarily need to act, sing, or learn lines, but
can be part of a performance in ways that do not require particular talents
or knowledge, and rather rely on using their bodies, following the crowd and
improvising, as the BP Vikings example shows. As a result, BP or not BP? per-
formances have more potential for being accessible to newcomers, while Shell
Out Sounds performances need to overcome the barrier of their artistic form
in order to engage the general public as spontaneous participants.
The third and final type of participation is that of spectators—members
of the public who become audiences once a performance begins, but who
remain at a distance. This form of participation could arguably be regarded
as passive, but in the context of these performance actions, people who stop
to watch make a significant contribution to the situation, as an audience is
important in terms of the reach and legitimisation of an action; the more
56  A Viking longship
people that stop to watch, the more exposure of a message, and the more
pressure on a target—in this case, the cultural institution sponsored by a fos-
sil fuel company. In the same fashion as in more traditional kinds of protest
and direct action, there is power in numbers. In the Vikings performance,
more than a hundred people were watching and taking pictures and filming,
and a few asked if the group would perform again. It is therefore important
to also consider how people who do not take an active role in participatory
artworks experience them from the ‘outside’ (Bell 2017:80). Are there dif-
ferent sensations, experiences? Is the political efficacy different? One of the
BP or not BP? members noticed, for instance, a mother explaining the BP
shields on the longship to her daughter. Instances like this one serve to show
how these artistic actions can indeed, through the use of performance, song,
and visual material, start conversations around oil and sponsorship, and
why spectacular aesthetics can sometimes be a way of achieving this goal.
In the BP or not BP? Vikings performance, participation was at the heart
of the action. The idea of the longship came out of a desire to have a large
group of people being actively involved, as opposed to a smaller group of
actors in front of a large audience. This was linked both to a strategic desire
to attract and engage people with the group’s practice and make it more
spectacular (which could in turn lead to media coverage and more exposure
for the campaign), but also to a conception of art as democratic and inclu-
sive, ideals that aim at generating a kind of politically engaged participa-
tion, meaning a kind of creative participation that allows at the same time
a space for agency and political participation. On this occasion, BP or not
BP? managed to effectively integrate non-members who expressed a desire
to participate in their actions: by encouraging people to sign up to an action
in advance and sending ‘secret’ easy-to-follow instructions by email, people
could become actively involved in an action without having prior involve-
ment with the group. Having some kind of insider knowledge provided a
sense of purpose; their presence and role in the action mattered.

Embodied politics: participation as a political act

Because of the physicality of performance as a medium, participation in
activist performances is an embodied act. In the case of BP or not BP?’s
Vikings performance, participants were expected to join in call and re-
sponse singing; get into Viking poses that involved certain facial expres-
sions, noises, and attitudes; use their hands as a horn in order to create a
unison sound; and finally, join with others to create a longship with their
bodies, jointly representing a collective fight against BP. In instances like
these, embodied participation can amount to an enjoyable activity filled
with feelings of adrenaline and pleasure, and this can enhance the feeling
of collective power in a political action (Juris 2008). Art activist John Jor-
dan, who was part of Reclaim the Streets and founding member of CIRCA
(Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army) and the Laboratory of Insur-
rectionary Imagination, highlights the importance of creating instances
 A Viking longship  57
of direct action that are pleasurable to participants. He explains that this
is important

[b]ecause in a sense, there’s a kind of sacrificial thing in non-violent

direct action, you know, you’re putting your body in danger. And of
course you are having pleasure while you’re doing it, because it’s excit-
ing, it’s adventure […] It’s a kind of collective ritual, […] you are working
together under risk and adrenaline. Your bodies are sharing this kind
of risk, and that’s really important and interesting for creating strong
collectives and collective power.7

Similarly, Greg from Shell Out Sounds explains that

[t]he moment before the action, if you know you’re gonna do something
good, it can be very empowering because the adrenaline is there and…
you’ve got a purpose. As if the night just before a gig [but] you’re doing
something disobedient for a good reason.

In the case of the Vikings performance, adrenaline and enjoyment were a

big part of the action. And, as can be the case with choir singing, the feeling
of unity and collectivity was also achieved through the collective effort of
forming a ship, in which each person’s body had the same importance, and
which could only move forward if everyone was walking at the same pace and
towards the same goal. The evident importance of each and every participant
in the venture of forming a human longship contributed to reinforcing the
power of the collective, and the fact that a hundred bodies in space can do
something powerful. For this reason, performance is a chosen mode of action
for many activist groups as opposed to other forms of art. As Greg explains:

[W]e need to use our bodies to make noise. Visual art is amazing, and
some people need to do it. But in terms of the transformative collective
act, you can sing together, but it’s very hard to go paint a picture together.

In addition to the bonds that are formed between participants, and the em-
bodied experiences that strengthen a sense of collective power, embodied
performance can also be an opportunity for personal expression and trans-
formation for participants. In contrast to other more traditional forms of
political action, performance allows a place for protest and direct action
to take an expressive and creative form. Furthermore, as argued by Brown,

Particiaptory artworks can […] amplify the effect of an individual’s

self-placement in a fictional world by making tangible the sensory, emo-
tional, and ethical effects of encounters within that world, or by display-
ing the outcomes of a participant’s action or inaction in response to a
particular set of circumstances.
(Brown 2014:7)
58  A Viking longship
But also, in the Vikings action, for instance, new participants’ decision to
reshape the longship and take it outside was a creative expression of agency
and of political subjectivities, carried out through body movement and song.
The possibilities that creative practice open up for the transformation of po-
litical subjectivities have been noted by Rancière, who sees “aesthetic acts
as configurations of experience that create new modes of sense perception”
through which these transformations can take place (Rancière 2004:9).
Considering this, what do these dynamics of embodied participation tell
us about performance as activism? Earlier in this chapter, I presented some
key ideas on participation in socially engaged art as it develops in an institu-
tional context. These kinds of art practices, I explained, attempt to generate
through their work social dynamics that challenge the idea of authorship,
and that restate values of community and collaboration or activate partic-
ipants as political subjects (Bishop 2012, Shaughnessy 2012). The change
that these practices attempt to generate through participation is directed at
participants themselves, both on a collective and personal level (Bourriaud
2002), and, as I have argued, the kinds of transformations and the extent to
which these changes can occur in an institutional context are questionable.
In the case of performances by BP or not BP? and Shell Out Sounds, partici-
pation is partly linked to a desire to maintain an ethos of openness and collab-
oration. But even when these values are an important feature in these groups,
the main objective of their performances is to produce a structural change
at an institutional level—bringing an end to oil sponsorship of the arts—and
to change attitudes about fossil fuels and corporate power on a wider social
scale. What, then, is the potential for collective and personal transformation
of participants in these actions, when the main objective for change lies outside
the social interactions and relations formed within the artwork? (Figure 2.2).
Performance actions such as those by Art Not Oil groups are tied to specific
social, political, and environmental agendas. Building a human longship at
the British Museum to protest against BP, or taking over the main hall at the
Royal Festival Hall for an afternoon of un-commissioned political carols,
entail both an act of participatory performance and an instance of protest
and direct action. If compared with instances of institutional participatory
art, activist performances allow opportunities for politically engaged par-
ticipation, in addition to opportunities for artistic, embodied, expressive
participation, as participants engage with concrete agendas and objectives
for social change. This allows political subjectivities to be transformed, as
participants are not the targets of change, but agents that become involved
physically and symbolically with a political issue through creative protest.
While participants take part in a performance action that was conceived
and planned by a smaller group of art activists and therefore could argua-
bly not be seen as ‘co-creators’ (Kaitavuori 2014), they are not only taking
part as participants that follow the invitations and guidelines of a perfor-
mance, but also as political actors with agency, who choose to support an
 A Viking longship  59

Figure 2.2  BP or not BP?’s BP Vikings performance at the British Museum, ­London,
15 June 2014. Image by the author.

environmental and political cause by joining an act of protest. Embodied

performance actions provide the space for the arguably unfulfilled objec-
tives of institutional participatory art to be fulfilled, as participants become
engaged, political subjects with agency and an objective for change that
transcends the self, instead of becoming targets or even users of a partici-
patory piece. This idea will be further developed in the following chapters,
where I will look at participation in other forms of art activism, such as
radical pedagogy projects (Chapter 6).

Limits to participation in Art Not Oil performance actions

While these performances generate spaces for political participation and
the formation and expression of political subjectivities, there are limits
to how participatory actions can be, and to what extent they can put into
practice the values of democracy and inclusion that many of these groups
embrace. While there is room for participants to take the lead and make a
performance their own as in the case of the Viking funeral, there will al-
ways be a distinction between those who are ‘in the know’ and those who
are not. This insider knowledge unavoidably creates hierarchies and lead-
ership during actions, as people who were involved during the planning
will be leading the rest. This is not something that can be easily changed,
as open calls and openness to passers-by are bound to generate this kind
of dynamic. Since performance actions are strategic, interventionist, and
60  A Viking longship
sometimes unannounced, there are limits to how much information can be
shared beforehand, and that alone establishes a specific kind of power dy-
namic among everyone involved, even if the action itself is collectively taken
forward.
A high proportion of members from the activist groups analysed here have
previous knowledge of and/or experience in the performing arts, and all of
these groups have a predominantly white and middle-class composition.
The people who are occasional participants in actions by these groups tend
to be of similar backgrounds as well. There are a number of reasons why
these groups tend to mostly only attract white middle-class participants. As
members of Liberate Tate and BP or not BP? have stated in the past, they
are aware of the fact that being a group of mostly white activists has given
them certain privileges when operating inside cultural venues (Liberate Tate
2012:138), largely because of the way in which their interventionist actions
are perceived by museum staff as ‘non-threatening’. Under the social and
political climate of the UK, people of colour do not have this privilege, and
this might influence their decision when it comes to taking part in actions
of an interventionist nature. But also, and despite the specific language and
form of these actions, the wider environmental movement in the UK—as in
most Global North countries—can be described as predominantly white
and ­middle class (­Cotgrove and Duff 2009), as well as fragmented and two-
tiered.8 This is the case not only for direct action groups, but also for NGOs
and other campaigning organisations.9 The lack of diversity in these environ-
ments is, then, not only a result of the space that is intervened or the particu-
lar mode of action, which in this case is performance, but is also related to the
way that environmental issues are framed within a particular social context,
and how these are related or not to other struggles faced by working-class and
BME (Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic) individuals (­Serafini 2017). Due to
the particular focus of this book, I will not be able to expand further on this
very important matter. I believe, however, that this would be an equally im-
portant project, which could usefully contribute to a b ­ etter understanding
of activist dynamics, and to the work of groups that are ­already challenging
through their work the lack of diversity in environmental movements.10

Conclusion
In this chapter, I examined the role of participation as a relational dynamic,
an objective, and a strategy for art activist groups, highlighting the par-
ticular ways in which participation takes place in performance actions, the
political potential of embodiment, and also the limitations to participation
and inclusion in these particular types of campaigns. I argued that while
participation can be actively sought by art activist groups, an open ap-
proach can sometimes be in conflict with artistic objectives, often framed
as artistic quality. The cases reviewed here contribute to a demystifying of
participation, acknowledging the negotiations art activists must make when
 A Viking longship  61
planning participatory performances and analysing how participation can
render certain practices unstable (Brown 2014:4).
By presenting the case of BP or not BP?’s Viking longship action, I was
also able to build a framework for understanding the different forms that
participation can take in performance actions: casual, spontaneous, and au-
dience. These categories build on the work of Kaitavuori (2014), the first two
categories representing ‘active’ participants and the second representing the
audience, also a type of participant, even if passive. All three types of par-
ticipants become involved in what Kaitavuori would call the display part
of the artwork, which she marks as different from its production. Finally,
I also looked at participation as an embodied, political experience, and ar-
gued that this experience is characterised by the position of participants as
political subjects as opposed to targets of change, who by being part of a
political action with a target outside of themselves acquire political agency.
This perspective on participation, specific to activist performance actions,
challenges previous frameworks for looking at participatory art (Bourriaud
2002, Kester 2004, 2011, Bishop 2006, 2012) by suggesting that performance
action can generate different forms of participation specific to art activist
practice, and that participation in art activism can allow a type of political
agency that is not commonly achieved in an institutional setting. Also, look-
ing at participation was useful as a way of uncovering tensions between aes-
thetics, prefigurative values, and political objectives in art activist practice,
and also in the relationship between individual and collective experiences,
which was explored in the previous chapter in relation to identity. In the
next chapter, I will return to the practice of Art Not Oil groups, in order to
look at how transgression and prefiguration are negotiated in the planning,
execution, and experience of performance actions.

Notes
1 Sections of this chapter have been previously published in Serafini, Paula (2015)
‘Prefiguring Performance: Participation and Transgression in Environmental
Activism’, Third Text 29(3): 195–206.
2 Greg, personal interview (2014). Greg is a pseudonym.
3 Danny Nemu, personal interview (2014).
4 Bridget McKenzie, personal interview (2014).
5 While this distinction can sometimes be blurred and activists can shift across
time from one role to the other, I argue that it is still useful to consider the differ-
ence between those involved in the planning and execution of an action and those
who become involved in the latter stages, as this difference in agency—marked
by different levels of input and knowledge—are key to the study of participation.
6 An exception to this was the Carols Not Barrels event, which adopted the format
of carol singing and hence became appealing to the general public as a familiar
kind of activity. I will expand on this performance in Chapter 3.
7 John Jordan, personal interview (2014).
8 See, for instance, Valentine, Katie (2013) ‘The Whitewashing of the Environ-
mental Movement’. Grist. 24. http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-whitewashing-
of-the-environmental-movement/. Accessed 30 December 2014.
62  A Viking longship
9 See Jurado Ertll, Randy (2014) ‘Lack of Diversity Within the Environmental
Movement Continues to Persist’. The Huffington Post. www.huffingtonpost.com/
randyjurado/lack-of-diversity-within-_b_5779048.html. Accessed 30 D­ ecember
2014.
10 See the UK-based groups Shake! (Chapter 6 in this book) and The Wretched of
the Earth.

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15(1): 73–83.
Benjamin, Walter (1970) ‘The Author as Producer’, New Left Review 1(62): 83–96.
Bishop, Claire (2004) ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, October (110): 51–70.
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Participation: Documents of Contemporary Art, London: Whitechapel Ventures
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3 From transgression to
prefiguration
Performance action as a
blueprint for social change1

Introduction
Transgression in the arts is usually related to what is known as ‘shock fac-
tor’. “Shock, disruption, or ontic dislocation are accorded an intrinsically
liberatory power in the tradition of avant-garde art, capable of revealing
new, critical insight into the formation of individual and collective identity”
(Kester 2011:183). Kester (2011) explains how in contemporary art theory
and criticism—he refers, for instance, to the work of Claire Bishop—there
is a tendency to champion art that is controversial and makes the viewer
uncomfortable, and to uphold this kind of practice as the right path for
artists aiming for social impact. Such is the case of Santiago Sierra, whose
body of work is based on revealing (and reproducing) the exploitation of
poor, marginalised subjects.2 This type of work looks to shock the viewer by
exposing them to the harsh realities of an unequal system. But this approach
assumes a unique bourgeois art world viewer who will presumably react to
the raw exposure of the capitalist system and be incited to take action. There
is a significant leap from the production of the work to the expected effects,
as there is no tactical specificity in the understanding of the public (Kester
2011:184).
In social movements, on the other hand, transgression can be understood
in terms of shock, controversy, and brushes with the law, but also in a move-
ment’s processes and long-term objectives. In his book Activism!, Tim Jor-
dan identifies two types of political action: one that looks to generate social
or political change while still maintaining and perpetuating the existing
system and its mechanisms (e.g. campaigning for a new law), and one that
is transgressive, and challenges the status quo and its institutions (Jordan
2004:33). Transgression can be understood as going “beyond the bounds or
limits set by a commandment or law or convention, it is to violate or in-
fringe” (Jenks 2003:2). In the context of contemporary political activism,
it is linked to “the contradiction of existing social structures, institutions
and ethics” (Jordan 2004:37). Transgression, adds Jordan, is what distin-
guishes movements that think of the future as a slightly changed version of
the present from movements that envision different futures. In other words,
 From transgression to prefiguration  65
he identifies as transgressive those movements that create in their present
actions a model for their vision of a better world.
Jordan (2004), as McDonald (2006), argues that these forms of transgres-
sive activism rely on certain forms of coordination known as dis/organisa-
tion. These forms stand against the hierarchical and bureaucratic codes of
the institutions and organisation commonly found in society, and take the
shape of open networks, flat structures, and consensual decision-making:

What is key about dis/organization is not just the way it puts principles
of equality and justice into action, but that in doing so it brings a little of
the future into the present. Dis/organization is a prefigurative politics,
because it attempts to preview what social change may bring.
(Jordan 2004:69)

Transgressive activism, therefore, can involve a prefigurative approach to

doing politics. Maeckelbergh (2011) and Sitrin (2006) describe prefiguration
in activism as the present use and enactment of forms of organisation, ac-
tion, and social relations that put forward in the now the values and ide-
als of the kind of future society towards which we are working. In other
words, processes and means are closely related to a movement’s ends. A
well-known example of prefigurative politics has been the Occupy move-
ment, which through its attempt at a horizontal and inclusive form of organ-
ising aimed to challenge in present time the hierarchical and exclusive forms
of organisation of a capitalist society (Maeckelbergh 2012). And before
Occupy came the alter-globalisation movement in the late 1990s and early
2000s, inspired by movements in the Global South such as the Zapatista
Army for National Liberation (EZLN). The alter-globalisation movement
was about reinventing democracy and building new forms of organisation.
It prioritised horizontal networks over top-down structures, and upheld
principles of consensus decision-making. Ultimately the movement aspired
to “reinvent daily life as whole” (Graeber 2002:70).
For decades the dominant view in activist and academic circles has been
that prefiguration stands in opposition to strategy. Prefiguration was re-
garded as an inward-looking approach to politics that focuses solely on
processes, and strategy as a pragmatic path towards achieving a move-
ment’s objectives (Maeckelbergh 2011). The alter-globalisation movement,
however, challenged this view, combining a series of direct action tactics,
horizontal, democratic, decision-making processes, and the aim of disman-
tling capitalism, which put forward the idea that prefiguration can indeed
be strategic. For movements that look to challenge the distribution of power
and build new social structures, Maeckelbergh argues that “prefiguration is
the most effective strategy (perhaps the only strategy) because it allows for
goals to be open and multiple” (Maeckelbergh 2011:2).
In the study of contemporary participatory art practice, on the other
hand, we find a different framework for distinguishing between practices
66  From transgression to prefiguration
that are constructive and those that are interventionist. Claire Bishop,
for instance, marks a division between the “authored tradition that seeks
to provoke participants” described at the beginning of this introduction,
and a “de-authored lineage that aims to embrace collective creativity; one
is disruptive and interventionist, the other constructive and ameliorative”
(Bishop 2006:11). While Maeckelbergh argues that strategic interventions
are not incompatible with constructive, prefigurative approaches, Bishop
“prescribes political and socially-engaged art to one of two options; disrup-
tion and intervention, or collective construction” (Serafini 2015:196).
Combining these two theoretical perspectives will be useful when ask-
ing the following questions: can participatory performances emerging in
the context of social and political activism be both constructive and pre-
figurative, and transgressive and interventionist at the same time? And, if
performance action has potential for prefiguration, in what stage, process,
or aspect of the performance is this potential found? Prefiguration has often
been understood mainly as one of two things: either “the building of move-
ment ‘alternatives’ or institutions” or a “way in which protest is performed”
(Yates 2015:2). In this chapter, I will explore both understandings of prefig-
uration while focusing on the latter strand of thought, and I will also argue,
following Maeckelbergh (2011), that prefiguration can go hand in hand with
the strategic aspect of art activist practices.
This chapter will explore the ways in which transgression and prefigura-
tion develop as key features of performance actions by two groups opposing
oil sponsorship of the arts—Shell Out Sounds and BP or not BP?—as part
of a campaign aimed at dismantling fossil fuel companies’ social license to
operate. I will do this by looking at the specificities of transgression in art
activism, how prefiguration is performed and enacted, and then examining
the relationship between transgression and prefiguration in performance
actions as instances of political action and creative expression.

Transgression in the performance actions of Art Not Oil

Shell Out Sounds is a London-based environmental choir that stands
against the links between the fossil fuel company Shell and the Southbank
Centre (among other cultural institutions in the UK that have ties to the
fossil fuel industry). They are part of a coalition of groups and organisations
called Art Not Oil. On 25 October 2013, Shell Out Sounds had an unan-
nounced performance inside the concert hall at Southbank Centre’s Royal
Festival Hall, which was part of a campaign against Shell’s sponsorship of
the Classical Season at this venue. Minutes before the São Paulo Symphony
Orchestra began playing, fifteen activists dressed in black and wearing pur-
ple sashes stood up from their seats in the choir section and began singing
a rewritten version of the Spiritual classic Wade in the Water, now renamed
Oil in the Water, which spoke of the environmental and human cost of fos-
sil fuel extraction. As they sang, a group of young people seated nearby
 From transgression to prefiguration  67
began clapping along. Halfway through the song, singers dropped a banner
that read ‘Oil in the water’ and featured a Shell logo made into a skull.
The audience received the banner with a round of applause. Once the song
ended, protesters left the auditorium, as audiences clapped once more. The
intervention was later mentioned in a number of reviews for the orchestra’s
performance.3
When discussing this performance action, Greg, one of the singers from
Shell Out Sounds, mentioned it was his favourites from all the performances
the group had done. He said, “it was the most invasive, and it’s the one we
had the most—strangely, the one where we expected to have the most …
anger and opposition, […] but had the most palpable sense of being sup-
ported.”4 Singing inside the concert hall was something the group had not
attempted before (most of their performances take place outside or in the
foyers of oil-sponsored cultural institutions), and because of this singers
regarded it as their most ‘transgressive’ action to date. During the perfor-
mance, however, there was no attempt by security to stop or remove singers,
and there was even a repeated performance afterwards in the foyer.
But attitudes from both security guards and audiences had been very
­different for a performance that had taken place earlier that month. On
1  October 2013, six Shell Out Sounds singers, myself included, went to
the Royal Festival Hall on the evening of an all-Beethoven concert by the
­Orchestra Mozart. Armed with flyers describing Shell’s negative impact on
the environment and on frontline communities across the globe, we waited
for the interval in the mezzanine, and as people came out into the foyer, we
began to mingle among them and sing, sharing flyers as we walked by. The
song we sang was a revised version of a Shell jingle from the 1950s:

We’re going well, we’re going Shell

But the Arctic’s going to hell, hell, hell!
Profiting hard, destroying the Earth
You can be sure of Shell!5

Each time we sang the song, we changed ‘the Arctic’ for other keywords,
such as ‘Alberta’, ‘the Delta’,6 and ‘the climate’. We went for a ‘cheeky’
mood, clicking, smiling, and swaying as we sang.
As we sang along some people applauded, and some became furious.
One audience member began screaming at Greg, saying we were “ruining
everything”, and unsuccessfully attempted to punch him. The man said we
were being childish, and tried to take away our leaflets. Security staff had
to intervene. Minutes afterwards, an affluent-looking older woman told
­another singer, Helen, that we were ruining her experience and were not al-
lowing her to reflect upon the music. Helen told her that people were dying
because of Shell, to which the woman responded: “I know that, but I don’t
want to be told about this right now!” A few other members of the audience
also had negative reactions. However, at the same time there were several
68  From transgression to prefiguration
people who congratulated us, and said there should be more of what we were
doing. Some Southbank Centre employees were also quietly whistling along
to the song. After a few minutes of singing in the foyer outside the concert
hall, security asked us to go downstairs to the main foyer on the ground
floor. When some singers tried to go back up the stairs, they were stopped.
We carried on singing in the ground floor foyer and gave out leaflets, filming
parts of our song and engaging in conversation with people. We moved mer-
rily as we sang, walking about in the downstairs foyer. This Shell Out Sounds
performance also received a mention in a review of the Beethoven concert.7
What these two examples clearly show is that the transgressive nature of
an action is multi-layered, based partly on the act of transgressing spatial
boundaries and limits by appropriating spaces for political goals, but also
depending on other issues such as the particular moment for an interven-
tion, and the content and mood of a performance. The extreme reactions
to the jingle singing pose the question of whether it was the particularly
merry and sarcastic attitude embodied in the clicking and smiling which
angered people, considering that the performance Oil in the Water, which
was received with applause, expressed the same message but with a different
mood, and was in fact more transgressive in spatial terms, having taken
place inside the concert hall itself.
There is yet another Shell Out Sounds performance action that made me
reflect upon the locus of transgression in art activism. On the day of the
Hallelujah performance as described in Chapter 1, there was a participant
who was hesitant about singing inside the Queen Elizabeth Hall building at
the Southbank Centre, claiming this would be ‘too political’ for her. She said
she was happy to sing outside the entrance, but would not go inside to sing.
The singer’s concern poses an interesting question regarding what makes an
action transgressive and what makes it ‘political’, and brings me back to the
idea of the political as theorised by Jacques Rancière (2010), and addressed
in the introduction to this book. Is the political in this action found in the
act of singing and in the oppositional nature of the lyrics sung, as Rancière
would propose, or does singing become an act of dissensus only if it is also
transgressive in spatial terms, meaning an uninvited entrance and a dis-
ruption of the dynamics inside the cultural venue, as this singer suggests? It
would be, according to this latter view, the spatial position of the group vis-
à-vis the venue that makes the act of singing more ‘political’—or politically
transgressive—and not the content of the song itself, which the singer was
happy to perform outside the building.
But even if performers take their singing inside the hall, and disrupt the
dynamics of the venue, how spatially transgressive can this uninvited perfor-
mance be, when the foyer of the venue is open to the public, and moreover,
the venue is already a place for musical performances? Shell Out Sounds’
performances are usually unexpected interventions, but they somehow ad-
here to the purpose of the cultural organisation they are intervening, since
they use song and music as media. If the action takes place inside the venue,
 From transgression to prefiguration  69
is the transgressive aspect of the performance then found in the content of
the songs, which is overtly political and denouncing the sponsorship deals
of the organisation, or is it found in the fact that the performance is unsanc-
tioned, and hence even though there is no trespassing in legal terms, there
is a form of spatial transgression in the appropriation and re-signification
of the space?
This brings back similar questions to those raised by Greg’s proposal for
a celebration of nature at Southbank Centre, which I described in Chapter
1. Is the potential for transgression in a performance located in its content
and aesthetic form, or in the degree of intervention—and as a consequence,
disruption—that the action causes in a particular space? Is the presence
of uninvited bodies what is disrupting the dynamics of a cultural venue,
or is it their particular message within that setting which has the potential
for transgression? In Shell Out Sounds’ repertoire we come across differ-
ent types of actions, including ones that intend to shock audiences through
controversial, in-your-face lyrics, adhering to the idea of transgression es-
poused by artists such as Santiago Sierra and his supporting critics, and
others that aim at being transgressive through interventions that are strate-
gically disruptive in terms of time and place.
These examples suggest that transgression should not be understood in
binary terms, in which an action is either transgressive or not. Rather, the
different ways in which an action can be transgressive—in other words, the
different facets of an action that have the potential for breaking boundaries,
be these spatial, symbolic, or other—mean that there are grades of trans-
gression, and that an action can be transgressive in one sense—for instance,
unapologetic, denouncing lyrics—and not so much in another—remaining
outside the targeted institutions and not disrupting specific performances.
Another point to consider is that in the case of Shell Out Sounds (as in
other groups with similar organisation and tactics), the level of intervention
and transgression is considered in the process of planning an action, dur-
ing which there is a collective negotiation between issues like impact and
participation that a group wishes to achieve. While disrupting an event or
exhibition and pressuring museum directors is a desired outcome for groups
like Shell Out Sounds and others in the campaign against oil sponsorship of
the arts, antagonising museum visitors is not. This negotiation is sometimes
difficult, especially when planning an action that is intended to be partic-
ipatory and safe for families, which is often the case for Shell Out Sounds,
but that at the same time intends to give a headache to the institution. What
the previous examples also serve to show is that although some elements of a
performance action can be planned ahead, transgression is not a ­single-sided
dynamic, but a struggle over power and control between protesters and the
venue. In other words, “[p]eople and things only transgress if they are con-
ceived to be in the ‘wrong place’: if there is no ‘wrong place’, then there is no
transgression” (Cresswell 1996 as cited in Dines 2012:104). How transgres-
sive an action is will depend on activists’ strategic use of space and choice
70  From transgression to prefiguration
of date and time and on the content of their songs and performances, but
also on the reactions of the audience and venue staff. These reactions will
determine whether an action runs smoothly, is barely noticed, or turns into
a tense situation that can potentially place more pressure on institutions to
rethink their sponsorship deals, that can receive media attention, or even
generate risk of an arrest.
This two-way nature of transgression is made evident by the differ-
ent reactions that venues have had in the face of interventionist perfor-
mances that Art Not Oil groups have held at various London cultural
organisations. While Southbank Centre never tried to prevent a previ-
ously announced performance from taking place at their venues, the
British Museum did try to stop the BP Viking longship performance by
BP or not BP? described in Chapter 2 (as well as other more recent perfor-
mances). Knowing that activists were coming, the museum put into place
bag checks outside their entrance, and placed police on site. Several vis-
itors who were joining the performance had their props confiscated, and
one activist was arrested at the entrance.8 This kind of reaction did not
take place in other venues such as Tate Modern, however, where Liberate
Tate held a previously announced participatory performance called Hid-
den Figures on September 6 the same year. When talking to a Liberate
Tate member sometime before that action, she actually expressed how
she felt the group’s performances had opened up a space for transgressive
art in the gallery—an interesting statement considering that the gallery
willingness to accommodate this kind of intervention can be seen as the
annihilation of their transgressive nature.9
In an interview with long-time art activist John Jordan, he discussed the
locus of transgression in art activism, in reference to the work of Liberate
Tate:

I think one of the greatest works of art activism that Liberate Tate ever
did […] was the blade,10 I think it was genius. Absolutely genius, because
you know, it really was direct action […] [The Tate] had to spend a lot of
money to get that thing out. It was beautiful, it was participatory […] and
for me direct action is fundamentally about blocking, and costing […]
the institution that you want to force to change. It’s not informing
­people of information.11

Referring to his involvement in the early stages of Liberate Tate and to

the work of the collective during the first few years that followed, he
explains:

[W]e really pushed the aesthetic in Liberate Tate, and really pushed the idea
of ‘this is gonna be art activism with a really strong aesthetic’. […] I feel at
the moment, […] Liberate Tate is making political art actually, as opposed
to interventions […]. I think the power of art activism is that it’s neither
 From transgression to prefiguration  71
art nor activism […] and I think it’s absolutely key to be in this kind of
in-­between […] space in a sense. [A]nd I think by saying ‘oh, we’re perfor-
mance, we’re not protest’, […] especially in a culture where protest is in-
creasingly criminalised and so on, I find it really problematic.

According to Jordan, in order to maintain the ‘in-between’ status of art ac-

tivism, performance actions need to remain transgressive, and avoid get-
ting too invested in aesthetics—while at the same time acknowledging that
aesthetics are indeed important. He places emphasis on the direct action
aspect of performances, and generating a cost to targeted institutions. In
relation to this, a discussion with Danny from Shell Out Sounds brought out
the fact that in other places such as the US, activists like Reverend Billy,12
who stages musical and theatrical performances against consumerism and
for social and environmental justice, have been arrested multiple times for
singing interventions at public and private spaces. In the case of Reverend
Billy these include several shops and banks, which he and his choir target as
sites for exposing realities of economic inequality, unsustainable corporate
practices, and environmental crisis.13 Thinking of the consequences of this,
Danny says “I think every time someone gets arrested for singing it just
makes the whole system look more and more brutal”.14 The question that
follows then is, what happens if, on the contrary, museums become comfort-
able with these kinds of interventions? Jordan’s statements above suggest
that if there is no tension between protesters and museums, these perfor-
mances lose strength as instances of direct action, and become absorbed as
inconsequential critiques that remain in a symbolic realm.
The examples analysed here contribute to an understanding of transgres-
sion as something that can sometimes be an objective category—for exam-
ple, when trespassing or transgressing legal boundaries—but can also be
something that only occurs if an action is perceived as transgressive by oth-
ers. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around, does it make a sound?
If a group of activists takes over a museum but the museum does not seem
bothered, is their action still transgressive? Transgression can therefore be
understood as a relationship between two or more parties; an act is only
transgressive if perceived as such by others. Transgression can also be seen
as an action—to transgress the norms and spatial boundaries of a museum,
for instance—and as a quality that can be found in different aspects of an
­action, from the lyrics or words of a performance, to the transgression of spa-
tial boundaries, or the precise moment when the action takes place. But also,
if we go back to Greg’s and other singers’ reflections on the Oil in the W­ ater
action, transgression can be understood as an experience. It is an ­attitude
that art activists consciously decide to take on when they say that they want
an ­action to be transgressive (or disruptive, or interventionist), regardless of
how the action ends up being received by the public and the institution (or
any other stakeholders, depending on the case). It is also an embodied act
that can be found in the words spoken and sung by activists, as well as in
72  From transgression to prefiguration
their bodies trespassing and occupying spaces. Finally, it is also worth men-
tioning how transgression, as suggested by John Jordan’s words, can be what
distinguishes art activism from political art, and hence is a crucial aspect of
this kind of practice. The way in which transgression develops as part of art
activist practices will continue to be explored in the following chapters, as
I introduce other case studies that focus, for instance, on urban spaces and
on transgressing boundaries between private and public in performance art.
One further consideration in relation to transgression is how it fits within
a wider aesthetic-political practice with an agenda for social change. Bevir’s
reading of Foucault frames transgression as “an expression of agency in a
world where the impact of a normalizing power makes agency highly vul-
nerable to various forms of distortion” (Bevir 1999:80). However, as Dines
argues, “disruptions to the spatial status quo do not in themselves lead to
social transformations”. According to this latter view, the performance in-
terventions carried out by the art activist groups described here will then
only generate social (and personal) change if the processes of performances
allow an act of transgression to develop into a concrete challenge to the sta-
tus quo (Dines 2012:105), and enact in this way the idea of transgression put
forward by Tim Jordan (2004). Later in this chapter, I will address the rela-
tionship between transgression and prefiguration, and show how transgres-
sion and prefigurative approaches to social change can be closely related.
Before this, I will look at performativity as an integral part of activist per-
formance, shifting the focus once more towards the embodied experience of
the subject, and thus providing a bridge from issues of transgression to an
exploration of prefiguration in performance actions.

Performativity in performance as political action

As argued in Chapter 2, there is a duality in art activism as an aesthetic-­
political practice, found in the fact that activists engage in artistic per-
formance and political action at the same time, embodying the roles and
positions of artists and activists simultaneously. In order to better under-
stand this duality and how it is enacted and experienced, it is useful to refer
to issues of performativity in performance actions.
Performativity can be found in rituals and ceremonies, philosophical es-
says, and scripted behaviours such as theatre (Parker and Kosofsky Sedg-
wick 1995:2). The founding work in this field was J.L. Austin’s How to Do
Things with Words (1962). In it, Austin explains how speech is related to
act, and act to identity. He also points out that there is a difference between
what is said and the act of saying it. Butler explains that Austin talks on
the one hand of perlocutionary acts of speech, which are acts “performed
as a consequence of words”. In this case “the words and the thing done are
in no sense the same” (Butler 1995:197). Illocutionary acts of speech, on
the other hand, are “actions that are performed by virtue of words”. So, in
illocutionary acts “the meaning of a performative act is to be found in this
 From transgression to prefiguration  73
apparent coincidence of signifying and enacting” (ibid:198). In their account
of ­Austin, Parker and Kosofsky Sedgwick argue that there are negative per-
formatives such as “count me out”, and explicit performatives such as the “I
do” uttered in marriage ceremonies (Parker and Kosofsky Sedgwick 1995:9).
Parker and Kosofsky Sedgwick agree with Butler (1995) in arguing that
the notion of performativity has allowed a deeper appreciation of how iden-
tities are iteratively constructed by means of citational processes (Parker and
Kosofsky Sedgwick 1995:2). They add that explicit performatives have the
power to mobilise transformative effects on interlocutory space, and thus the
idea of performativity can engage in fruitful associations with theatrical per-
formance, ritual, and activism (Parker and Kosofsky Sedgwick 1995:13). In the
case of Reverend Billy, for instance, performing the role of a man of the church
and preaching as a form of activism gives place to an “ongoing, performative
self-fashioning that relies on irony to both create community and refuse its fix-
ity in the same gesture” (Lane 2007:358). In the case of performance actions by
ACT UP! (AIDS Coallition to Unleash Power) activists in the US and beyond,
mobilised by the injuries of homophobia, death, and inaction from the state,

theatrical rage reiterates those injuries precisely through an “acting

out”, one that does not merely repeat or recite those injuries, but that
also deploys a hyperbolic display of death and injury to overwhelm
the epistemic resistance to AIDS and to the graphics of suffering, or
a ­hyperbolic display of kissing to shatter the epistemic blindness to an
increasingly graphic and public homosexuality.
(Butler 1993:23–24)

Performativity is a useful framework for looking at speech instances that

put into action certain realities through the public enouncement of specific
words (Butler 1995). When considered alongside Rancière’s (2010) theory of
dissensus as a speech act and a political act that disrupts the consensus of
the status quo, performativity provides a useful framework for looking at
artistic practices that have a political or social aim.
Shell Out Sounds’ Hallelujah performance, for instance, ended with the
lyrics:

It goes like this, a song, a plea

’Til our concert halls are fossil free
Our voices will be singing Hallelujah!15

The lyrics positioned the ‘we’ (the singing protesters) in opposition to Shell’s
sponsorship of the Southbank Centre, and announced that the singing
would continue until this deal was over. By singing these words, protesters
were performing and enacting their embodied resistance and their commit-
ment to continue their protest until the sponsorship deal with Shell came to
an end.
74  From transgression to prefiguration
Similarly, on the song sheet for the Shell Out Sounds’ 2013 Carols Not
Barrels event were the words:

Can we continue to let culture provide a smokescreen for human rights

abuses, land grabs, oil spills and climate change?
This holiday season, join us to take back Christmas from
corporations, and embrace the spirit of community and social justice.
Let our voices be heard on cultural sponsorship.16

Here, messages of opposition are intertwined with performative utterances

that announce a ‘taking back’ of Christmas, enacted through the act of
singing and having voices being heard in the context of a participatory ar-
tistic-political event.
In her study of protest singing as part of the citizenship movement emerg-
ing in Wisconsin in 2011, Paretskaya argues that

what exactly the group sings is no more important than how it does
it, how it structures relationships with the group and with the outside
world […] But at the same time the discussion of repertoire can illumi-
nate these social relationships, internal as well as external.
(Paretskaya 2015:10–11)

She adds that lyrics are also important because they contribute to building
a history of the movement, by constructing, telling, and retelling its story
(Paretskaya 2015:11). While in this book I focus on the processes of per-
formance actions more than on content, the examples presented above are
important because lyrics and texts produced by Shell Out Sounds contrib-
ute to the process of collective identity building of the group explored in
Chapter  1, by constructing, performing, and reproducing a narrative. Most
importantly, as performative utterances these lyrics enact some of the val-
ues that the group upholds, and therefore are part, as following sections will
show, of a prefigurative approach to art activist practice.
Reflecting on the power of song as protest, Danny from Shell Out Sounds
says (Figure 3.1):

[W]ith art we can say stuff, which is more difficult to say in other formats.
[…] You can sing farcical and quite funny Christmas carols, and it carries
a lot more weight than kind of complaining about sponsorship in a bitter
and serious tone. […] It’s just quite good to sing, you know. People singing
together, it makes them happy. And it’s good for people to be happy when
they’re doing activism rather than bitter. I mean, from the beginning you
are motivated by harmony, or you’re trying to seek harmony. And that’s
kind of what we’re doing. We’re not turning up at the Southbank because
we want to shut it down. We’re turning up because we want it to be run in
a way that is more harmonious with the rest of the world really.
 From transgression to prefiguration  75

Figure 3.1  Shell Out Sounds doing a second edition of Carols, nor Barrels out-
side the National Gallery, London, 21 December 2014. Image by the
author.

Danny’s statement brings together issues of artistic form, embodi-

ment, and performativity, and makes visible the connections between
strategy and prefiguration within the group’s practice. While singing, he
argues, can be a strategic way of communicating certain messages, it is
also a way of ensuring participants enjoy their role as activists. H
­ aving
said this, Danny equates the harmonies created by singers’ voices to the
harmony sought for in the work of cultural institutions—meaning more
ethical forms of funding as well as more democratic processes. Singing
in protest, therefore, can be understood as a performative act, as the
harmonies produced by singers aim at a harmonisation of the Southbank
Centre. But it is also a prefigurative way of putting forward a more har-
monious form of culture, based on values of openness, participation, and
collectivity (as described in Chapters 1 and 2), and in opposition to cor-
porations and neoliberalism. This idea is contained in the phrase ‘har-
monic disobedience’, often used by Danny in order to describe Shell Out
Sounds’ acts of performance protest. He says he likes this term because
it is an oxymoron, positioning the idea of disobedience as something that
can be harmonic.
The way in which Danny speaks about harmony in relation to both the
actions of Shell Out Sounds and the practices of Southbank Centre can also
be extended to harmony as a wider social and environmental objective,
considering that Shell Out Sounds’ actions emerge from an environmental
76  From transgression to prefiguration
movement. A comparison with Joseph Beuys’ views on radical ecology inev-
itably comes to mind, given that, as Adams describes:

An approach to ecology worthy of the epithet “radical” is one that does

not limit its concerns to ecological systems within the natural world.
Radical ecology also sees these in connection with larger patterns of
human life: social forms; economic theories, practices and interests.
(Adams 1992:26)

According to Beuys, art as a form of knowledge production and as a so-

cial interaction is the right path towards constructing a new social order
that is in harmony with nature (Adams 1992:26). This idea will be further
developed in the following section, in which I will look at the potential for
prefiguration in performance.

Prefiguration in performance action

BP or not BP? is an activist theatre troupe, also part of the Art Not Oil
coalition, which started out as a Shakespearean-themed resistance to fossil
fuel company BP’s sponsorship of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2012.
They have since moved on to target another BP-sponsored institution in
London, the British Museum, and have held numerous performances in-
side the museum. BP or not BP? has a core of around twenty people who
plan actions. This core, however, is not fixed, as even though some members
have been continuously involved as organisers, other people flow in and out
of the planning group. The group is committed to functioning through a
democratic system of self-allocation of tasks, and people take on respon-
sibilities according to their preference, skill, and availability. It has been
noted by some organisers, however, that there is still an informal soft lead-
ership held by a few of the original founders of the group, or what Gerbaudo
(2012) would refer to as ‘choreographers’. This is partly due to some peo-
ple being more enthusiastically involved, but also related to long-standing
members possessing more experience and knowledge about how to plan and
carry out actions. The disproportionate involvement of some people is in
fact something the long-standing organisers are aware of and actively try to
address, and they do this by encouraging others to take on responsibilities,
and providing training and support to newcomers. While soft leaderships
exist within the group, the distribution of tasks and the way in which per-
formances are planned pose a challenge to the idea of the author in an art
piece, because performance actions are collectively produced by a fluctuat-
ing group of both artists and people who don’t identify as artists. Moreover,
performances differ from traditional theatre in their process due to this
flowing and informal dynamic: even though tasks are allocated, there are no
set formal and hierarchical roles such as director, producer, or playwright,
and the processes of writing a script and producing an action require several
stages at which different people become more or less involved. (Figure 3.2)
 From transgression to prefiguration  77

Figure 3.2   BP or not BP? performing at Tate Britain, London, 19 January 2014.

For groups emerging from social movement and grassroots spaces, the
concern with moulding art-making processes that are horizontal and demo-
cratic is an extension of a political programme that is concerned with coun-
tering hierarchical relations of power in every space. But also, as argued by
Sholette, “recently established artists’ groups and collectives appear to treat
organizational structure as just another artistic challenge, as if it were a
material or medium to be manipulated” (Sholette 2011:161). This perspective
is useful as many of these groups have an approach to their practice that is
holistic, and in which a concern for aesthetics and a concern for a politically
coherent practice feed each other.
Shell Out Sounds for their part challenge the concept of the traditional
choir through their own internal dynamics and processes, by operating un-
der principles of openness and equality, and bypassing processes of exclu-
sion such as auditions. Chris from Shell Out Sounds explains that:

Shell Out Sounds’ performances are both a protest against oil spon-
sorship and an affirmation of the value of art as something that should
be accessible to all. There are no auditions or selection procedures to
join Art Not Oil’s campaign groups. This means that all members, re-
gardless of their experience or training, can be involved in the creative
process and bring new ideas.
(Garrard 2014:N/A)

Despite the parallels and commonalities with a community choir format,

the activist origin of Shell Out Sounds allows a particular kind of dynamic
to take place, in which musical, social, and environmental objectives coexist
78  From transgression to prefiguration
and often need to be negotiated, and in which processes are guided by
shared values that have been passed down from a tradition of grass-
roots movements. This particular intersection of objectives, values, and
processes challenges the normative of musical groups and choirs, pro-
posing in a ­prefigurative way an alternative kind of culture. This is exem-
plified by Shell Out Sounds’ Carols Not Barrels event, which took place on
1 December 2013.
Carols Not Barrels was an open and participatory Christmas season
singing event, which took place at a number of different cultural venues in
London and which had been previously announced and promoted though
Facebook. The group sang popular carols with new environmental lyrics
and lyrics against Shell. Members picked their favourite carols and rewrote
them, and then some were collectively selected for singing on the day. The
morning carolling session took the group—myself included—to the S ­ cience
Museum and the steps of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Towards the af-
ternoon, we relocated to Southbank Centre, where we were met by some more
singers. Once inside, the group of around thirty singers went  down some
steps and into an open area in the Royal Festival Hall foyer. We distributed
leaflets with our new carol lyrics, and began to sing. As we kept singing
a few people joined in, making it a forty-strong choir. Most singers knew
about the event beforehand, and a few were passers-by. In addition to people
joining, the choir managed to get the attention of several families who were
using the foyer space. After each song singers received applause from the
audience, and intervals between songs were used for addressing the public
with information about Shell, sponsorship, and the fossil fuel industry. The
event had an inviting family tone to it, and on this occasion security staff
did not intervene at any point.
The repertoire of carols covered a wide range of moods, from the cheer-
ful Rudolph the Branded Reindeer to a new version of God Rest Ye Merry,
Gentlemen addressing poverty in the UK, and a hopeful wish for a Green
Christmas. Since songs were written by different members of the choir, the
carols represented the variety of approaches to singing as activism that dif-
ferent people had. After singing inside for a while, the group moved outside,
where an accordion joined in. The singing went on for about an hour, and
closed with Green Christmas, which was an emotionally charged moment
as the song conveyed feelings of hope, unity, and peace. Even though many
singers were not regular group members, a temporary collective identity was
formed around a shared goal of coming together for social good, a shared
mood of hope for change, and an opposition to the fossil fuel company Shell
as a symbol of greed and environmental damage. The action even succeeded
in recruiting new members to the choir, and some of the participants asked
to join the Shell Out Sounds mailing list. Furthermore, through an open,
collective singing event, Shell Out Sounds and everyone who joined in were
able to collectively appropriate the space of a cultural venue and use it for
a political end, turning the foyer of the Royal Festival Hall into a space of
 From transgression to prefiguration  79
dissensus and counterculture against the fuel industry and for environmen-
tal and democratic values.
After the carolling was over, a few of the singers contributed their thoughts
for a short film about the event, which was being shot by a commissioned film-
maker. When sharing her thoughts about the day, one of the singers said:

We’ve been talking about how Southbank represents culture and the
things that are good about culture, and Shell represents the things that
are bad about the world, and that we represented more of what’s good,
in terms of coming together without any officialdom or sponsorship
or—we just made goodness between us.

Greg from Shell Out Sounds talks about the importance of the approach
activists choose to have towards campaigning, and the difference between
opposing something and proposing something new:

We had this whole debate about whether it’d be Art Not Oil, we’ve got
Shell Out Sounds, and we’re defined by our desire to have someone not
present, and I find that very frustrating. But I haven’t come up with
something that is more captivating. […] We want the absence of Shell,
so we define ourselves in that way. I would say, you know, I wouldn’t
want the word ‘protest’; I wouldn’t want to say that we are using music
against something.

He adds that:

[I]n terms of … creating a proto-anarchic future system, where you need

vast amounts of organisation and personal commitment, […] if music,
and art, and creativity, and expression, and singing together were at the
heart of all of that, it would be so much more possible. And so much
more fun! […] The world we want to create is one of magic, wonder and
beauty and joy and silliness, and fun, and follies, and all those things
that music can do.

Greg’s views on art and music as constructive forces rather than forces of
opposition resonate with his approach to activism, which despite not claim-
ing to aim for a reconfiguration of the cultural sphere, is committed to a
rethinking of what art can achieve and what role art should have in society.
By creating spaces for politically motivated art making that counters neo-
liberal dynamics as well as the oil industry in particular, Shell Out Sounds
prefiguratively develops an alternative kind of culture, which separates itself
from the institutional art framework and emphasises the power of collective
art making, even if this is not their primary objective.
Art activist practices such as the ones I have described here are
grounded in a political programme, with a set of values and objectives that
80  From transgression to prefiguration
frame and guide practices. When speaking of contemporary ­U K-based
environmental and social justice groups, a rejection of hierarchies and
a questioning of the professionalised idea of the artist are in many in-
stances built into the ethos of their practice, despite the fact that their
main objectives are tied to an environmental agenda and not a reform
of the cultural sphere. In the case of BP or not BP?, a commitment to
horizontality and inclusiveness results in a democratic division of tasks
and decision-making processes, and in a fluidity in the involvement of
members of the group, who can contribute to different planning stages,
being more and less involved as they feel, and not responding to tradi-
tional divisions of creative labour. Most notably, the process of writing a
script as described earlier entails several stages at which different partic-
ipants become involved in order to discuss artistic and strategic aspects
of the performance, suggesting in this way a reconfiguration of the way
in which scripts are written, and a rejection of the idea of the author, as
the work is not attributed to any particular person within the group. In
this context, processes achieve a highly democratic form in spite of the
soft leadership of more seasoned members.
The practice of Shell Out Sounds also puts forward a particular
kind of dynamic that brings together interventionist strategy with the
­horizontal values of an open and collaboratively run choir. Despite the
internal conflict between quality and open participation described in
Chapter 2, which sometimes calls into question their horizontal values,
there is a shared awareness around the fact that oil sponsorship is not the
only problem with cultural institutions, and that the group represents
an ­a lternative form of culture that stands in opposition to corporations
and neoliberal values. Shell Out Sounds’ position at the intersection of
a community choir and a direct action group challenges the traditional
processes of musical groups and choirs, and proposes a prefigurative al-
ternative kind of culture that is based on merging art with the practice
of social change.17
When considering the potential for prefiguration in art activism, however,
it is necessary also to note the limitations to prefiguration within these prac-
tices. Having argued in this chapter that strategy and prefiguration can be
complementary approaches to social change, there are still certain strategic
elements that are specific to art activist performances, and that may inhibit
or limit the full potential for prefiguration in certain aspects of these kinds
of activist initiatives.
In the first place, as I began to suggest in Chapter 2, there are sometimes
discrepancies between the dynamics behind the planning of an action and
the dynamics that take place during a performance. Horizontal structures,
collaboration, and democratic processes in participatory performance ac-
tions can be understood as prefigurative forms of art making. However, the
fact that open, participatory performance actions inevitably maintain an
organiser/participant distinction constrains the ways in which occasional
 From transgression to prefiguration  81
participants can become active within these performances, and how much
agency they have within that space. As argued in Chapter 2, performance
actions can generate spaces for artistic engagement, self-transformation,
and political agency for participants as they become involved in an action
with a social/political target outside of themselves. However, the organ-
iser/participant (or author/participant) distinction means this potential for
agency and transformation is in a way limited by the fact that participants
are entering a pre-constructed situation. This is particularly the case for
performances that are choreographed or scripted, which automatically cre-
ate a distinction between organisers that are in the know and participants
that are joining later on.
It is, however, possible to escape this dynamic, if the medium and form of
the action allow for less guided participation. An example of this was Shell
Out Sounds’ Carols Not Barrels, as the nature of the event was simple and
familiar enough, and anyone physically able to could join in the carolling,
creating a performance action in which there was no clear distinction be-
tween organisers and performers, and thus the prefigurative processes of
democracy and horizontalism that govern planning stages were still present
throughout the performance.
The second strategic element that can conflict with prefigurative ap-
proaches is the focus on media reach, and how this can shape performances.
Elsewhere (Serafini 2014:334–335) I described the paradox inherent in in-
terventionist performances that are conceived as participatory experiences
and onsite interventions, but are at the same time produced with the main
objective of disseminating documentation of the performance online.
This placing of value on media presence and or/shares on social media as
­u ltimate objectives and measurement of success compromises actions for
many art activist performances, since elements such as participation and
audience interaction, which are usually actively sought, can end up being
neglected for the sake of a performance that is easy to capture on video.
In these cases, things like narrative, sound, and visual elements are all
developed with the production of a film in mind, instead of focusing on
the interaction with a specific site and with a particular public. During
my instances of observant participation, I have noticed, for instance, how
getting the BP or Shell logo on photos was often a main strategic point that
determined aesthetic choices and the way in which a space was used. This
does not mean that performances that are spectacular, strategic, and/or
media savvy are not valuable or should not take this approach. Farrar and
Warner (2008) have indeed argued that there is much potential for radi-
cal interventions through a reclaiming of the spectacle. However, it means
that the focus on social interactions and the reproduction of certain values
of openness and participation take a secondary role when a performance is
developed with the specific aim of obtaining a media product out of it, and
depending on a group’s values and initial objectives, this can be counted
as a loss.
82  From transgression to prefiguration
Conclusion
In this chapter I argued that the locus of transgression in performance ac-
tions can be found in different aspects of this practice, from the trespassing
of spatial boundaries to the disobedience of the norms and rejections of the
canons of an institution. Transgression as an embodied act can take place
through the oppositional words uttered by activists in defiant performative
acts, but also through the presence of bodies occupying spaces. The ques-
tion that follows is, what is the relationship between transgression and pre-
figuration in performance action? Can one lead to the other?
In an interview with Bridget McKenzie, cultural learning consultant and
member of Shell Out Sounds, I asked, “What do you think makes an art-
work political?” Bridget responded:

Well … I suppose there are two things. One is it gives people a voice,
enables political discourse to happen. It works with people, it’s partic-
ipatory. It works with people who are particularly deprived of voice or
needing facilitation to express their voice. And then on the other side of
that coin, or maybe at the other end of the spectrum, is using that voice
to actually enforce change. So going straight for the jugular, going for
the people who hold the power to make decisions […] It’s quite rare for
an artwork to be both trying to understand, engage and help people
express their voice, and then definitely trying to campaign to make a
change; a definite change, a legal change, political change.18

Chris from Shell Out Sounds, on the other hand, offers a different view, and
argues that work which carries sharp political messages can at the same
time engage in dynamics of participation and processes that are inherently
political:

[A]rt as a form of activism has two dimensions. It is ‘Political’ with a

capital P by virtue of the specific message conveyed; song lyrics might
give voice to a protest or a painter can satirise iconic images of political
leaders. However, it is also ‘political’ with a small p as a result of its
potential to shift consciousness through new experiences and opportu-
nities to participate. In an environment dominated by sponsored and
corporate art, exploring new artistic forms or simply making new work
that intervenes in the existing system is itself a radical political act.
(Garrard 2014:N/A)

This latter take on art activism positions performance actions as occasions

for making political interventions that carry a political (and in this case, en-
vironmental) message, and that at the same time prefigure alternative forms
of art making by allowing inclusive and democratic instances of creativ-
ity that counter the institutional framework. In other words, performance
 From transgression to prefiguration  83
actions according to this view can be strategic and transgressive in planning
towards a specific political objective, while at the same time prefiguratively
enacting alternative forms of making art.
Marianne Maeckelbergh argues that in fact “a prefigurative strategy in-
volves two crucial practices: that of confrontation with existing political
structures and that of developing alternatives, neither of which could achieve
the desired structural changes without the other” (Maeckelbergh 2011:15).
This means that a confrontational approach need not be incompatible with
a prefigurative one, and that actually the combination of confrontation and
construction is needed in order to produce structural change. In order to
prefigure a new society, we cannot just ignore present power structures and
build our own. We must confront these, transgress them, and attempt to dis-
mantle them while building new structures and ways of relating to each other
in the process. Art, and specifically embodied, collective practices that allow
instances of performativity, can be a medium for this. Earlier in this chapter
I explained how Bishop distinguishes between a kind of politically engaged,
participatory performance that is interventionist and one that is constructive
and ameliorative (Bishop 2006). But the practices analysed here show that
contrary to Bishop’s distinction, collective performance and interventionist
acts are not necessarily two ends of a spectrum. In the case of activist perfor-
mance action, transgression can indeed go hand in hand with prefiguration.
Similarly to the alter-globalisation activists who rejected the structures
of representative democracy and engaged in the creation of their own
structures, these anti-oil activists generate their own forms of art making,
­inspired by the horizontal and democratic ethos of grassroots movements,
and defined by an interventionist nature. These groups’ alternative forms of
art making emerge from acts of transgression: spatial and symbolic trans-
gression of cultural spaces that involves a contravention of the space’s dy-
namics and rules and the appropriation and re-signification of a physical
space for a political use. If we go back to Tim Jordan’s (2004) definition
of transgressive movements, we could argue that groups like Shell Out
Sounds and BP or not BP? are not transgressive in their official, strategic
demand—ending oil sponsorship of the arts—as this is a reformist demand
which is not challenging the wider structures of institutions nor the idea of
sponsorship itself. Rather, it is their prefigurative art-making processes that
qualify the group as transgressive, as they challenge preconceptions on per-
formance making and creative and political participation. In performances
by Art Not Oil groups, transgression and prefiguration are intrinsically
connected: transgressing spatial boundaries and the norms and dynamics
of an institution opens up a space for art activist performances that propose
another form of doing and experiencing art in that space, as a horizontal,
democratic, and inherently political activity. The result is a temporary use
of cultural institutions that is at the same time a form of direct action and
an artistic instance that is in line with a specific, transgressive vision of a
democratic culture and society.
84  From transgression to prefiguration
In a conversation with Danny from Shell Out Sounds, he stated: “There’s
much more hateful things going on in the world than oil sponsorship, but
I think that’s quite a good point of attack to critique the entire machine
of industrialised capitalism.” With these words, Danny puts a spotlight on
the fact that the environmental issues that fuel Art Not Oil performance
actions are not isolated from other social and political issues. The current
environmental crisis is connected to a set of neoliberal values that governs
not only policy on energy, but increasingly also on social and cultural is-
sues, such as funding for the arts. Challenging oil companies and challeng-
ing the structures of the art world are therefore more connected than one
might think, as they are both attacks on neoliberal values that dominate
society and culture. With this in mind, and even though a reconfiguration of
the cultural sphere is not the main objective of these groups, the alternative
forms of participatory art that they put forward can be seen as prefigurative
responses to the neoliberal values of the contemporary art world, proposing
more democratic forms of art that carry a desire for social change at their
core. These forms of art making that challenge the processes of institutional
art are therefore not accidental, and are at the same time symptomatic of a
commitment to prefigurative politics common to many movements across
the globe in a time of economic crisis and neoliberal responses.

Notes
1 Sections of this chapter have been previously published in Serafini, Paula (2015)
‘Prefiguring Performance: Participation and Transgression in Environmental
Activism’, Third Text 29(3): 195–206.
2 See, for instance, 160 cm Line Tattooed on 4 People El Gallo Arte Contemporáneo.
Salamanca, Spain. December 2010, a video documenting an action in which
­Sierra paid four sex workers addicted to heroin the equivalent of a heroin shot
in exchange for their consent to be tattooed. For more see www.tate.org.uk/art/
artworks/sierra-160-cm-line-tattooed-on-4-people-el-gallo-arte-contemporaneo-
salamanca-spain-t11852.
3 See, for instance, a review in the blog Orpheus Complex: http://orpheuscomplex.
blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/sao-paulo-symphony-alsop-swingle.html.
4 Greg, personal interview (2014). Greg is a pseudonym.
5 Shell Out Sounds (2013).
6 ‘Alberta’ and ‘the Delta’ made reference to Shell’s operations in Canada and
Nigeria, respectively.
7 See a review in the Evening Standard www.standard.co.uk/goingout/music/
orchestra-mozarthaitink-royal-festival-hall-music-review-8853054.html.
8 See Danny Chiver’s article for The Ecologist, ‘British Museum – is BP driv-
ing your heavy-handed approach?’. 17 September 2014. www.theecologist.org/
campaigning/2559477/british_museum_is_bp_driving_your_heavyhanded_­
approach.html. Accessed 26 February 2015.
9 A more recent performance by Liberate Tate titled Time Piece, which took place
in 2015, involved escalating tactics: members of the collective stayed inside the
gallery after its closing time and for a total of twenty-four hours. While in the
end there were no arrests, performers were threatened with arrest if they failed
to leave the premises after closing time, and the police were called.
 From transgression to prefiguration  85
10 Jordan refers here to a performance titled The Gift, for which Liberate Tate
brought a wind turbine blade into Tate Modern and offered it as a donation
to the gallery’s collection. See www.vice.com/en_uk/video/liberate-tates-the-
gift-tate-modern-art-prank-bp.
11 John Jordan, personal interview (2014).
12 See www.revbilly.com/.
13 See, for instance, John Vidal’s article for The Guardian, ‘Reverend Billy
faces year in prison for JP Morgan Chase toad protest’. 25 November 2013.
www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/25/reverend-billy-jpmorgan-
chase-toad-protest-talen.
14 Danny Nemu, personal interview (2014).
15 Shell Out Sounds (2013).
16 Shell Out Sounds (2013).
17 Despite emerging from an environmental position and having clear objectives
related to disabling the social license to operate of fossil fuel companies, in re-
cent years some Art Not Oil groups have begun to explicitly incorporate other
issues into their campaigns, such as the privatisation of museum and gallery
workers’ contracts and the repatriation of objects. This is discussed in detail in
Chapter 7.
18 Bridget McKenzie, personal interview (2014).

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4 Breaking barriers
Bodies, institutions, and codes1

Introduction
This chapter explores the notion of the personal as political (Hanisch 2000),
an idea popularised by feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. It was
conceived as a bridge between the first three chapters of this book and the
three chapters to follow, before moving on to a theoretical discussion in
Chapter 8 that will bring together issues explored throughout the book. Here
I will return to issues such as transgression and performativity discussed in
­Chapter 3, while also focusing on two key aspects relevant to much contempo-
rary art activism: embodiment and the relationship between art activists and
institutional structures and codes. My objective is to contribute to a rethink-
ing of the personal as political by tracing how the aesthetic and the political
are negotiated through the use of the body as a tool of action and expression
in relation to institutional spaces, mainstream movements, and social norms.
My interrogation will therefore return to the idea of transgression, but will
do so through the perspective of the body. In their literary study of poetics
and transgression, Stallybrass and White argue that “the human body, psy-
chic forms, geographical space and the social formation are all constructed
within interrelating and dependent hierarchies of high and low”, which also
govern the realm of culture and aesthetics (Stallybrass and White 1986:2).
They add that “transgressing the rules of hierarchy and order in any one of
the domains may have major consequences in the others” (ibid:3). This can
be so, for instance, in the case of the carnival as a ­subversive event, as ar-
gued in the introduction to this book. Following this viewpoint, I will look
at transgression as the inversion of norms and symbolic hierarchies through
embodied performance in artistic practices that look to enact structural
change.
I will begin by presenting the case of Left Front Art, a network of queer
artists that work in partnership with trade unions. I will look at the politics
and processes behind this initiative, which looks to queer the trade union
institution through performances and other artistic practices, as well as mo-
bilising the LGBTQIA arts scene. I will then look at the work of two artists
doing performance in political contexts, Liz Crow and Antonio Onio, and
explore their views on activism and the connections between the personal
88  Breaking barriers
and the political through an embodied lens. This empirical chapter will
serve its purpose as a bridge by introducing themes that will be further ex-
plored in subsequent chapters, mainly embodied practices, the personal as
political, and the relationship between art activists and institutions.

Left Front Art: building a bridge between workers’ unions

and the LGBT community
On 21 January 2014 I attended a performance by Portuguese artist Antonio
Onio at the Trade Union Congress (TUC) building in London. The event
was organised by Left Front Art, a network that promotes radical queer
art from the UK and beyond. When my friend invited me to this event, the
first thing that came into my mind was: “How come this is this taking place
at TUC?” I then came to learn that Anton, a lay activist who is part of Left
Front Art and had co-organised the event, was also a branch secretary for
Unite, Britain’s biggest workers’ union.
In his performance-presentation, Onio shared the personal story of how
he became involved in the arts, his negative experiences in dance education,
and intimate details about his health. He explained how personal stories
can be politically significant, acting as powerful comments on sexuality and
society. The sharing of personal stories of illness and sexuality, intertwined
with his performance—which included singing to the audience—amounted
to an intimate, honest moment and a collective experience. The openness
and vulnerability of his sharing allowed a space for empathy and identi-
fication, in which he spoke to the audience from a subjective place while
addressing larger social issues that go beyond his own life experience.
After attending this performance, I was intrigued by how Antonio Onio
had come to perform at TUC and what it was that Left Front Art did. The
following month I interviewed Anton, who would provide me with an in-
sider perspective on the work of Left Front Art and the connections between
queer artists and British trade unions. As we talked about art and politics,
he shared with me the kind of work that Unite and Left Front Art do, and
how art is approached as a way of engaging LGBTQIA communities with
unions, and union members with the work of LGBTQIA artists.
At the beginning of the interview, Anton explained,

I’ve been involved in what we might call activism for many, many years.
Decades. And a group of us ten years ago got together and had a sort
of loose network/ think tank called Left Front Art. […] We were recog-
nising that there was a resurgence in queer performance and queer art
which had a political slant on it. […] It was a not just LGBT activists
but also people that were involved in their trade unions—but also very
much left wing—and one of the things that brought us all together was
the fact that we were on the left of various things, and on the left of the
trade unions.2
 Breaking barriers  89
Anton identifies the work of Left Front Art as positioned within the rad-
ical left. He said they are inspired by the Bolshevik revolution and their
views on society, and by the Situationist International’s use of art as a
confrontational challenge to alienation. He shared that the one thing
that all artists they work with have in common is that they are all in-
volved in some form of activism in their own countries (the network is
international in its scope), doing “queer stuff that doesn’t fit easily within
the mainstream”.
Anton explained that Left Front Art began to work with Unite because
they realised their position in the trade union movement was useful as a
vehicle, or as a form of access. He explained,

[T]he trade union is the largest [form] of self-organisation for the

working class in this country […] We believe in social progress and
stuff like that. And the way that it’s structured in our country is that
the trade unions are bringing a way of communicating to the work-
ing class.

But despite the potentially mutually beneficial connections that can come
from building bridges between queer artists and the trade unions, Anton ex-
plained that this is not a simple exercise, and despite the fact that the union
sees value in events that attract people, there is always a lot of convincing
and negotiation to do:

[At the union] they weren’t firmly convinced about art, and people in
Britain on the left don’t really identify with art, they see it as a middle
class thing. […] and also, the vast majority of the left in trade unions in
the UK is heterosexuals. […] It’s predominated by middle aged white
heterosexual males.

He added that what they have been trying to do is to get “politically active
queers” who do not have a fixed workplace involved with the union, but the
union is not immediately welcoming and friendly. Anton said that there are
certain politics of LGBT activism that make some artists’ political work not
welcome by some people. He explained,

[T]here’s what’s called the ‘respectable’ and the ‘unrespectable’ side

of the LGBT. You’ve got organisations like Stonewall,3 and certainly
the trade union movement that believe in equality, but that means not
being discriminated against, which is good, being allowed to marry,
which we support. But it’s also very… couples getting together and be-
ing together like heterosexual couples. They don’t like mixing it with the
SM nights, or stuff that queers identify with. And that’s the other thing
about bringing in people; what you might call the ‘LGBT trade union
establishment’ don’t really identify with it.
90  Breaking barriers
Anton shared that sometimes trade union organisers experience shock
when they see the online profiles of artists who will be performing as part of
the union programme. Things like body piercings and implants, and other
non-normative aesthetics, provoke strong reactions and reservations. But,
most importantly, Anton explained that nine out of ten times performances
involve artists being nude, and this has led to people thinking “oh, this is all
about sex and perversion”. Anton attributed this to what he describes as a
strong social tradition in the UK against nudity. The way in which artists
use their bodies as a way of transgressing social codes and challenging het-
eronormative structures in the way they ‘appear’ publicly (Butler 2015:39)
is then at the same time an integral part of what Left Front Art does, and
one of the things that generates resistance from the trade union. While art-
ists like Antonio Onio put on embodied performances that seek to provoke
emotional connections and a space of openness, their use of their bodies,
perceived by others as transgressive, can sometimes be counterproductive to
this same objective of connecting with people. The aesthetics and embodied
nature of the carnivalesque as a subversive reclaiming of the body can open
up opportunities for collective pleasure and subversion, but this potential
can be thwarted if aesthetic and embodied gestures are seen as unacceptable
by part of that collective. In this case, there are cultural attitudes towards
the body that need to be surpassed.
At the same time as there are reservations about these kinds of events
from the side of the trade union, which makes the exercise of connecting
these two sectors difficult, queer artists sometimes also have reservations
about becoming involved with unions. Anton explained that some artists
need quite a bit of convincing, and when they perform at unions they don’t
usually advertise these events widely. He said that making these connec-
tions is a “building bridges exercise”, because many queer artists come from
self-organised or DiY backgrounds, and are not used to functioning within
structured organisations. He added,

A lot of the queer artists we get involved with are a bit sceptical of trade
unions because it seems quite…not just conservative socially, but actu-
ally they don’t go that far. Which is true, because basically their job is to
represent workers on the collective basis, and to defend jobs and work-
ers’ conditions. They are not revolutionary organisations. […] Trade
­unions are very bureaucratic, and they are quite conservative. And that
often doesn’t seat easily. But, on the other hand, they are also quite well
concerned with this stuff. I think, you know, desperate times…

Once the bridge is crossed between the union and queer artists, there are
further connections to be made between union members and the wider
­LGBTQIA community. The events organised within this framework are
open and widely promoted in order to bring in a diverse audience and to
encourage LGBTQIA people to join the union, as well as influencing the
 Breaking barriers  91
structure and culture of the trade union as an organisation. Anton shared
that a lot of young LGBTQIA people in London are in precarious or in­
secure work, and hence it is difficult to engage with them. Since 2007, to this
end, Unite have been looking at different things they could do in order to
engage people. That year they kick-started the LGBT network in the South-
ern Eastern region of the TUC, and began to organise events for LGBT his-
tory month. These became major events, and they succeeded in attracting
many people who were interested in politics but did not identify with trade
unions. They used the occasion of LGBT month to host the launch of a
book on LGBTQIA arts in the labour movement. Since then, they began to
think about events that would at the same time bring in large audiences and
celebrate individual LGBTQIA artists. In March 2011, when the TUC and
the Labour Party called a national demonstration, they planned an event
in the run-up to it. The event was called Queer Noise Festival, and it took
place at the Brixton club, Mass. Anton explained it had “several political
splinters interspersed with performance art and also different queer artists
from across Europe playing their music”.
Finally, in 2012 Unite and Left Front Art put on an event at Congress
House (the TUC headquarters): an afternoon that looked at several decades
of LGBTQIA liberation. This was followed by an evening of performance
art, poetry, and folk music. Anton emphasised that they made the event
as inviting as possible, with refreshments and an entertaining programme.
He added that holding events at this location is strategic because Con-
gress House is based in Soho—a neighbourhood in central London with a
long-standing queer history and numerous LGBTQIA venues—so people
who work in the area can drop by after work. He explained,

[W]e made it for like a six o’ clock start. Blanketed them and encouraged
people to come along, so that they could come and see things outside
the over-processed commercial gay scene that you get in Old Compton
Street [Soho]. And to get people thinking, so even if it wasn’t overtly
political, just by being exposed to some [of the art] and to get people to
start thinking outside of the box.

Anton explained that Left Front Art originated from the idea of using art to
form people, and to “get some sort of movement between all these different
schools of thought going”. He explained it can be different forms of art,
from photography to performance—the latter, he argued, is a good way of
communicating with people. In order to cater to different audiences, they
try to mix up their cultural offer, bringing a variety of films, performances,
and other art forms that address a variety of LGBT and other political and
social themes in different languages and media.
With the theme of engagement and participation in mind, I asked Anton
if they had plans for doing any interactive workshops as part of their pro-
gramme. He responded that they want to move in that direction, but that it
92  Breaking barriers
would take some time. He added, “You noticed when the Q&A came with
Antonio, it was very hard, people are reluctant to say anything. But yeah, we
would like to do that, and that’s gonna take some time to bring people over”.
In terms of the objectives and outcomes of these events, for the union the
objective is to recruit new members, and they always have recruitment staff
present. However, the most important thing is to get people interested, not
necessarily to make them sign up to the union. These kinds of events, said
Anton, are “putting queer culture in the labour movement orbit, and putting
the labour movement in the queer orbit”. Talking of the importance of the
arts, he added:

The thing is, it’s much better having a performance, or having some-
one give a presentation the way that Antonio did, than having a panel
of speakers talking at you for a long, long time. Which is how the left
in the trade union movement traditionally functioned, and it still does
function.

Several of the Left Front Art/Unite organised events, such as the one on
the build up to the 2011 march, connect LGBTQI issues with other pressing
social and political issues in the UK. For instance, in 2013 they commis-
sioned a Spanish photographer, Francesco, to do portraits of LGBTQIA
people who contributed to their local scene in European countries that were
undergoing severe austerity measures. The exhibition was unveiled at Unite
House (headquarters of Unite the Union in London), where the photogra-
pher spoke in the company of a representative from the Greece Solidarity
Campaign, and the chair of the London and Eastern Unite branch. The
different forms of engagement that Left Front Art resort to are evidence
of a strategy that looks to connect LGBTQIA and broader sociopolitical
issues—such as austerity and workers’ rights—through artistic events. By
making connections between different social and political issues, these
events draw in a variety of audiences, thus fostering links between two dif-
ferent spheres and different publics.
At the same time, Left Front Art is committed to a radical type of leftist
politics that challenges not only the traditional structures of unions, but
also mainstream, commodified expressions of LGBTQIA activism. The po-
sitioning of Left Front Art’s work as counter to the ‘over-processed’ com-
mercial gay scene in the neighbouring area is a clear statement on the current
status of mainstream LGBTQIA culture, as many events and initiatives that
were once counterculture have now been commercialised and commodified
(Bell and Binnie 2004, Enguix 2009), and can become void of any potential
for social change. But, at the same time, it is important to ask whether in-
troducing radical queer art practices into institutional spaces, such as trade
unions, does not in some way give place to an ­institutionalisation—and con-
sequently, de-radicalisation—of these practices, which need to adapt to the
structures and limitations of these institutions.
 Breaking barriers  93
While the joint work of Left Front Art and Unite has begun to make im-
portant connections between LGBTQIA communities and the trade union,
Anton identifies the barriers ahead, which stop them from generating the
kind of cultural movement they wish to achieve. He shared:

We’re not at the stage where we were with the Situationists, where they’re
going to do something spontaneous. And there are reasons for that. It’s
licencing regulations, it’s a very regulated country now, in terms of what
we can and cannot do. And you have to jump through hoops, and there’s
a limit to what I can get away with at Congress House, because they’ve
got protocols and things, so you can’t have a full blown extreme perfor-
mance there.

Anton’s statement confirms the reasons behind the suspicions that many
radical queer artists have about engaging with unions, and bringing trans-
gressive art into spaces that are bound by regulations and protocols. It is,
however, in this space of constant negotiation between structural limita-
tions and radical content that Left Front Art functions, using embodied
forms of communication to challenge structures and perceptions, and cre-
ate personal bonds between the LGBTQIA arts community and the labour
movement.
Anton shared with me that one of the most inspiring events of 2013 was a
fundraising event for medical aid in Greece, which hosted poetry readings,
talks about Palestine and Greece, workshops, and a naked dinner. He said
it is necessary to have more of these events. In his words: “[I]t’s us getting
people to think ‘yes, there’s more to (life) just going home, paying the rent,
watching television, and then just doing nothing else’.” His words suggest
advocacy for a change in the way people engage with politics and engage
with each other. Left Front Art does not advocate one-off political events,
but for a long-term change of consciousness: a rejection of commodified
culture, and a type of artistic-political practice that is embedded in everyday
life, as a tool for transforming attitudes and structures, but also as a way of
living. By bringing transgressive queer artists into the trade union context
they simultaneously foster engagement with LGBTQIA issues, challenge the
boundaries of mainstream queer activism and of the labour movement, and
advocate a non-commodified experience of art that permeates all aspects of
daily life.

Our bodies, our struggles

The case of Left Front Art is an example of transgression enacted through
the body: a direct confrontation of the norms and codes of the union—
and their inherent heteronormativity—through performances and other
creative forms that push and challenge institutional and social norms on
the appropriate look and behaviour of bodies, while also addressing wider
94  Breaking barriers
structural issues. But the relationship with one’s body in the making of art
and activism, can be quite complex, especially when dealing with issues of
gender, race, sexuality, disability, and other matters that define our daily
social and embodied experiences as well as our identities. In an interview
with filmmaker, performance artist, and activist Liz Crow, founder of the
creative media company Roaring Girl Productions, I asked her about the
use of the body; whether it is something she thinks about during her process
when working on performances. She said that since she is dealing with dis-
ability as a theme in her work, the body is very present. However, her work
is about social structures, and hence she actively tries to divert attention
from the body, and place focus on how certain structures of society affect
disabled people.
An example of this is her famous performance Resistance on Trafalgar
Square’s Fourth Plinth, which was part of Antony Gormley’s One & Other
project. For this performance Crow went on the plinth in her wheelchair and
wearing a Nazi uniform to bring attention to the seventieth anniversary of
Aktion T-4, the first Nazi elimination programme, which targeted disabled
people and would then become the blueprint for the systematic murder of
Jews, LGBTQIA people, and other minority groups.4 As a disabled artist,
she chooses to shift focus from her own body towards the elements of a so-
ciety that through its systems and structures disables people. She uses art as
a way of doing this, and sees art as a challenge to the idea that activism nec-
essarily entails suffering. At the same time, however, much of Crow’s work
is based on her openness about her disability and her body. In Lying Down
Anyhow, an autobiographical writing piece, Crow shares her experiences of
lying down in public spaces (and of being prevented from doing so). In later
a piece expanding and reflecting on those first writings, she explains:

Lying Down Anyhow begins in the physicality of the body, the freedom
that is, for me, the act of lying down. Yet, when I ask why lying down
in public is so very hard to do, it transforms to a story about external
codes and constraints, those emotional, social, political and cultural
influences that shape the body’s way of being. Lying Down Anyhow is
less the story of a troubled body than of its interface with the language,
values and physical structures that limit the possibilities of lying down
in public places.
(Crow 2013:89)

The author adds: “To lie down, in social spaces, is not a simple act of physi-
ology; it is a statement. In the midst of codes that say you do not do this, to
lie down in public is confrontation” (Crow 2013:86). In this project the artist
takes on the role of activist, challenging the norms that control bodies in
public space, re/writing the rules, and encouraging others to do so by taking
that stand. She does so by sharing both her private and public embodied
experiences, the particularities of her daily life, in a way that is exposing
 Breaking barriers  95
her as a subject, but is most importantly also exposing the underlying bi-
opolitics of regulations imposed by the state through public space law and
norms of public conduct. In a way, the simple daily act of lying down can
unintentionally become an act of civil disobedience by the mere fact that it
is transgressing codes of public conduct. Crow’s work points to the relative
nature of transgression as an embodied act, and to the relational nature of
bodies. As Judith Butler argues, “the body is less an entity than a living set
of relations; the body cannot be fully dissociated from the infrastructural
and environmental conditions of its living and acting” (Butler 2015:65).
Crow’s work takes openness and vulnerability and makes them powerful
weapons for confronting the state. A similar approach is taken by perfor-
mance artist Antonio Onio, whose performance, mentioned at the beginning
of this chapter, I attended at the TUC headquarters. In his ­performance Onio
talked about activism not as a force but as exposed vulnerability. He said
that force and confrontation don’t change anything, and that he b ­ elieves in
‘turning the other cheek’. Instead of protesting in the streets, he argues for a
different type of resistance in the body, situating “emotions and weaknesses
as catalysts for strength”. Being vulnerable, he said, ­cannot be co-opted or
exploited by capitalism, as many protest movements are. He said we must
find ways of exposing our own flaws and vulnerabilities.  We must create
spaces for thinking of other alternatives to capitalism and the norm on sex-
uality. Being vulnerable, he argued, can create those spaces. He described
counter-intuitive acts such as throwing money to the streets in the hope that
it will come back to us some other way. Acts that ignore the system, make
us vulnerable in its eyes but remain our choice, and are defiant through
passivity and vulnerability. He proposed a soft kind of embodied activism.
Vulnerability as power, as a choice. Are exposure and honesty necessarily
bad, or are we told they are bad, weak, negative? An embodied attitude that
we can control. Power in our bodies, and a challenge to prevalent values of
strength and endurance.
Following from Onio’s thoughts, it is important to consider that the
body is not vulnerable in itself, but it is vulnerable to economics, to history.
­Vulnerability is always “formed and lived in relation to a set of conditions
that are outside, yet part of, the body itself” (Butler 2015:148). Understand-
ing that it is not a fault of the body or of the subject to be vulnerable, but a
structural issue, can lead to a claiming of vulnerability as an empowering
identity. We are vulnerable when the conditions required for us to live our
lives are not provided or are taken away, and “[a]cting in the name of that
support, without that support, is the paradox of plural performative action
under conditions of precarity” (2015:65).
In our conversation Crow shared that she sees activism as a broad spectrum
of practices, from road blocking to petition signing. They are all different
ways towards the same goal: social change. She sees art as being increasingly
involved in activism, and also considers direct action to be a form of perfor-
mance. For instance, she told me about a bus blockade she was part of which
96  Breaking barriers
was protesting against the lack of public transport for wheelchair users. She
said that the press loved it because it was a very visible symbol of lack of ac-
cess. It was a form of performance, she added, because you need to develop
a very thorough consciousness of yourself in space, and in relation to others
(e.g. bus driver, the police). She added: “When the police approach and you
have to come up with an adequate reaction, that is a performance.” Crow
views her embodied activism as performance, and her embodied perfor-
mances as activism. While she is also a filmmaker she sees her performance
work as more directly linked to activism, as it is work that is relational.
Through these embodied pieces her work targets structural issues, norms
and codes, and, ultimately, the state. Through empowering embodied per-
formance, it enacts the “struggle between the power of performance in the
arts and the performance of power by the state” (Ngũgĩ 1997:12).

Conclusion
Butler argues that,

under conditions in which infrastructures are being decimated, the very

platform for politics becomes the object around which political mobili-
zation rallies. And this means that demands made in name of the body
(its protection, shelter, nourishment, mobility, expression) sometimes
must take place with and through the body and its technical and infra-
structural dimensions. When this happens, it may seem that the body is
the means and ends of politics. But the point is precisely to underscore
that the body is not isolated from all those conditions, technologies, and
life processes that make it possible.
(Butler 2015:128–129)

The cases presented in this chapter enact a vision of art as a means and
space to comment on vulnerability, to rethink what it means, to connect
with others through it, and to channel it as a tool for action. As Butler ar-
gues, we need to be “able to think vulnerability and agency together” (Butler
2015:139). Claiming vulnerability as an identification and a tool for action
makes the personal political in a way that places the fault and burden of vul-
nerability on the system, not the subject. It is also a way of challenging the
boundaries between private and public spheres, a key task towards effecting
change in the representation of specific identities (Deutsche 1992). A ­similar
analysis can be applied to Black Lives Matter, the movement against po-
lice brutality and systemic racism that emerged in the US in 2013, later to
become an international movement. With embodied, performative gestures
such as ‘hands up, don’t shoot!’ taking place in the streets in the context of
mass demonstrations, Black Lives Matter activists performed not only a
‘visibilisation of black life’ (McKee 2016:185) but also a visibilisation of the
vulnerability of black life in a racist system.
 Breaking barriers  97
The practices examined in this chapter also offer valuable insight into the
way in which art activism, and in particular embodied performance actions,
are intervening physical and discursive institutional spaces. The personal as
political is enacted here as a way of generating structural change, be that in the
culture of institutions such as trade unions, or in the regulations of public space
and the accessibility of public transport. Left Front Art artists and activists are
situated in an in-between position, as they operate between the loose, informal,
network format of Left Front Art, and the highly structured framework of the
trade union. In their work, there is constant tension and negotiation with the
union because of their protocols, structures, and culture, which are in some
ways resistant to the transgressive, embodied work of Left Front Art’s LGBT-
QIA artists. Left Front Art artists use nudity, sex, and non-normative aesthetics
as ways of challenging heteronormativity. This can be seen as a manifestation
of carnivalesque transgression, but also, the embodied aspect of performances
is intended to open a channel for empathy and communication with audiences
through vulnerability, as “the act of performing and theatricalizing queerness
in public takes on ever multiplying significance” (Muñoz 1999:1).
In the case of Liz Crow’s work, transgression is achieved through an
embodied reversal of roles that leads to a cognitive dissonance when she
embodies the figure of a Nazi soldier. But in her work there is also direct
transgression of public space codes; by bringing attention to her body lying
down, the artist puts up a mirror to the figure of the state and the ableist,
classist nature of its rules and conception of public spaces. The contradic-
tion between the seemingly passive act of lying down and the transgression
of the law that this implies is what makes Crow’s Lying Down Anyhow such a
powerful piece. Stallybrass and White (1986) see transgression as symbolic
inversion, or the contradiction of cultural and social norms. The practices
examined here are examples of a transgression of norms through the body.
These disobedient bodies, in their openness, materiality, and presence, make
statements about the personal as political as they irrupt into public spaces.
The threads of embodiment, public space, and transgression that framed
this chapter will continue to give shape to the analysis offered in the fol-
lowing chapters. I will expand on the issues addressed here by looking at
psychogeography and transgression of public spaces (Chapter 5), embodi-
ment and the personal as political in radical pedagogy (Chapter 6), and the
relationship between art activists and cultural institutions (Chapter 7).

Notes
1 Sections of this chapter have been previously published in Serafini, Paula (2015)
‘Beyond the Institution: Community-Centred Art Activism against the Com-
modification of Culture’, Anarchist Studies 23(2): 68–88.
2 Anton, personal interview (2014).
3 Stonewall is a UK-based LGBTQIA rights charity, the largest of its kind in
­Europe, whose main activity is lobbying for policy.
4 For more on this performance see www.roaring-girl.com/work/resistance/.
98  Breaking barriers
References
Bell, David and Binnie, Jon (2004) ‘Authenticating Queer Space: Citizenship,
Urbanism and Governance’, Urban Studies 41(9): 1807–1820.
Butler, Judith (2015) Notes toward a Performative Theory of Assembly, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Crow, Liz (2013) ‘Lying Down Anyhow: Disability and the Rebel Body’, in Swain,
John, French, Sally, Barnes, Colin and Thomas, Carol (eds.) Disabling Barriers—
Enabling Environments (third edition), London: Sage. pp. 85–91.
Deutsche, Rosalyn (1992) ‘Art and Public Space: Questions of Democracy’, Social
Text 33: 34–53.
Enguix, Begonya (2009) ‘Identities, Sexualities and Commemorations: Pride P ­ arades,
Public Space and Sexual Dissidence’, Anthropological Notebooks 15(2): 15–33.
Hanisch, Carol (2000) ‘The Personal Is Political’, in Crow, Barbara A. (ed.) Radical
Feminism: A Documentary Reader, New York and London: New York University
Press. pp. 113–116.
McKee, Yates (2016) Strike Art: Contemporary Art and the Post-Occupy Condition,
New York and London: Verso.
Muñoz, José Esteban (1999) Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance
of Politics, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1997) ‘Enactments of Power: The Politics of Performance
Space’, TDR (1988–) 41(3): 11–30.
Stallybrass, Peter and White, Allon (1986) The Politics and Poetics of Transgression,
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
5 Loitering in the city
Psychogeography as art
activism1

Introduction
Public art can be understood in broad terms as art that “acts in the public
realm” (Miles 1997:1). It is public in that it takes place in public spaces (e.g.
a sculpture in a square, or a mural), but it is also public in that it is accessible
to, and made for, the people. In regions where redevelopment programmes
and gentrification are displacing local populations, public art has been re-
garded with mistrust, as a common tool used by developers in these pro-
cesses (Deutsche 1992:37, Kester 2011:1995). This perception of public art is
also linked to the realisation that the definitions of ‘public’ and ‘public use’
are relative, and are not constructed by the public as a whole. Rather, these
terms are defined by sectors of the public who hold more power over others.
With regard to this, Deutsche asks, “Is it possible to speak with assurance
of a public space where social groups, even when physically present, are
systematically denied a voice?” (Deutsche 1992:38). However, she argues, as
a counterpart to this phenomenon,

artists and critics eager to counteract the power exercised through neu-
tralizing ideas of the public have sought to re-appropriate the concept
by defining public space as a realm of political debate and public art as
work that helps create such a space.
(Deutsche 1992:39)

This chapter is concerned with a particular form and understanding of pub-

lic art that departs from the public art proliferated by property developers.
In other words, a kind of public art that is concerned with the idea of the
public, with public space, and the right to the city (Harvey 2008). The ‘pub-
lic’ work of artists and activists that stand against capitalism and for equal
access to public space, and for the legitimisation of the art produced by
non-professional artists and in everyday spaces (Bonnett 1992:70). Standing
against a neoliberal current that defends redevelopment as a provider of
public space, “these works defend notions of a public realm that are formu-
lated in distinct oppositions to all facets of the privatization and bureaucra-
tization of cities” (Deutsche 1992:41).
100  Loitering in the city
Examples of this kind of ‘public art’ that does not align with public art
as a genre, but rather is public in its open nature and in its intervention
of the public space, are abundant and a cornerstone of countless social
movements. In the UK these include Reclaim the Streets in the 1990s who
took over roads and highways for temporary parties featuring costumes,
sandboxes, and the planting of trees (Jordan 2002), and the joyful carnivals
against capital in London in 1999 and more recently in 2013. In the US,
where the urban parties of Reclaim the Streets also resonated with artists,
activists, and community organisers, there is as well a history of urban in-
terventions, including mass cycling outings of activists dressed as clowns
(Shepard 2011), and interventions on the physical structures of the city, such
as the work of REPOhistory and their unsanctioned plaques and signs that
honour moments of radical history (Sholette 2011:88–89). In Argentina,
graphic arts and research collective Iconoclasistas developed a collective
mapping manual that champions the power of mapping as a tool for rede-
fining spatial and temporal relations, and generating new territorial per-
spectives that allow collective transformations.2 And in Mumbai, the Why
Loiter? project examines women’s experiences of public spaces and the idea
of justice in the urban space. Their book Why Loiter? Women and Risk on
Mumbai Streets maps the experiences of women in the city but also calls for
the reimagining of urban space justice. We could also position within this
tradition Liz Crow’s piece Lying Down Anyhow, discussed in Chapter 4. In
this work the artist and disability rights activist examines the clash between
lying down, an act that is central to her daily life, and the codes and regula-
tions of behaviour in public spaces.
Public, creative, political practices that centre on the rethinking of pub-
lic space have become a growing phenomenon across the world, and are of
particular interest at a time when it is not only the idea of the public that is
in crisis, but also the idea of democracy. Artists, activists, and researchers
have for years been looking at the urban space as an inherently political site:
“If the modern city classifies our lives through the organization of streets
and buildings then resistance implies an exploration of the spaces between
or within them” (Jenks 2003:146).
One such form of engaged creative practice in an urban setting is psy-
chogeography, and also the contemporary practices that are informed by
it. Psychogeography, as developed by the Letterist International and then
theorised and practised by members of the Situationist International3 such
as Guy Debord, can be understood as the study of the effects of the environ-
ment on people’s behaviour and emotions (Pinder 2005). It was conceived
as a political and artistic practice, which employed the dérive—a walking
practice intended to disorient the subject and allow them to experience
and analyse the city from a new perspective—as its main tool. Psychogeo-
graphical dérives were planned and had a purpose, but lacked destination
(Sharanya 2016:201). Acknowledging the current popularity of psychogeog-
raphy as a creative practice of resistance with a strong history in the UK and
 Loitering in the city  101
increasingly practised in many parts of the world (Pinder 2005, Richardson
2015), this chapter will examine the politics of psychogeography as art ac-
tivism by focusing on the practice of LRM, a Manchester-based collective
that practises psychogeography. I will explore issues of walking as crea-
tive and political practice, play as a form of transgression, the possibilities
and challenges of framing political walking as art, and the ethics of urban
exploration.

Sunday loitering
Manchester is known as the world’s first industrialised city. It is also known
for being an important centre of capitalism in the nineteenth century, as
well as having an important role in the development of Marxist politics. The
city went through a period of decline as a result of deindustrialisation, and
suffered considerable damage due to bombings during the Second World
War and then the IRA bombing of 1996. From the 1980s onwards, regenera-
tion began to take place, with major redevelopment programmes spreading
across the city, many of these happening quite recently. It is in this context
that the practice of LRM takes place, in the midst of an economic boom that
is threatening to destroy the city’s ‘industrial soul’,4 and a housing crisis that
suggests inevitable displacement of communities in Manchester and sur-
rounding areas (Wallace 2015).
On the first Sunday of April 2014, I attended a psychogeographical
walk in Manchester. We wandered down the deserted canals and up to the
­Manchester City stadium, looking for clues of a past civilisation and portals
to other planets. I met the usual walkers of the group plus new attendees
like myself, and as we walked we talked about regeneration in the city, the
Occupy movement, and Neil Gaiman novels. This walk was organised by
Morag from LRM, a “Manchester-based collective of artists and activists
interested in psychogeography, public space and the hidden stories of the
city”. They are inspired by the Situationist practice of psychogeography as a
form of engaging with public spaces, and they state:

We can’t agree on what psychogeography means but we all like plants

growing out of the side of buildings, looking at things from new angles,
radical history, drinking tea and getting lost; having fun and feeling like
a tourist in your home town. Gentrification, advertising and blandness
make us sad. We believe there is magic in the Mancunian rain.5

The way in which LRM self-defines as a group, together with the description
of their practice, provides a broad sense of the political position and ideology
of the collective. In the first place, the group description states the involve-
ment of activists and their interest in public space. Second, the description
of psychogeography as their practice ties in with their interest in radical
history, and a rejection of gentrification and advertising. This positions the
102  Loitering in the city
group as an entity of resistance against certain urban phenomena that are
a product of capitalism, and the effects these have on the city’s population.
Speaking to Morag, she pointed out some other specific issues in particular
that she tries to address with LRM, such as women’s right to the city and
certain trends in management and control of public spaces (Atkinson 2003).
Morag mentioned, for instance, how a ban on public consumption of alcohol
is enforced in several working-class areas of the city, but not when it comes
to ‘posh people drinking their Marks & Spencer wine’ in public parks. But
in addition to this ideological position expressed through discourse, LRM’s
politics are constructed and manifested, as I will explain, through their con-
ceptualisation and way of exercising creative practice, including the way in
which they relate to the city and to other people.
LRM’s embracement of psychogeography means that the collective
chooses walking as their main mode of action. Their monthly walks are the
main constant activity of the group, and they take place every first Sunday
of the month from 2 pm onwards and last approximately two hours, typi-
cally followed by a visit to the pub. Morag shared that the usual numbers
are from ten to fifteen participants, with quite an even gender balance. Ac-
cording to her, walks usually take place in central parts of Manchester, but
follow different routes each time. In addition, walks can also take different
formats and moods. Some, for instance, are ‘explicitly political’ and some-
how protest-like, taking the form of walking protests. Some, on the other
hand, are didactic: they include several historical facts about the city and
are built around prompt phrases and questions such as ‘Let’s look at power
structures and what you see. Where’s inequality? Who’s in the space?’ Fi-
nally, others are more game-like, and entail people finding their own path.
What is common across all walks is the intention to socialise with new peo-
ple, discover new paths, and reconfigure the way that the city is experienced.
The second LRM walk I attended in June that same year was based on
algorithms, and was one of the more ludic and game-like kinds of walks. Six
of us held small bags with three ‘chips’ in them: one had a number drawn
on it, another an arrow, and another an icon (e.g. a house, a moon, a star, a
heart, a leaf, or a musical note). We took turns to toss the chips and inter-
preted them freely. We followed the arrows in order to generate arbitrary
unexpected paths, and interpreted symbols as we liked. My chip with an
icon that looked like a moon, for instance, directed me to architectural fea-
tures in the form of crescents. We walked through the busy shopping streets
looking for stars, and the empty business streets looking for leaves. Through
this playful activity, we were able to reclaim certain spots in the city and use
them for new alternative purposes.
Pinder explains that “[p]art of the significance of psychogeography and
walking practices is […] the way in which they allow encounters with appar-
ently ‘ordinary’ and ‘unimportant’ activities in the city, against the grain
of powerful discourses of the urban” (Pinder 2005:391). Similarly, Jenks ex-
plains that
 Loitering in the city  103
psychogeography depends upon the walker ‘seeing’ and being drawn
into events, situations and images by an abandonment to wholly unan-
ticipated attraction. This is political, it is a movement that will not be
planned, or organized instrumentally—it will not be mobilized.
(Jenks 2003:147)

With its game-like format, potential for artistic creation, and playful forms
of relating to other people and to the environment, the ludic walk I took
part in went beyond a comment on gentrification, shopping, and capitalism,
and enacted a different way of relating to public space: a creative, collective,
and playful way of experiencing the city.

Transgression, play, and performativity in the city

LRM’s way of navigating public spaces flirts with the idea of transgression,
as spaces are used for purposes other than those for which they are des-
ignated. As Morag explains, for some reason LRM walks often end up in
car parks, a kind of urban space designed and reserved for cars and not for
­people. Even when trespassing in the legal sense does not occur, the new
uses given to spaces—such as wondering around business areas at weekends
and playing games in deserted parts of the canals—constitute a reclaiming
of the city and a reconfiguration of what place, space, and social connec-
tions are supposed to be like in an urban setting.
In one of their flyers, LRM suggests:

Draw a heart on a map. Follow the line, try to stay true. How do you feel
as you walk? What can you see? Who is missing? Can the city touch you?
Will you fall in love on the streets?

The other side of the same flyer reads: “Our city is wonderful and made
for more than shopping. We want to reclaim it for play and revolution-
ary fun.”6 The reference to feelings and the sensorial shows how the psy-
chogeographical walk is conceptualised and experienced by LRM as an
embodied activity, which is largely based on sensorial perceptions of the
environment (Rhys-Taylor 2013) and how these experiences affect our
emotional state. The walks intend to allow participants to recognise these
feelings and sensations and take control in creating their own new ways
of experiencing the city, through the embodied political acts of walking
and reclaiming public space. LRM also embraces the idea of magic in the
city, as exemplified by their reference to “magic in the Mancunian rain”,
but also in their approach to play, as was the case in the walk in which
we looked for portals to other dimensions. Magic, argues Bonnett, is “a
central aspect of the imaginative power of psychogeography”, that in con-
temporary psychogeographical practices has been used as “a way of of-
fering an aura of depth, yearning and possibility that transforms walking
104  Loitering in the city

Figure 5.1  P
 sychogeographical walk with Loiterers Resistance Movement, Man-
chester, 2 June 2014. Image by the author.

into a practice and site of potential and drama” (2017:1). Magic is not only
an aesthetic device, but can, in this context, be “a symbol and practice of
subversion and creation” (Bonnett 2017:3) because of its association with
the occult and ‘non-rational’. Magic can be “a form of counter-­p erception,
that is seen and felt in the city but that also enables its imaginative re­c ­
lamation” (Bonnett 2017:4).
At the same time, LRM promotes play and revolutionary fun as a way of
doing politics, in the tradition of several past and present creative protest
movements in the UK and elsewhere (Shepard 2011). Play in this context
acts as both a form of transgression and a prefigurative way of relating to
the city, as LRM denounces and resists gentrification and changes in the
urban ecology, and also engages, through play, in social relations with local
people who were not previously active around these issues. In reference to
this, Morag explains (Figure 5.1):

[W]hat I learned quite quickly was going for a walk creates a space to
have conversations… And that’s good because you get a good mix of
people, and like the guy who I only met last week, doesn’t feel like the
kind of person I’d meet in any other way, he seems quite… un-political,
and interested in history. And then you’ve got people who come from
you know, different spaces.7

Stuiver et al. (2012) argue that people construct identities of place by

observing everyday reality, but also through immaterial things such as
 Loitering in the city  105
stories. On his part, Frédéric Gros claims that through the practice of
walking, the subject gets to truly know herself (Gros 2014). Pinder brings
these two perspectives together, and borrowing from de Certeau, pro-
poses that walking can be a way of creating alternative personal narratives
about the city. He explains that de Certau “likens practices of walking to
the speech act whereby pedestrians ‘enunciate’ spaces” (­P inder 2005:401).
In other words, walking can in itself be a performative act (Butler 1995),
through which the subject can create a counter-­narrative of the city
that challenges prevalent discourses around urban space, as well as ac-
tively transforming the uses of those spaces. By engaging previously un-­
politicised participants, LRM provides a space for them to rethink and
perform new narratives about their experience of the city that incorporate
new ways of feeling and understanding their position in an urban setting.

But is it ‘art’?
Despite the highly creative aspect of their practice, Morag explains that she
is conflicted by the notion of art, and does not always see LRM as an art
project:

I could not see it as art and it is funny actually, because I was always kind
of interested in DiY art, and I also draw… But then I ran a course that I
wrote, which was about the art of walking, and it was about how walking
and art are really linked, and I can now see it from that point of view.

Morag’s acceptance of the category of art is then linked to the embodied

aspect of her practice, found in the act of walking. Her hesitation around
the word ‘artist’, as she explained to me later, lies partly in her respect for
artisans and craftsmen, and partly in her disagreement with the canons and
standards of the art world. This disagreement is at the heart of LRM’s prac-
tice, and is the basis for their active and prefigurative challenge to the main-
stream notion of art.
In the first place, LRM’s walks challenge the notion of the author and
the idea of participation as practised within the institutional framework,
as the walks and games they engage in are a collaborative practice in
which people are not mere bodies for an artwork, but participants with
agency in the activity. Unlike artistic walks or participatory works of pub-
lic art performed by artists coming from an institutional framework, this
is not the work of an artist directing participants, or an artist collective
collaborating, but rather the collective work of different kinds of ­p eople,
some of whom regard the practice as art, and some who do not, but all
having agency in their experience and creating meaning.8 Morag explains:

People come to LRM and they contribute. This is the thing about
ownership and artists, because I really feel strongly that walks are
106  Loitering in the city
co-­produced. Walks I do on my own are more kind of flâneur or what-
ever. If I take photos on that walk or I produce something at the end, I
own that and I produced that. But anything I write about a first Sunday
is kind of co-produced because it is about the conversations and, you
know… it is not just me.

She also comments, however, that despite her efforts to maintain a demo-
cratic, horizontal, and truly collaborative kind of practice, on some occa-
sions this is not easy to achieve:

I guess it’s one of those weird hierarchies as well because, at one point, I
gave anyone who wanted it the password to the blog, and they could post
anything they wanted on it […] but actually most people didn’t want to
do it. I do try to be open […] but with the best will in the world, it would
be disingenuous to say that we are totally equal, because I tried really
hard to make it like that for a really long time, and then eventually it was
like ‘actually you know what? It’s silly to pretend that’. And I think one
[of the reasons] was a couple of the founding members actually just left
Manchester. So when everyone was here, it was much more collective. As
they left, I kind of carried on and other people came in. So I guess I’m
accidently a little bit in charge, but I still feel uncomfortable with that.

‘Loitering with Intent: The Art and Politics of Walking

in Manchester and Beyond’
In October 2016, two years after my walks with LRM, I found myself in
Manchester again. My trip coincided with LRM’s exhibition Loitering with
Intent at the People’s History Museum, a happy coincidence that allowed
me to reminisce on my time spent with LRM and return to some earlier
thoughts on walking as art, participation, and what happens when psycho-
geography is framed as art practice.
Loitering with Intent: The Art and Politics of Walking in Manchester and
Beyond was housed in a temporary exhibits hall on the ground floor of the
People’s History Museum, and had free entry. The accompanying text on
the exhibition’s website read:

Walking is often taken for granted as an everyday activity but it has

extraordinary resonance. This exhibition explores how walking can be
a work of art or a political act. Footsteps create desire lines and shared
histories; creative walking can become performance art that helps re-­
imagine, remap and reshape the world. Protest marches, mass trespasses
and quiet acts of pedestrian rebellion reclaim space and assert rights.9

The large, bright room was populated with tall, solid exhibition panels, dot-
ted across the room and creating an informal path for visitors. The panels
 Loitering in the city  107
held a variety of works from artists, academics, and psychogeographers
from the north-west of England and beyond, including photography of
found objects; texts and photo-essays documenting walks; drawn maps, col-
lage maps, and emotional maps; archival material such as posters, zines,
and leaflets; installations; and film. Together, these pieces displayed the
breadth of mediums that can be used in psychogeographical practices and
their documentation.
In the spirit of participation and the democratisation of the arts, the
exhibition included opportunities for visitors to contribute to it. One such
opportunity was a panel where visitors could share information about
upcoming events with other ‘loiterers’, as well as photos and field reports
from their walks. Another one was a panel with a paper sign reading ‘this
is YOUR space’. The panel was covered in sticky notes of all colours with
an array of messages similar to that of a toilet cubicle door, with people
declaring ‘they were here’, others spreading messages of love and world
peace, and of course the always-present drawing of a penis. At the exhi-
bition there was also a table with leaflets and postcards, which the visi-
tors were invited to take home. Among these was a handout of ‘Play the
City Now or Never!’, a game by Idit Elia Nathan and Helen Stratford. The
handout had instructions for how to turn it into a cube that can be tossed
and played with in the city, proposing different tasks depending on which
side it lands on.
The spaces for visitors to include their thoughts and mark their presence
in the exhibition are in line with LRM’s open nature and their predilec-
tion for coproduction as a form of making. It is worth noting, however,
that the rest of the exhibition followed traditional curatorial standards,
whereby each piece was attributed to one or more authors. In fact, it is sig-
nificant that most of the exhibited work, except for publications, was single-­
authored. This included the drawing documentation of an artist’s walk from
Newcastle to Leeds, an emotional map of Stockport, and photo-collages of
abandoned buildings.
This brings us back to Morag’s distinction between the collectively
­authored nature of LRM’s walks and other work she has done outside of this
collective. The first question that emerges is why, given that LRM’s prac-
tice is collective, as is much psychogeography, most of the works exhibited
are singly authored. Is it because unlike single-authored work, collective
walking and psychogeographical projects and their documentation are of-
ten not conceived as art? Or is it because the type of work that is collectively
produced and documented does not fit with exhibition canons? Second, in
the exhibition one could see a clear distinction between the work of artists
and the messages and posts from visitors-turned-participants. This raises
the question, therefore, of whether these opportunities for visitor engage-
ment are really democratising the exhibition or rather perform a symbolic
function, when the distinction between artwork and visitor contribution is
still present.
108  Loitering in the city
The politics of psychogeography
When examining the politics of psychogeography, it is important to consider
the politics of walking in the city, and how the figure of the flâneur, the psycho-
geographer and the urban explorer have been constructed and reproduced in
literary works and in the imaginary of cities, as well as reinterpreted through
practice across time. The flâneur, most commonly associated with Baudelaire’s
writing, emerges from the streets of nineteenth-century Paris. A quintessential
urban figure engaging in the arts, leisure, and embracing the city as experience,
the flâneur is white and male, and he possesses cultural capital as well as the
time and freedom to explore the city. In terms of his relationship to the urban
environment, “[t]he flâneur does not demand of things that they come to him;
he goes to things. In this sense, the flâneur does not destroy the auras of things;
he respects them” (Groys 2013:63). While determined to soak the city in, the
figure of the flâneur stands in a position of detachment from the city and those
who inhabit it; he is an observer (Boutin 2012:126). As such, initial accounts of
flânerie emphasise visual mastery and confirm a sensory hierarchy. This is not
detached from political implications, as in nineteenth-century Western society
several thinkers associated senses to class distinctions, linking women and the
lower classes to the ‘baser’ senses (Boutin 2012:126), such as smell.
From the idea of the flâneur followed the Surrealist dérive in the early
twentieth century, a kind of urban walking expedition that revolved around
the element of chance. In the 1950s, the Situationists put forward their ver-
sion of the dérive, that of the politically engaged psychogeographer who is
aware of the sensorial stimuli of the city and seeks to analyse their effects,
with the aim of using this knowledge to transform urban spaces. But this
new urban subject was still male, and in most instances still white. The
­Situationist dérive longed for an encounter with otherness, which “is reflec-
tive of their own historical positions as mostly white, male Europeans in
search of everyday difference” (Sharanya 2016:200).
Gibbons (2015) explains how, from its beginning, psychogeography ig-
nored the paramount role of race in the experience of the city. When
­A lgerian psychogeographer Abdelhafid Khatib was continually arrested for
his attempt to conduct nocturnal dérives of Les Halles in Paris in 1958, the
reaction of his Situationist comrades was little more than sympathy, and his
experience did not lead to the inclusion of race in psychogeographical theory.
This is also evidenced by the fact that Khatib’s story remains, as G ­ ibbons
puts it, a mere footnote in some psychogeographical texts. S ­ haranya argues
that the Situationist dérive (Figure 5.2)

performs a dual function […] it highlights the spaces wherein difference

occurs, such as in racially segregated pockets where the mere perfor-
mance of dérive will uncover “alterities” of experience and affect, but
also emphasises embodied difference, which affects the dérive as well as
the affective responses one may have to a local.
(Sharanya 2016:200–201)
 Loitering in the city  109

Figure 5.2  Image taken during a walk with Loiterers Resistance Movement, Man-
chester, 2 June 2014. Image by the author.

Psychogeographical walks are constrained as well as enabled by the em-

bodied identities as well as the bodies of participants. Race, gender, sexual-
ity, and ability, for instance, condition the way in which people experience
the city, and hence psychogeographical practice must be conscious of issues
of access and of power and privilege (Pinder 2005:402). While questioning
claims that pyschogeography is intrinsically masculinist, Bonnett admits
that “lone male voyagers […] take their freedom to roam, at any time of day
or night, for granted” (2017:8). Sharanya e­ xplains how as a woman practis-
ing psychogeographical ethnography in Delhi she had to adapt the timing
and scope of her walks to the times of trains, the flow of crowds, and her
perception of certain areas as more or less safe. She also refers to the Why
Loiter? project (mentioned in the introduction to this chapter), and speaks
of how loitering in Mumbai—being in the public space without a concrete
purpose—can be dangerous for a woman. Actively choosing to loiter in
the city can then also be seen as a radical act that challenges perceptions
of women’s expected behaviour in public spaces. But, she adds, this choice
is only afforded to some, as several marginalised figures find themselves
loitering not out of choice. In fact, “the very framing of ‘loitering’ varies
across socio-economic and religious identities, and the neoliberal co-option
of women’s visibility in public as inherently liberatory can be unproductive,
as it casts one’s movements as accessible or even desirable to all” (Sharanya
2016:204).
In the case of LRM, these issues are actively addressed in different ways.
Morag has done work on women’s right to the city and to spaces that are
110  Loitering in the city
deemed as ‘dangerous’ for women within and outside the collective. Also, in
our conversations she expanded on how walking in the city can sometimes
be something people find themselves doing not out of choice, but for eco-
nomic reasons, and how this experience of movement in the city results in
a specific perspective. Finally, LRM’s work is also informed by awareness
of how disability determines one’s experience of the city. Morag shared that
her own physical limitations with walking have influenced her own practice,
as well as her views on walking in general.
The Situationists positioned their practice as political and artistic, but
they rejected—at least on paper—the idea of art as a sphere with its own
institutions. LRM distinguishes itself from the canons of institutionalised
practice in that its relation to the themes and spaces that are a basis of its
practice is strongly rooted in specific values and political ideologies, thus
determining the kind of aesthetic and political approach it has to subjects
such as architecture, urban decay, and gentrification. Morag explains, for
instance, how they are concerned with avoiding the fetishisation of estates,
and not falling into ‘ruin porn’. On many occasions she referred to issues
of class and how some people who have taken part in their walks like go-
ing into estates and gawking, something she, having grown up on an estate
­herself, consciously avoids.
Fetishisation and commodification of working-class and minority ethnic
spaces and cultures are common phenomena among artists and other cre-
atives, and ought to be avoided (Todd 2015). These issues are important
when determining whether a certain kind of urban exploration is guided by
a political project that wishes to engage with and/or transform the current
situation of a city, or whether it is guided by other motivations such as the
aesthetic value of the ruin (Gansky 2014) or the search for adventure. These
ethical concerns and considerations that go beyond the artwork itself are
commonly bypassed by many artists who deal with political issues in their
work but do not fully engage with the social and political implications and
impact of their own ‘political’ art.10 In the work of LRM, even when walks
are ludic or historical and not overtly political, there is always a political
goal enacted in every walk, which is to transform the way the people of
Manchester live in the city. The fact that one of the objectives of the walk is
to attract people who had not been involved in activism before, and to offer
an opportunity for politicising the daily activity of walking, also speaks of
how this work is different from institutionalised practices, as the walks are
tied to a specific political objective, and campaigning and politicising atti-
tudes is one of the main desired outcomes. As Pinder explains, “[w]alking
provides a means of engaging with urban spaces and experiences in ways
that move beyond specialized arenas, whether those of art or academic in-
stitutions” (Pinder 2005:402). This means that by engaging in an alternative
use of space a political act is taking place, in addition to an artistic action.
Jenks argues that most psychogeographical practices do in fact tend to be
politically aware and engaged (Jenks 2003:150). Pinder, however, points out
 Loitering in the city  111
that these kinds of practices can sometimes carry a colonial legacy linked
to the idea of ‘exploration’, which can lead to an unequal power balance be-
tween the urban explorer and local communities in the sites explored (Pinder
2005:388). The power dynamics in the ‘explorer-explored’ relationship will
heavily depend on who the explorer is, what community is being explored,
and whether the agency of local communities in transforming urban spaces
is acknowledged (Hall 2015:2), or whether cities are perceived by artists and
urban explorers as blank canvases.

Conclusion
LRM embodies a Situationist ethos in its politicised walks, which take art
out to the streets and make use of public spaces as sites for creative resist-
ance and a collective reimagining of the urban experience. Their practice
relies on the embodied nature of walking, the element of play, and the trans-
gression of spatial norms as tools that facilitate creative and politicised
experiences, which result in a re-signification of specific public spaces, as
well as the production of an independent, non-commodified form of public
art, or art in public spaces. Instead of adhering to one of the “three main
­currents within British psychogeographical walking-literary, art and activ-
ist” (­Bonnett 2017:5), LRM’s practice bridges art and activism, adopting
an artistic stance that is political, non-institutional, and community-based.
A question that emerges is what happens when practices such as LRM’s
walks do engage with institutional spaces and frameworks. LRM’s ex-
hibition was held at the People’s History Museum, an institution that is
community centred. Yet the format of the exhibition, while incorporating
interactive elements, adhered to a traditional curatorial canon. Perhaps a
reframing of objectives around each aspect of LRM’s practice is important
here. The exhibition, due to its format, does not allow the same forms of
participation, coproduction, and agency as the walks. But it can serve other
purposes, such as inspiring people to engage in psychogeographic practices,
or rethink their relation to their own environment.
The work of LRM aims for the politicisation of everyday spaces through a
re-centring of sensory experiences and a rethinking of the subject’s relation
to their environment, and as such it opens up important questions around
the relation between the aesthetic and the political in contemporary psycho-
geography. LRM frames its practice as open, collective, and creative, and
these are the elements that make it appealing to participants that are not
politically active as well as to those who are. The embodied, sensorial, and
aesthetic aspects of its practice are what allows their political rethinking
and re-appropriation of space to take place: the aesthetic gives place to the
political. Deutsche (1992) argues that artists have become concerned with
two aspects of the public: issues of spatial arrangement and issues of visual
representation. She argues that despite a tendency of critics to relegate issues
of representation to the private sphere, these two can be aligned. In the work
112  Loitering in the city
of LRM, an interest in new sensory and aesthetic experiences of the city is
directly connected to the political objective of democratising public space
through interventions in the urban setting, aligning in this way spatial issues
with a people’s visual—and more broadly, aesthetic—experience of the city.
In terms of the objectives and goals of LRM, Morag stands with one foot
in a grounded and more contained standpoint, and one in optimistic utopi-
anism, arguing:

Walking in of itself won’t change inequalities, but it might provide some

imaginative ideas or some insight or some connection, because actu-
ally if you talk to someone or you walk with them, it does break down
­barriers. It is a bit idealistic, but I kind of feel there’s nothing wrong
with utopia as an aim.

But perhaps the most pressing question that the case of LRM invites, when
considered alongside the politics of psychogeography and urban explora-
tion in the current sociopolitical landscape, is linked to the possibilities of
psychogeography being transforming for a group of people with different
identities and political subjectivities. Can open, collective, and collabora-
tive psychogeographical practices such as these allow transformative expe-
riences for diverse groups of participants that have different positionalities,
everyday realities, and experiences of the city? Can any participatory crea-
tive practice do this? Sharanya points us to the discrepancy between theory
and practice in the dérive: not everyone has the same freedom of movement
in the city (2016:200). It follows that a psychogeographical walk with cer-
tain common parameters will not only be a different experience for differ-
ent subjects according to issues such as gender, ability, race, nationality,
religion, and class—and how these identities are shaped by the culture and
norms of different cities, regions, and countries—but it will also be political
in a different way for different subjects. As a mixed group goes on a dérive in
the streets of Manchester, most of them will be challenging the designated
uses of urban spaces. Some of them might be thinking of how they would
not normally be in that area alone after dark. And others might have a sud-
den feeling of being the only ‘other’ in an area of the city, until encountering
another ‘othered’ subject, which fellow psychogeographers (those who are
not othered) will not interpret as familiarity, but as difference.

Notes
1 Sections of this chapter have been previously published in Serafini, Paula (2015)
‘Beyond the Institution: Community-Centred Art Activism against the Com-
modification of Culture’, Anarchist Studies 23(2): 68–88.
2 See Iconoclasistas’ mapping manual here: https://issuu.com/iconoclasistas/docs/
manual_mapping_ingles.
3 The Situationist International was a group of artists, thinkers, and activ-
ists based in Paris and other European cities, active from 1952 to 1972. They
 Loitering in the city  113
developed the practice of psychogeography and advocated for art as a revolu-
tionary medium. See Wark (2011).
4 See Alec Herron’s article for The Guardian “Manchester’s second coming—but
are developers destroying its industrial soul?” www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/
jun/08/manchester-second-coming-heritage-developers-destroying-industrial-
soul. Accessed 15 February 2017.
5 From the Loiterers Resistance Movement blog, http://nowhere-fest.blogspot.
co.uk.
6 LRM flyer collected in 2014, date unknown.
7 Morag Rose, personal interview (2014).
8 For more on participation in institutional art and in art activism see Chapter 2.
9 People’s History Museum website, www.phm.org.uk/whatson/loitering-with-in-
tent/. Accessed 16 October 2016.
10 This issue was at the heart, for instance, of the controversy caused by Brett
­Bailey’s Exhibit B, organised by the Barbican Centre in September 2014. The
exhibition, which recreated human zoos from the nineteenth century, was can-
celled after protests denounced it as exploitative and racist. While the artist and
the venue claimed the piece was a critical response to racism and argued for free-
dom of expression, protesters not only questioned the message of the e­ xhibition,
but also focused on the exploitative dynamics produced by a white artist direct-
ing black actors in chains inside cages within the framework of an institution
that caters to a white middle-class audience.

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6 New narratives
Rethinking activism through art
in the youth project ‘Voices that
Shake!’

Introduction
This chapter explores the dynamics and processes of the London-based art
and activism youth programme Voices that Shake! (often known as Shake!),
in order to examine how art and activism intersect in a pedagogical con-
text. I first became involved with Shake! in 2013, when I met James from
Platform (Shake!’s parent organisation), who introduced me to Farzana,
Shake!’s coordinator. I initially entered the Shake! space as a researcher/
volunteer, participating and helping out in their 2013 summer course Power,
Propaganda, Perceptions. By the end of that year one of the team members
had left the project, and my role had evolved to core team member as Art &
Activism Facilitator and Strategic Advisor, a role I held for three years. For
this reason, my perspective on Shake! will be twofold, based on interviews
and ethnographic observations, but also on reflections about my own con-
tributions to the project and conversations I have had with participants and
facilitators in my role as core team member.
I will begin by presenting Shake!’s structure and model, and then move
on to an analysis of the experiences, thoughts, and work of facilitators and
participants, focusing on embodiment and performativity, and how these
aspects of their aesthetic-political practice aim to produce instances of per-
sonal transformation while also enacting prefigurative politics. I will look
specifically at spoken word poetry as one of the main elements of these
courses. I will also look at the tensions that arise between the individual and
the collective in a practice that addresses both personal transformations
and structural change, and conclude with a reflection on the nature of activ-
ism and how art activism functions within this particular context.1

The Shake! model

Shake! is a programme on art and activism for young people aged sixteen
to twenty-five, which was created in 2010. During its first few years, the pro-
gramme ran two five-day intensive courses each year, as well as an artistic
showcase after each intensive course (since 2017 the delivery format has be-
gun to change to adapt to new objectives, the needs of participants, and
116  New narratives
other factors). In addition, Shake! hosts continuity events throughout the
year, such as poetry writing workshops, film nights, and professional devel-
opment sessions, and keeps past participants updated with opportunities
to attend training, perform, gain work experience, and become involved in
community projects and activism. One of Shake!’s objectives is to create a
community out of past and present participants and facilitators.
The project is run by a core team, which for most of the time I was
conducting research consisted of Sai Murray and Zena Edwards (Poetry
­Facilitators), Farzana Khan (Facilitator and Coordinator), and myself
(Art and Activism Facilitator). Each course also features film and music
facilitators, and a number of guest speakers. Shake! originated as a pro-
ject by London-based environmental justice organisation Platform and
was the brainchild of campaigner Ben Amunwa, supported at its beginning
by Jane Trowell from Platform and the then-volunteer and facilitator Ed
Lewis, in partnership with poets Zena Edwards and Sai Murray. In an inter-
view, Jane2 explained that Shake! emerged out of a need to intervene in the
­future of Platform as an organisation, and in the environmental sector more
broadly, through the training and support of young artists and activists of
colour.3 As Ed and former Shake! participant Selina Nwulu explain, these
spaces continue to be dominated by white middle-class people (Nwulu and
Lewis 2012:155).
In addition to responding to the need identified by Ben and Platform,
Shake! is also a project that follows the needs and interests of its partici-
pants. Sai explains that “Shake! is a youth project, so young people define
the outputs”.4 The Shake! intensive five-day courses consist of a series of dis-
cussions and practical sessions around social and political issues which take
place during the first two days of the week, and workshops in different art
forms—poetry/spoken word and film, and since 2015 also zine-making—
which take place mostly in the following three days. Regarding the structure
of the week, Shake! coordinator and facilitator Farzana comments:

[T]his kind of model worked, because it was a kind of finding the prem-
ise, building the foundations, and then giving young people free reign to
create art that was authentic and coming from where they wanted it to.5

The discussions and workshops throughout the week tackle issues such
as race, gender, capitalism, and climate change, while responding to the
main themes that frame each five-day course. Some past themes for dif-
ferent courses have been Propaganda, Power, Perception; Remembering,
­Re-­imagining, Reparations; Headspace; and States of Violence.

Radical pedagogies
From the beginning of my involvement with Shake!, conversations with fa-
cilitators and participation in planning sessions led me to learn that the
 New narratives  117
programme was conceived as a radical pedagogy project, and as such,
courses are structured according to principles and ideas inherited from
critical, feminist, engaged, and radical pedagogies, such as those of Paulo
Freire (1970) and bell hooks (1994, 2003). For this reason, the workshops
and talks about political and social issues are heavily discussion-based and
dialogical, and top-down dynamics are consciously avoided. In line with
these strands of thought, creativity and artistic production are embedded
into the course as fundamental learning and teaching experiences (Endsley
2013:114). I was able to observe how these ideals are enacted by mechanisms
such as always sitting in a circle, limiting the amount of content delivered,
and dedicating most of the time in each session to discussion, focusing on
participants’ experiences as sources of knowledge. In later courses such
as Remembering, Re-imagining, Reparations and Headspace, these princi-
ples were also enacted through creating opportunities for participants and
­former participants to facilitate exercises or sessions themselves, or return
as guest speakers. In terms of the dynamics of the room, core team member
and poetry facilitator Zena pointed out on several occasions that the role
of facilitators during the course is to provoke discussions and ask questions
instead of giving answers (Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1  Group workshop during the Shake! course Surviving the System, ­London,
October 2016. Image by the author.
118  New narratives
In order to create a space that challenges the power dynamics of stand-
ard education models, that is safe for participants and puts forward a
holistic approach that looks at mind, body, and soul, a typical day in a
Shake! intensive course includes the following: warm-up exercises that
energise the body and foster group cohesion, designated moments for
sharing at the beginning and end of the day—during which participants
and facilitators share inspirations and report back on their days—and
moments of ­free-flow writing that allow a ‘digestion’ of the content
dealt with throughout the day. In addition, Shake! attempts to build a
decolonial practice (­E scobar and Mignolo 2010) that challenges power
and ­u nlearns ­oppression through intergenerational dialogue, collective
learning ­experiences, and horizontal non-hierarchical dynamics that
counter the relations, structures, and modes of learning of the official
education system. This is visible, for instance, in how facilitators take
part in group exercises alongside participants. These values are present
in the Shake! course space and also guide the practice, processes, and
organisational forms of the core team, which at the time of research was
mostly female and made up of people of colour and Global South people.
Farzana shares that:

The team in itself is representative. And also […] I do think that our
team does believe in those values, so when you go into a Shake! environ-
ment, somebody said you can’t separate the coordinator or facilitator
from a participant. And that’s the best compliment ever, ’cause that’s
what we want to achieve.

What this commitment to the values and methods of radical pedagogies

looks to achieve is a safe space in which participants and facilitators can
learn from each other (Nwulu and Lewis 2012:147), and in which everyone is
encouraged to make their opinions heard. This mode of approaching an ed-
ucational experience can be understood as prefigurative radical education,
enacting the values it upholds through practice.
Shake! participants from the 2014 course Headspace touch on this issue
in the short documentary Education?,6 which they shot during the intensive
course. The film brings together a variety of views on the current education
system in the UK, and then presents the example of Shake! as one way of
complementing or countering formal education by creating the education
you want to see and you want to have. The film is evidence of the impor-
tant role of out-of-school settings as “alternative knowledge spaces […]
where literacy learning is authentic and purposeful for […] people of col-
our” (Fisher 2003:363) and other marginalised young people. Shake! is
positioned as a project that is not only ameliorative, but also prefigura-
tive, and through its alternative structure proposes a different form of
education altogether.
 New narratives  119
Personal and structural change
Farzana explains the multiple objectives behind Shake! in the following way:

One aspect of it is located in personal transformations, so the young

people that we work with, we hope, and the facilitators, go through some
kind of personal transformation within their art and activism. So that’s
either being more informed about political issues, or becoming more
skilled in a particular art form […] And then it tries to make a structural
change, and that’s both politically—in different political issues that we
are looking at [such as] environment, race, power, and media—but also
within the system. One of the key areas that Shake! is interested in is
power and privilege, so looking at how the environmental movement as
a whole is predominantly white and middle class, and looking at struc-
tural changes within the system and how to shift the power balance.

In other words, Shake! is about personal as well as structural change. Dur-

ing my first period of observant participation as a volunteer, I noticed how
on the first day of intensive courses other facilitators emphasised this by
­explaining that the Shake! five-day course is a personal transformation
space. The continuity programme, including youth-led workshops that take
place outside of the intensive course as well as showcases and opportuni-
ties for performing and sharing artistic work, on the other hand, aims to
contribute in a more direct way to structural change in different spheres of
society, such as political activism, education, the art world, and social and
cultural policy. Farzana describes the connection between self-transfor-
mation and a wider collective movement for change as “justice work inside
out”. This focus on the individual could arguably bring about comparisons
with a libertarian approach, placing the sovereign individual as the starting
point. However, as following sections will argue, this is linked to the fact
that in the practice of Shake! self-healing is positioned as a necessary start-
ing point towards collective structural change.

The embodied development of political subjectivities

through spoken word
Spoken word is a form of poetry conceived to be performed, which has
different histories and traditions across continents, many linked to the ex-
pression of countercultures (Gräbner and Casas 2011) and in particular the
experiences of African diaspora communities (Fisher 2003, Endsley 2013).
At Shake! intensive courses, participants have the choice of specialising in
one artistic form after the second day of the course: poetry and spoken word,
film, and most recently also zine-making. The poetry element is also present
at the beginning of the week, as some short moments of free writing and
poetry are allocated for the whole group from day one. These writing breaks
120  New narratives
are key towards developing the structure for the course, and contribute to
the development of participants’ voices. In the first place, they provide a
break from intense political discussions. Second, they provide a space for
reflecting upon these issues, articulating thoughts, and expressing feelings
that these discussions may have triggered. And third, the possibility of read-
ing aloud one’s writing reinforces Shake!’s objective of providing young peo-
ple with a safe platform for sharing, encouraging them to literally speak out
and be heard. Because of this, the Shake! space can be understood as what
Fisher calls a ‘literocracy’, the place where literacy and democracy meet, or
“a space in which each participant ha[s] an opportunity to access both writ-
ten and spoken words while speaking his or her own truth” (2007:4).
Besides these writing and sharing breaks, participants who choose poetry
and spoken word as their art form have further opportunities to focus on
their writing during the latter part of the week, participating in exercises
that serve as inspiration and trigger points for poems. These workshops
usually combine discussion on social and political issues on the one hand,
and poetry writing and performing skills on the other, thus integrating these
two facets of the course: the political and the artistic.

Narratives: owning your story through poetry

Shake! intensive courses consistently touch on the idea of dominant nar-
ratives in society and in the media and the need to challenge these, be they
narratives about race, the economy, immigration, climate change, or other
pressing issues. This is linked to an understanding that “[a]s well as having
an important function for the individual in the process of self-making, the
telling of stories serves a vital social function in communal acts of construct-
ing societies and cultures” (Robson 2012:2). In February 2014 Shake! held an
intensive course under the theme Remembering, Re-imagining, Reparations.
Throughout the week, poetry facilitators Sai and Zena spoke of ‘the battle
for the story’; in other words, the need to own our stories. They highlighted,
for instance, the importance of identifying continuums and patterns in the
stories of young black people, from Ken Saro-Wiwa to Mark Duggan.7 They
asked: how do we interrupt that story, that cycle, so we can take it in a direc-
tion where we take control? How does protest take place? How do we inter-
vene in these narratives? The objective behind this discussion was to create
awareness among participants of how these patterns of events translate to
local stories, and how they, as young engaged people, can interrupt them.
This model was echoed in other workshops as well. For instance, Sai led
a workshop on definitions, which looked at the political weight and hidden
meaning of words and phrases such as ‘slave trade’, as well as alternative
terms for a number of words that perpetuate different forms of oppression.
Being in control of words, Sai argues, changes the story. Finally, during
a poetry workshop on that same course, participants engaged in differ-
ent writing exercises, including one that entailed confronting  a  figure  of
 New narratives  121
authority  from  one’s life through a poem. This exercise, in which neg-
ative past  experiences were confronted, allowed an opportunity for
­performativity, in which young people took ownership of a situation, spoke
up against ­oppression, and rewrote the course of that story.
Polletta argues that “[m]ovements in which the goal is selftransforma-
tion as much as political reform may see personal story-telling as ­activism”
(Polletta 1998:430). Echoing this, writer and community artist Claire
­Robson explains the significance of writing and performing stories in the
following way:

Particularly in marginalized communities, it is important to construct

bodies of artistic work which represent lived experiences so that they
can be made visible and examinable. By using texts as commonplaces for
shared interpretations and discussions, learners can examine their per-
sonal and cultural situations. By creating and performing them, they
may be able to recover experiences lost to insidious trauma and thus
come to understand their situations differently.
(Robson 2012:5)

In youth art and media programmes such as Shake!, often one notes the
“deep level of ownership participants can have of projects they take part in,
and how they make connections with their own personal histories, sense of
identity, and values” (Sobers 2009:193). When I asked Farzana why art is
such a major component of Shake!, she also referred to the (re)framing of
narratives that art allows:

Before we can even champion for justice, we have to be able to say ‘this
is what justice looks like’, and it’s really important for individuals to
engage with that. I think that’s the place when art comes in because art’s
a place where you remove your limitations and your constraints, and
everyday moralities, […] everything is possible. So we can actually re-­
imagine whatever limits have been placed for us, I guess that’s the key.

For Shake! facilitators, art is understood, pratised, and experienced as a

space where one can break free from a dominant discourse, as well as the
tool through which narratives can be reimagined and rewritten. By provid-
ing participants with the space and tools to take ownership over their stories
they are self-empowered, and can rewrite their position in the world, as the
following examples will show.

Developing political subjectivities

At Shake!, participants are encouraged to produce work that is not only a
response to the political and social issues discussed during the course, but
that also reflects and voices their personal feelings and experiences. As a
122  New narratives
result, the majority of poems produced throughout the week are politically
and emotionally charged, as they emerge from intense discussions during
which participants open up to others about personal experiences and ideas.
An example of this form of poetry is Onysha Collins’s Energetic Apathy. In
this piece, the former Shake! participant—who later went on to become film
facilitator for one of the courses—presents the concept of ‘energetic apathy’
as British society’s conscious decision not to address issues of racism and
inequality. The following are extracts from her poem, which I saw Onysha
perform at the Power, Propaganda, Perceptions Shake! course in 2013:

As I watch my pen caress this paper and the thoughts from my brain fly
free line by line, I think about the world and see that regardless of race,
politics, or moral obligation.
There’s a disease that’s permeated into the hearts of humanity.
[…]
Energetic Apathy- the decision to passionately deny the existence of
injustice in any area of society, because the alternative forces you to think
that my energy or apathy determines if someone else sinks or swims.
In conflict man always looks at the what instead of the why, as I pray
I realise it’s what I don’t do that’ll cause others to die, yet no matter how
hard I try there’s always someone who wants to encourage pollution of
the mind. If I speak about the inequality I face because of my colour or
creed, I’m consistently told ‘it’s not a problem, we’re in the twenty first
century.’ Yet time doesn’t evade grown men coming up to me and saying
they’re ready to hang some monkeys.
[…]
Free your mind from Energetic Apathy, and evaluate how the life you
lead can be an inspiration to future generations for positivity.8

In this poem, based on Onysha’s experiences and views on British society,

there is an intention to denounce a specific attitude, as well as to assert her
own views and stand up to certain social and political issues. Onysha not
only expresses her views, but also gives a name to a problem she identifies,
and performs a rejection of ‘energetic apathy’ by the very act of writing
and performing her poem. The poem and its performance are therefore an
illocutionary performative, as Judith Butler would argue, or an instance
in which an action is enacted through uttered words (Butler 1995:198).9
Through the public sharing of this piece, Onysha performs and develops her
political subjectivity.
A second example of work produced by participants during Shake!
courses is a poem by Annie Rockson called My Application. In this piece,
Annie challenges understandings of origin, background, and belonging by
saying she cannot explain where she comes from in a dotted line. The poem
continues to describe her mixed heritage, British and African, and the so-
ciocultural environment she comes from. The poem, full of rich images,
 New narratives  123
makes a turn for the performative when the poet refers to her own place
in society and her attitude towards life. Below is an extract from her piece,
which I have seen Annie perform in the context of Shake! courses, Shake!
showcases, and other public events, such as a conference on migration and
diaspora at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2014:

I’m a prisoner of the human mind and a slave to my emotions

I love and hate at the same time,
but refuse to remain shackled in the bitter taste of resentment built up
inside. From a life too long ago to even remember.
I’m a fighter and defender.10

In this way, Annie is not only expressing her ideas and emotions about her
background and place in society; she is also standing up to a society that
tries to box and simplify identities and negate an important and painful part
of history. Her words, embodied and performed loud and proud, become
performative as they put into action her resistance to being categorised, and
enact the same words she utters: “fighter and defender”.
The poetry sessions during Shake! courses, therefore, provide a space for
reflection and expression, but also, spoken word poetry in this context can
become a performative practice, in which the process of developing and
furthering a political subjectivity is enacted. By voicing out personal ideas
and feelings, the embodied act of spoken word performance fulfils Shake!’s
mission of cultivating young people’s confidence to speak up and to develop
their own political voices. The act of performing these subjectivities in pub-
lic and for others, a powerful learning experience because of its embodied
and relational qualities (Endsley 2013:111), is also the decisive act in which
participants claim their right to a voice in the public sphere and perform
their role as political subjects (Rancière 2010:139). Finally, spoken word po-
etry can also be a medium for building individual and collective identities,
and recording and transmitting oral histories (Fisher 2003).

Embodiment and performativity

The live performance of spoken word poetry can be seen as the embodiment
of a piece; the bringing to life of ideas, feelings, and words. Considering that
the poetry that Shake! participants write and perform acts as performative
statements of their political subjectivities, the embodiment of their poetry,
and the way in which their bodies are used as a channel for communication
also needs to be addressed, since the physical utterance of words is the way
in which participants share their truth. As mentioned earlier, participants
are encouraged to read aloud their poetry every time there is a writing slot
throughout the week. But it is in the latter three days of the course, when
they have chosen which art form they will specialise in, that issues of spoken
word as performance are fully addressed by facilitators (Figure 6.2).
124  New narratives

Figure 6.2  Shake! participant sharing her poetry on the final day of the course
Headspace, Bernie Grant Arts Centre, 2014. Image by the author.

During poetry workshops at Shake!, facilitators dedicate time to work-

ing on performance techniques, so that performers can adequately transmit
and evoke emotions, which aids the delivery of a message. Projecting one’s
voice, for instance, is described by facilitators as releasing the energy of
words from within you when you perform a piece of spoken word. It has
been noted by facilitators that participants often feel shy about sharing their
writing, and this is evident in their body language, from the tone and volume
of their voice to their posture.
In the 2014 February Shake! course, poetry facilitator Zena and guest
music facilitator Marcina focused on developing two specific aspects of spo-
ken word performance: body movement and projection. The body move-
ment techniques included a choreographed performance of a collective
poetry piece, and focused on rhythm, posture, targeted delivery, and visual
aspects of the choreography. Projection, in turn, focused on voice and atti-
tude. Through a series of exercises, such as repeating lines in different tones,
speaking as if addressing different people, walking around, and projecting
words towards a physical target, participants learned how to speak up and
use a confident and loud tone of voice when performing. These aspects of
spoken word performance are not exclusive to Shake!, and are important for
any performer. However, in the context of this course the different perform-
ing techniques, the use of one’s voice, and the embodiment of poetry are
linked to the aim of allowing participants to develop their political subjec-
tivities, as having one’s voice heard becomes a performative act of personal
transformation and political resistance.
 New narratives  125
Spoken word as an ‘emboldening’ medium
Given its focus on self-transformation, on expression, and on young peo-
ple engaging indepth with political issues, Shake!’s work has often been
described by facilitators, participants, and supporters of the programme
as empowering for young people. But Farzana explains how discussions at
Platform—Shake!’s parent organisation—have led to the use of the word
‘emboldening’ instead. She says:

I never felt empowering was right, because you take away autonomy
from the young people who in and of themselves are artists and activ-
ists, and also, how much we as facilitators are taking away […] So I
think saying, ‘we empower’ just didn’t feel right, to establish that kind
of power relationship. […] Shake! is a process of emboldening; young
people have something to say already, and what they go through is
­emboldening, and I think that captures it best.

In an interview with Sai, I asked him about his views on spoken word in
relation to the objectives Shake! wishes to achieve. He said:

I think it’s been really emboldening, and that’s really evident in some
of the young people who’ve gone off from Shake! and actively joined
campaigns and continued their work. So I think it’s been a great space
to talk about issues and then continue to craft poems and spoken word
pieces after Shake! has finished. […] And I think as a medium spoken
word is incredibly immediate cause that’s what we have, voice. […] In
terms of tools it’s super accessible, so pen and paper or just a phone, or
even just a voice. It’s limited tools, and everyone is able to engage with
that and use their own words.

Sai’s thoughts position spoken word as a powerful tool for discussing politi-
cal issues, and also provide valuable insight into the politics of spoken word
as a medium. Issues around immediacy and accessibility are not only impor-
tant logistically, but also politically: in order for art to be a vehicle for young
people to embark upon self-transformation, it needs to be accessible on all
levels. This accessibility and flexibility of the medium was evident during
my observations, as I noticed that many participants wrote down and read
out their poems from their mobile phones. From this, one could argue that
mobile devices allow participants to engage with poetry and spoken word in
new ways that are in line with their everyday modes of communicating and
capturing and sharing data (Endsley 2013:115, boyd 2014,). However, poetry
facilitator Zena noted that the immediacy of writing with a pen on a piece
of paper is disrupted when writing poetry on a phone instead, and hence the
practical benefits of using mobile devices for creating and sharing poetry
might interfere with the creative process. This poses interesting questions
around the aura of certain artistic processes and whether these should be
126  New narratives
compromised or not for the sake of accessibility in radical education and/or
in art activism projects.
During a conversation with Shake! participant, poet and visual artist
Orla Price, she shared with me her views on how spoken word is a particular
experience, which is different from poetry:

[S]poken word […] I think it gives me more of a feeling of power or even

purpose. I think it has more impact, […] ’cause you write poems on a
page, and you might get them published, or you might put them online
or something [and] you’re not seeing any reaction, you’re not feeling any
reaction, and you’re not feeling what it does to yourself. I think a lot of
times with spoken word you can feel the words inside you. It sounds a
bit weird, but yeah!11

Jane from Platform adds that:

[T]here’s something already kind of very dynamic about it as a form.

It’s not a poet reading a poem, that’s a completely different thing. We’re
talking about a performance, and I think that’s very dynamic, I think
it’s very, very empowering to think that you could be that person. And I
think that also, there’s a connotation of authenticity in production with
that. It’s not pretentious, […] it’s something about needing to say some-
thing. There’s a whole set of cultural connotations for spoken word; the
way it’s delivered in the context of race, which is very dynamic and very
liberating.

(Self-) reparations and well-being

Even though many scholars and intellectuals mock the world of self-
help, it is an important realm of self-recovery for the racially colonized
mind.
(hooks 2003:38)

As mentioned earlier, the type of change that Shake! looks to achieve

is ­integral: from what Shake! activists would define as a holistic self-­
transformation process that looks at mind, body, and soul in unity—a key
process, as bell hooks would also argue—to structural change that addresses
different spheres in society. To that end, the process of self-transformation is
approached as an embodied one, which understands the body as a tool for
communication and expression—as discussed, for instance, in relation to
spoken word performance—but as a site of healing and of resistance.
As part of the February 2014 course, Remembering, Re-imagining, Repara-
tions, guest facilitator Esther gave a workshop on reparations. She explained
that reparations knowledge is important not only to imagine social change,
but so we can bring it about. In her workshop she discussed issues such
 New narratives  127
as the incomplete narrative of slavery in the UK, the differences between
identity and nation, and the importance of maintaining or bringing back
the art, culture, and way of life of diaspora groups, with specific reference
to slavery. Esther then explained that we need different types of reparations
as individuals and as a society: self-made, political, relational, economical,
personal. She concluded by asking the group to think about how we can use
art in our reparations work. In this way, her workshop made a connection
between the personal and the structural, arguing that self-transformations
are an important first step in the path towards enacting social change.
Following the principles of self-reparations and self-preservation as im-
portant steps towards social change, Shake! pays attention to well-being,
embodiment, and the body throughout the activities of the course and con-
tinuity activities as well. As mentioned earlier, each day of the course begins
with collective warm-up sessions, which include activities such as games,
trust exercises, yoga, dance, body movement, and meditation. The objec-
tives of these exercises are multiple: trust building, fostering collectivity, and
physical and emotional well-being. But in addition to warm ups, Remember-
ing, Re-imagining, Reparations was the first Shake! intensive course to have
a well-being workshop as part of its offer, in which the group shared and
discussed techniques for coping with stress and enhancing well-being. This
workshop aimed to approach well-being holistically, and issues of physical
well-being, mental health, and spirit were all addressed. Farzana explains
that there was a need for this workshop because during Shake! courses
participants deal with intense topics, work long hours, and feel tired and
drained. Also, the workshop is a response to the situation that many activ-
ists are in, when campaigning affects their overall well-being. Activism can
be a mentally and physically exhausting activity, leading to problems such
as depression and isolation, an issue that was also addressed by interviewees
from other groups featured in this book.
In the case of Shake! in particular, dealing with personal stories and po-
litically charged issues throughout the week has caused many participants
to cry—especially at the end of the first day—or to express they were over-
whelmed by their emotions. In reference to the mental health aspect of the
well-being workshop, Sai argues that under the current capitalist system
there is pressure for young people to conform and fit the norm, and de-
pression and other mental health conditions are highly stigmatised. Having
spaces where young people who have experienced trauma and marginal-
isation can talk about these issues openly and connect the dots between
well-being and how this is influenced in different ways by the world in which
we live is essential. As argued by Sara Ahmed in her discussion of Audre
Lorde: “For those who have to insist they matter to matter, self-care is war-
fare” (Ahmed 2017:239).
The way in which Shake! courses approach and incorporate issues of
well-being, self-preservation, and embodiment is prefigurative, as courses
go beyond having discussions around well-being and actually begin to put
128  New narratives
into action the principles of self-reparation and self-preservation being
discussed. These principles and ideas are enacted in a number of ways,
such as the games, performance techniques, and exercises that foster a
continued focus on the body, both as a means for relating to others and
as a tool for resistance. Audre Lorde once said: “Caring for myself is
not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of politi-
cal warfare” (1988:131). In the context of Shake!, self-preservation as well
as instances of transformation are seen as important parts of a wider
process of social change, and are a product of a decolonial perspective12
that emphasises embodied knowledge and learning, and addresses social
change in a holistic way, from personal healing and self-transformations
to structural change.

The individual vs. the collective in art activist radical

pedagogies
During Shake! courses there is a series of mechanisms and factors that lead
to the creation of feeling of community among participants. First of all,
spending five days with a group of people and sharing thoughts and feelings
in a space that is constructed as safe can allow bonding to happen between
participants and with facilitators as well. The use of embodied exercises and
activities contributes to the generation of trust and making people feel com-
fortable, and the sharing of past experiences, especially around sensitive
subjects such as race, mental health, sexuality, and gender, also fosters inti-
macy and bonding. At the same time, after day two of the week participants
are split into different groups (film; spoken word and poetry; and lately also
zine-making), in which they spend most of the remaining time of the course.
As a result, the dynamic of the group changes, and while the film group
works together towards the same film project, poets attend workshops in
which they mostly work on their own pieces.
In order to foster the sense of collectiveness and teamwork during the
week—which the film group slips into easily due to the nature of film-­
making—poetry facilitators have in some instances encouraged partici-
pants in the poetry group to work on collective poems. During a workshop
in the Shake! course of February 2014, participants chose stanzas from
their individual poems and turned them into two collective ones; one was
on the theme of ‘remembering’ and the other on the theme of ‘reimagin-
ing’. The group practised the performance aspect of these pieces, includ-
ing a choreography and the inclusion of choruses in different languages
­(­I remember/I imagine. Je me souviens/J’imagine. Yo recuerdo/Yo imagino …).
Encouraging participants to resort to their mother tongues or vernaculars
as part of the creative process was linked to Shake! facilitators’ recognition
of the importance of language as identity, as a tool for communication,
and as a tool for resistance (hooks 1994:173). It also suggests an attempt
at creating a collective piece that said something about the group—since
 New narratives  129
it was a diverse group in terms of ethnicity and on that particular course
also in terms of nationality—and also celebrated the individuality of each
participant.
As beautiful as the piece was, and as engaging as it was for me to take
part in that process as a participant-facilitator, there was an evident ten-
sion between the collective and the individual in this joint project, which
brings to mind some questions around the possibilities and limitations
of poetry and spoken word as transformative tools in a collective setting.
Several participants were very eager to work on their own poems, instead
of spending time rehearsing a collective piece. Also, despite the fact that
this collective poem brought together stanzas from everyone’s work, it did
not represent any one participant’s voice in the way that their own, whole
poems did. Part of the message as well as the voice behind each of those
stanzas was lost when it was taken out of context and merged with other
people’s words. This puts into question how effective this exercise was as
an artistic activity and as a form of political expression. If the intention be-
hind the poetry workshops was for people to develop their own voices and
political subjectivities, could the collective, in this case, be disrupting that
process? Poetry and spoken word have proven to be powerful tools for ex-
pression and self-transformation (Fisher 2007). But the fact that, as I have
observed, the collective poetry pieces are rarely participants’ favourite
part of the course, and that these fail to transmit a message that represents
poets’ voices—either their individual voices or a new, collective one—
shows that spoken word, in this context, does not succeed in creating a col-
lective identity, but rather remains as a tool for group work and exploring
different writing techniques.
The individual and collective aspects of Shake! must also be considered in
relation to the outcomes and achievements the course has accomplished so
far. When I asked Farzana what she thought had been the greatest achieve-
ments of Shake!, she stressed the personal transformations that both partic-
ipants and facilitators go through.
But Ollie, a former facilitator for Shake!, offers a different perspective,
which puts into question Shake!’s focus on self-transformation:

There’s a strong emphasis on personal expression, which I think is po-

tentially a double-edged sword […]. So I think people feel personally
empowered, that’s good, and it might be motivating and so on. At the
same time, is there a danger if we are doing stuff which gets people to
focus a lot on their voice and their individual perspectives? […] Is there
a danger that that could cloud out this kind of more collective identity?
And you could see the two working together, […] and we want to be alive
to the humanity of others as individuals, and I think art is good for that,
or can be. I just think that […] that’s something which maybe links in a
way to the fact that there hasn’t been such a kind of, an activist sort of
focus to things, you know.13
130  New narratives
In reference to Annie’s poem My Application, shared earlier in this chapter,
Ollie says:

Annie’s poem for instance […] was really great, right? And I find that
I really like this because there was a political edge to it, I mean, be-
cause she’s talking about the way in which her cultural experiences, and
her cultural history and so on might be effaced by bureaucracy and by
the state. At the same time, […] I’m not sure if as a project we’ve done
enough to draw around the political implications of experiences and
feelings like that, and see how they knit together with other experiences
and feelings other people have and what the implications of that might
be, politically. Maybe it would be different if people were doing stuff
collectively, but I don’t think that people who’ve done film stuff particu-
larly then, sort of [become politically active as a collective].

Ollie’s concerns address the fact that the Shake! model prioritises personal
transformations during the intensive course stage, and does not try to build
a defined collective social movement with a shared collective identity and
set of objectives, unlike the kinds of movements and groups ­analysed in
the first three chapters of this book. Rather, Shake! a­ pproaches ­structural
change by intervening in the spheres of campaigning, academia, and the art
world, through performances, films, and workshops carried out by young
people—sometimes jointly with facilitators as well. These concerns can be
linked to the fact that there are different u­ nderstandings of what activism
is, particularly around the personal/structural change d­ ichotomy. In the fol-
lowing section, I will address this issue in more depth, as I ­rethink activism
and its connections with art through the practice of Shake!

Rethinking (art) activism

We need activism that doesn’t have its parameters defined and set by
western ideology on what is ‘appropriate’ and ‘effective’ activism.
(Shake! Twitter account, 13 September 2014)

With the above statement Shake! establishes the need to not only work on
personal and structural change, but to also address long-standing oppres-
sive dynamics and understandings that are tainted with a limited Eurocen-
tric perspective and that still persist within activist spaces today. Having
looked at how personal transformations are enabled in Shake!, and how the
focus on the individual can be perceived and experienced as conflicting with
the generation of a collective identity, I will now explore how the idea of
activism is understood and practised in this context, examining also how
artistic practice is approached as a tool for change, and focusing on the ten-
sions between aesthetics and politics.
 New narratives  131
Shake! as activism
When I asked Farzana about her thoughts on how Shake! intersects with
activism, she said that it depends on the definition of activism, but that
with Shake! we look at political issues and “we are looking at the political
through the personal too”. In her reflection, Farzana relates activism to
a number of elements, including the fact that Shake! deals with political
issues as a pedagogical project, and the focus on the personal as political.
We could indeed consider the practice of the radical educator as activism in
itself (Trowell 2017), her role being “not to introduce dissensus, but to facili-
tate a participatory (or ‘collaborative’) space, which leads to the emergence
of dissensual experiences that already exist within the social fabric, and
the collaborative production of knowledge from these experiences” (Bell
2017:79). But Farzana also adds that “the other way is that it’s activism
within activism. It’s something that is also challenging the environmental
[activist] sphere, saying ‘well actually, it’s not representative, it’s not di-
verse’” (Figure 6.3).
It is at this level of engagement that the Shake! model intends to become,
once more, a prefigurative force for social change: by actively challenging
the lack of diversity in activist circles—among other spheres—in the UK.
My observations and conversations with facilitators and participants, and
the fact that a large number of participants remain involved with Shake! af-
ter taking part in the intensive courses, suggest that young people of colour
come to Shake! because most of the movements and activist projects in the

Figure 6.3  Drinking tea and sharing readings during the Shake! course Foodfight at
Spotlight, August 2015. Image by the author.
132  New narratives
UK right now do not represent them, and as a result they do not identify
with those spaces. Shake! responds to this by providing a space for build-
ing skills that can challenge the practices of environmental and political
movements, and skills to create other new spaces. By facilitating a space
for political discussion, self-transformations, and the nurturing of political
subjectivities, Shake! acts as a subaltern space and fosters the emergence of
a new ‘subaltern public’ (Fraser 1990) of activists, especially young people of
colour, with an awareness of decolonial thought, issues of power and priv-
ilege, and race, applied to the context of environmental and social justice
activism. In this way, the project approaches issues of structural change by
actively contributing to the transformation of the environmental and politi-
cal activist circles in the UK.
In line with the idea of activism as a broad contextualised practice, and
the principles of self-care and self-reparations discussed in previous sec-
tions, Shake! champions and puts into practice the idea that (art) activism
can be several different things, and that it should not be limited to direct
action and campaigning but also include acts of self-preservation and of
care within our communities—things that are usually overlooked but are
crucial to the resistance of some of the most marginalised people in society.
This has been the subject of many internal conversations among core team
members, in which we also discussed how in the case of young people—and
especially young people of colour—standing up and speaking your truth
through a poem or a film can in itself be an act of activism. We also talked
about the need to reconcile the predominant view of activism as an outward-
looking practice with the idea of self-care. These discussions, during which
I learned to broaden and contextualise my own ideas around activism, also
centred the fact that people of colour and minorities are often neglected and
isolated by the structures and dynamics of mainstream politics and of activ-
ism as well, so they often do their activism within their communities. For a
marginalised community, therefore, daily acts of resistance and survival are
instances of activism.

Expression  / activism
Having established that Shake! frames activism as a broad, contextualised
concept that can—especially in the case of marginalised communities—be
found in individual acts of daily resistance, it is necessary to now explore the
ways in which art can function as a tool for transformation and as a form of
activism in this context. Speaking of the activist aspect of Shake!, Sai says:

The activist element of that is engaging young people with issues, and
the call out we give them is ‘What makes you angry?’ ‘What injustices
are you experiencing and know about?’, and then to respond to those
using art. So that’s where the activism comes in, ’cause it’s a direct re-
sponse to those feelings.
 New narratives  133
When discussing art and activism with Ollie, former Shake! facilitator, he
suggested a different view: “[P]roducing some political art is not it seems […]
a sufficient condition for then becoming politically active, if being politi-
cally active is something different from just producing art.” This reflection
brings up the important question of whether producing so-called ‘political’
art equates to being politically active, or if it is something different.
If we look at the model that Shake! proposes, participants that come to
Shake! are expected to go through a number of different stages: seeing in-
justice, feeling anger/frustration, learning skills, expressing themselves,
doing something about it. If we look at what takes place during the inten-
sive courses, we can see that there are moments for political discussion, ac-
quiring creative skills, producing art, and then sharing this art, acquired
knowledge, and skills at the public showcase and in different contexts in
each individual’s daily life—which may or may not include participation in
broader social movements. But this still poses the following question: are
the last two stages of the model—expression and action— separate things,
or is expression in itself a form of actively addressing an issue?
If we return to the theories on political and critical art explored earlier
in this book, it could be argued that artistic expression of a political mes-
sage does not necessarily amount to art activism, if the artist or work is not
directly involved in a practice for social change (Lippard 1984, Grindon
2010:11). But if we move forward to an understanding of art activism that is
contextualised rather than abstract and attempting to be universal, the polit-
ical expressions that emerge from Shake! are not only commentaries on po-
litical issues or cathartic exercises within a radical pedagogy project. These
artistic works that target a number of issues such as race, colonialism, and
state violence, produced by marginalised young people and part of a process
of developing and strengthening political subjectivities, are then penetrating
the public sphere when they are shared in public events and even online, and
in this way, enact dissensus by interfering with the dominant discourse of
the status quo and inserting marginalised voices with messages of dissent.
If, like Rancière (2010), we understand politics as the redistribution of the
sensible, and following from Benjamin (1970), we look at both the content
of the artwork and also at who takes control over the means of production,
the creative acts of Shake! participants not only express critiques of society,
but also irrupt in the public sphere by taking control over artistic media and
producing their own work which is then shared and distributed. This work
is actively attempting to enact structural change by means of diversifying
artistic practice and challenging dominant narratives. We must also con-
sider, in relation to this, that the lack of affiliation to wider movements that
characterises much of what Shake! does is not due to a disengagement from
politics, but to the aforementioned fact that many movements and activist
spaces in the UK are still exclusionary and do not represent the experiences
of marginalised young people of colour. It is important to also note here that
Shake!’s position in relation to the art world is different to that of groups like
134  New narratives
BP or not BP?. While some art activist groups actively choose to operate
outside of the institutional framework,14 Shake! strategically chooses to be
visible in certain artistic, activist, and academic environments even when
its practice is critical of these spaces, as the presence of young marginalised
voices in these arenas contributes to the legitimisation of these voices.

Art as an instrument / art for art’s sake

When asked about his views on art as activism, Sai replied that when answering
this question, he always looks to Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa,
who used to say that art must provoke change, do something. Sai said he follows
this line of thought, and does not want to do ‘art for art’s sake’. In another inter-
view with former Shake! participant Orla, we discussed how she first began to
draw connections between art and activism. This brought us to a conversation
on art and politics, and also to the idea of ‘political art’. She explained:

I started working on a magazine HeadSpace, which me and my friends

founded, and it was all about art, creative writing. But we were using
those as tools or platforms to tackle the issue of mental health, and
how society sees mental health, so I guess the combination of those two
things made me see that art is more than something in a gallery, and
that it can be very socially engaged and useful.

When I asked Orla about the different artistic media she uses, she responded:

I started spoken word poetry after I graduated from uni, and I also
write short stories, although those aren’t political at all, I just do them
for fun. Yeah, and then I make art, I do illustration and drawing and
all, so paint and stuff.

The way Orla split her work into ‘political’ and ‘not political’ caught my at-
tention, as this is a distinction I have used in the past to refer to my own art-
work and projects, one that is quite common among many artists/activists.
I therefore asked Orla about this distinction, and whether making art that is
political or not is a conscious decision for her. She responded:

Oh, no, and actually in some respect maybe they are political? I don’t
think I’ve ever sat down and like ‘Oh! I’m gonna write something po-
litical that will change shit!’ It’s more like … I guess I went through a
phase of writing these stories about how genocide could happen, and
just messing around with different ways where the conclusion to every
story was a genocide, I don’t know if that’s political.

Orla’s hesitation around what makes a piece of art political or not reveals a
tension between political art as that which is used as an instrument towards
 New narratives  135
change (in Orla’s case, her magazine), and art that may be considered political
because it has a political theme or content. This long-­standing ­debate is very
much present in the work of Shake!, and is related at the same time to a tension
between the personal and the collective, and ­between ­self-­transformations
and structural ones. I asked Orla how she would ­compare Shake! to other
spaces or projects that combine art with activism. She responded:

I think [Shake!] was different because it was a lot about your opinion,
and expressing yourself. Whereas I think, when I volunteered for Am-
nesty we had a specific campaign or a specific goal, that sort of thing.
And if you wanted to do something creative it would be within that,
rather than actually using yourself and your own identity to promote
some type of issue.

Here Orla makes a distinction between art that is produced for the sake of
aiding an already standing campaign, and art that emerges from individ-
ual expression and interests, without being limited by a preset goal and a
framework. This brings up the following question: is artistic practice that is
constrained by (political) objectives still art, or is it at most a ‘creative’ form
of activism as some (e.g. Jelinek 2013) might argue?
When asked if she felt Shake! was a space of activism, Orla said:

Yeah, I think that’s activism. You are empowering people, you are look-
ing for a reaction, it isn’t just mere representation. That’s the way I look
at it. Maybe some people take part and they just want to represent their
feelings. But I think there is a certain reason people want to do that,
and that you are looking for something, some type of change, and that’s
activism.

Here, Orla interprets activism as a matter of intention and agency, defining

it as someone’s intention to produce change. But she also suggests there is
an element of empowering others involved, and a quest for a reaction. She
then adds:

I think when it’s contained within the Shake! space, it’s sort of, you can
look at it more as art. But I think once we start bringing that into the
world, and we start engaging other people and noticing what they think,
then it becomes more activism.

Orla’s ideas here make a turn for the external, as she makes a distinction
between the internal events of Shake! as art, and the engagement, through
art, of other people outside of Shake! as instances of activism. The personal/
collective—in this case also internal/external—dichotomy is once again
present, as it is here suggested that art is only activism when it engages other
people.
136  New narratives
Challenging narratives, redistributing the sensible
Explaining the composition and claims of contemporary social movements,
Melucci argues that the dispossessed are those who do not have access to
jobs, resources, or basic work conditions, but also those who do not possess a
political voice (Melucci 1996). Already a decade ago, Della Porta and ­Diani
added, borrowing from Touraine, that we are living in a “programmed soci-
ety”, and that the struggle of the dispossessed is not over means of produc-
tion, but over the control of information (Della Porta and Diani 2007:54).
Although the plurality of contemporary struggles across the world in a time
of austerity, climate change, and social unrest cannot be reduced to a fight
over the control of information, the idea of the dispossessed as those who
struggle for their voices to be heard in the public sphere and in the physical
public spaces where it is enacted, and who fight for control over informa-
tion and narratives, resonates with the creative actions put forward by the
groups discussed in this book, who employ artistic means in order to irrupt
into the public sphere and challenge the status quo. Both collective, organ-
ised direct actions and individual creative acts of subversion can generate
an interruption in mainstream discourse and permit a redistribution of the
sensible (Rancière 2010:139) that gives space to the oppositional voices of a
counterpublic.
The different approaches to activism that art activist groups embrace de-
pend on the particular objectives of each group, but also on the particular
context of a practice. The case of Shake! specifically serves to show that the
act of dissensus takes a different form and has different political implica-
tions according to who is the one breaking the dominant discourse. While
the struggle over information and control over narratives might define all of
the groups examined in this book, when young people of colour disrupt the
consensus there is a redistribution of the sensible that is based around who
gets to occupy and speak on certain platforms, in addition to the content of
the new narratives put forward.

Conclusion
My role in Shake! as a facilitator and researcher, and the conversations
I have had with other facilitators and participants, have allowed me to iden-
tify the key elements that define what Shake! does, and how certain aspects
of the Shake! model are sometimes in tension with one another, allowing
fluid experiences and open-ended ideas on what both art and activism are.
Shake! is a project that intends to achieve personal and structural change,
providing participants with a space for self-transformation, and producing
content and instances of knowledge exchange that aim at enacting changes
in multiple spheres of society beyond the two yearly intensive courses. The
type of creative activity that takes place during Shake!, and the ways in
which it is framed by different participants and facilitators, inevitably leads
 New narratives  137
us to rethink what art activism is, and what it is that makes a politically
charged artistic piece ‘count’ as a political act. Yet the reflections of facili-
tators and participants of Shake! and the rhetoric built around the project
present a number of contradictions and tensions around this matter.
In the first place, Shake!’s dual focus on expression and self-­transformation
as individual instances of change, and on intervening in activist, creative,
and political spaces as forms of structural change, creates an internal/­
external dichotomy. If the Shake! model is made up of two facets, then is
the self-transformation one a prelude into the ‘real’ activism—the structural
change—or are both facets two balanced sides of one ‘activist coin’? While
Shake! facilitators advocate the importance of instances of self-­expression,
they also defend a position of art as an instrument, not ‘art for art’s sake’.
But if they indeed implemented an instrumentalist approach to art making,
wouldn’t this limit the kind of art that young people can do as part of their
process of self-transformation? Does this art need to be tied to a political
cause in order to be activism, or can it be activism because of the role it has
in developing a young person’s political subjectivity? Is the activist nature of
an artwork found in the content of the piece, the context of its production,
or the effect it has as an agent of social change? Although these questions
are unlikely to have definite answers, I suggest that beyond certain contra-
dictions that can be found in the rhetoric built around Shake’s practice, the
project’s prefigurative redefining of both art and activism can help us begin
to form some responses.
If we look at the processes behind Shake! and the dynamics that take place
during Shake! courses, we can see that the instances of personal transfor-
mation that the project looks to facilitate take place both through perform-
ative acts of creativity, which for the most part take the form of embodied
performances of poetry and spoken word, and through group exercises and
activities. By dedicating time to forming and expressing feelings and ideas
about social and political issues that affect them, participants are able to
develop political subjectivities that are later expressed and performed in the
public sphere, making their voices heard in a way that, as many participants
have expressed, they has never been heard before. In addition to this, I
­argue that in the intersection between artistic training and the participants’
process of developing political subjectivities, we can identify instances of
prefiguration, which are particularly interesting for the study of art activ-
ism. The enactment of prefigurative politics in this context is the product
of three main elements. In the first place, a space is provided that puts into
practice values such as equality, horizontality, dialogical learning, deco-
lonial perspectives on art and on healing, and the value of young people’s
voices. Second, throughout the week there is an implicit redefinition of what
artistic practice is, what it can do, and who is entitled to engage in artis-
tic production—Shake! advocates a democratisation of the arts, and rein-
forces young people and people of colour’s right to reclaim creative practice
and creative spaces. And third, Shake! places emphasis on  the body  as a 
138  New narratives
means for artistic expression, as a tool for resistance, and as a way of relat-
ing to others.
These conditions make up a space in which the discussions around politics,
the sharing of opinions, and the engagement with social and political issues
on both a personal and a collective level are part of the artistic process, thus
reconfiguring participants’ relationship to both politics and artistic prac-
tice. The merging of these two facets brings into action a mode of creative
expression that is equally rooted in three principles: articulating thoughts
about an issue, artistic expression, and embodied resistance. ­Putting this
model into practice means that Shake! not only aims to create social change
through the arts, but actually enacts this change in its processes, producing
politically charged work, but also enacting a radical model for aesthetic-
political practice. As a result, Shake! is also an example of prefigurative rad-
ical education practice, based on a horizontal (­Maeckelbergh 2012) form
of organisation, a commitment to dialogical learning (Freire 1970), and a
recognition of art and embodied knowledge as legitimate sources that can
help us understand the world around us and the experiences of others, as
well as enact social change.
This links with the final point of this chapter, which is the rethinking
of activism and specifically of art activism as a path for social change.
Shake!’s practice is based on the idea that personal acts of resistance can be
activism, and when these take the form of creative work that communicates
personal experiences, producing and sharing this work can contribute to
structural changes. This stems from the fact that activism at Shake! is not
only about the content of the art produced, but also about the importance
of young voices and voices of people of colour being heard in the public
sphere. By providing spaces and opportunities for performing, being in-
volved in campaigns, and sharing work, Shake! brings together personal
and structural change. In addition to this, the work of Shake! and the nar-
rative that has generated around the project lead to an understanding of
activism—and art activism in this case—that is not only about content
and/or process, but is also contextual. The same art piece or the same con-
tent could be activism or not depending on factors such as who is speaking,
when, where and what for, and what the processes are behind that piece. In
many cases, it is not just about a poem that denounces a particular social
issue, but it is also about a young marginalised person performing that
poem in public—Shake! participants like Annie, Onysha, and Orla, for
instance, have performed at a variety of artistic, academic, and activist
events. This idea of context also applies to other practices presented in this
book, as performances by Art Not Oil groups, for instance, would not have
the same impact if they did not take place at the museums they are target-
ing, or if the performances were commissioned.
In presenting the case of Shake!, I have attempted to provide an insight
into how politically motivated artistic practice in a pedagogic context can
go beyond communicating a political message in artistic form, and actually
 New narratives  139
enact the ideas and values advocated in its very processes and dynamics.
Looking at art activism in different contexts, such as in education, serves
to show how aesthetic-political practices can take different forms and be
experienced and understood differently according to context, social factors,
and the motivations and backgrounds of those involved.

Notes
1 In this chapter, I will focus on the art-activism interactions that take place at
Shake! and not as much on the pedagogical aspect, as this focus will allow reflec-
tions that can contribute to the core themes and questions of this book.
2 Jane Trowell, personal interview (2014).
3 Shake! focuses on race and prioritises the voices of young people of colour. How-
ever, the course is open to all young people and the programme encourages ap-
plications from people who face oppression due to other issues such as gender,
disability, sexual orientation, and class.
4 Sai Murray, personal interview (2014).
5 Farzana Khan, personal interview (2014).
6 Film available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=y32MHdLlNsE.
7 Ken Saro-Wiwa was an Ogoni activist and writer who was killed by the Nigerian
military in 1995 because of his activism against Shell. Mark Duggan was an
unarmed black man killed by a police officer in London in 2011.
8 Poem acquired directly from the author, 2014.
9 For more on performativity see Chapter 3.
10 Poem featured in Birthday Magazine: http://birthdaymagazine.co.uk/2013/10/23/
over-to-you-annie-rocksons-my-application/.
11 Orla Price, personal interview (2014).
12 For more on decolonial epistemologies see, for instance, Escobar and Mignolo’s
Globalization and the Decolonial Option (2010).
13 Ollie, personal interview (2013). Ollie is a pseudonym.
14 See Chapter 7 of this book.

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7 Breaking the mould
Art activism and art institutions

Introduction
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o argues that “[t]he struggle between the arts and the state
can best be seen in performance in general and in the battle over perfor-
mance space in particular” (Ngũgĩ 1997:11). He adds that in a performance
the struggle over space is concerned with “its definition, delimitation, and
regulation” (Ngũgĩ 1997:12).
Previous chapters in this book have addressed the way that art activists
plan performance actions, facilitate participation, and allow instances for
personal and collective transformation. They also addressed public at pub-
lic space and the public sphere in practices that take place in the streets and
that look to engage with, and, on occassions, transform the public space,
as well as those that aim at having their voices heard in the public realm.
This chapter will return to the performance actions of the anti-oil sponsor-
ship campaign groups of the Art Not Oil coalition in order to examine the
relationship between these groups and the institutions they target. It will
return to issues of space, look at site specificity and institutional critique,
and follow the growth and development of the Art Not Oil campaign from
a focus on oil sponsorship and environmental issues to a wider stance that
includes other instances of critique, and that aligns these groups with an in-
ternational museum liberation movement. Before this, the idea of autonomy
from cultural institutions will be discussed. By looking at and problematis-
ing ideas of site specificity, autonomy, critique, and the public sphere, this
chapter will explore the specificities of the relationship between these con-
temporary art activist practices and major cultural institutions.

The search for autonomy: positioning art activist groups

Gavin Grindon (2010) argues that art produced by activists cannot really
exist in the context of art institutions because institutions do not want to
take risks, and will prefer art that has a political edge to it, but not art that
is radically transgressive. In reality, in many cases art activists actually
choose to remain outside of institutional frameworks, and an understanding
142  Breaking the mould
of this rejection can be helped by considering the characteristics of contempo-
rary UK-based activist movements outlined and explored in previous chap-
ters. In the first place, for many activists it would be an ethical problem to work
with or for institutions that have hierarchical structures, corporate sponsors,
and who have the power to censor whatever art they do not find appropriate—
or that their sponsors do not find appropriate. The neoliberalisation of the art
world (Jelinek 2013) and museums’ increasing adherence to “corporate mod-
els of activity” (Stallabrass 2004:14) is something that many artists and activ-
ists alike are aware of, and sometimes actively choose to reject. In the second
place, because art activism is conceived by practitioners as a tool for direct ac-
tion and community building in addition to reflection and public engagement,
remaining within the framework of the institution and the l­ imited sphere of
the art world would hinder these practices from fulfilling their full ideals and
potential (Holmes 2004), as art in institutional contexts is often “disconnected
from actual political processes” (Stallabrass 2004:20). As Mouffe argues, for
art to achieve social change we need to widen “the field of artistic intervention,
by intervening directly in a multiplicity of s­ ocial spaces in order to oppose the
program of total social mobilization of capitalism” (Mouffe 2007:1).
Holmes (2010) explains the need for autonomy1 in transgressive art
through the analogy of activism in the museum as a game: ‘Liar’s Poker’.
In Liar’s Poker the artist claims to have the highest card, which is the ace of
politics. But she is usually bluffing. Sometimes the artist will pretend that
she is bluffing—for instance, “to pretend that you are only pretending to oc-
cupy the museum”—up to the point when she plays the card. Then she with-
draws her winnings, or gets kicked out of the museum. Holmes calls this
the ‘frame of hypocrisy’, which is to say that within the institutional frame-
work political issues are not dealt with; they are only represented (Holmes
2010:19). Similarly, Grindon (2010) argues that this kind of art

might mimic the practices or raise the issues of activism, but it does so
in a context without consequence. One can be as subversive and ques-
tioning of social relations as one wishes in a gallery […] But doing so
within actual social relations has greater risks, which many artists and
institutions are less willing to take. Much that is labelled art activism is
not, in fact, particularly active when it comes to changing society.
(Grindon 2010:11)

Stallabrass offers similar thoughts in his take on politicised work at doc-

umenta, a major art exhibition that takes place every 5 years in the city of
Kassel, when he argues that “as long as such work remains within conven-
tional art-world structures, such critiques contain self-evident contradic-
tions that weaken their likely power” (Stallabrass 2004:188).
In response to this, Holmes suggests that the adequate reaction to the
state of the art world is to exit it and move into “marginal realms of opposi-
tion” (Holmes 2004:551). By this, he means the space that political activism
 Breaking the mould  143
offers; a space without the safety net of art institutions, away from the cor-
porate sponsors, impact evaluations, and media partners, and embedded
in actual social practice that actively works against the system and towards
a better reality. Art activism is the only ‘real art’—if we employ an under-
standing of art as a transgressive and transformative experience—because
the sphere of political activism provides a free space for thinking and imag-
ining a better world.
An example of art abandoning the institution completely and inserting
itself in other spheres in order to effect change was P A N D E M I C, a
multimedia DiY anti-capitalist art festival that first took place in Sheffield
in 2011, and later moved on to other cities in the UK. It was inspired by the
ideas and work of the Situationist International, and stood against the al-
ienation of the subject under a capitalist society. I first heard about P A N D
E M I C through a friend, and participated by contributing artwork to the
second and third editions of the festival: Leeds in April 2013 and Derby in
October the same year.
From a 2012 P A N D E M I C zine, which includes artwork and writing
by different contributors, comes the following:

The purpose of P A N D E M I C is to inspire as many people as possi-

ble, to involve people who are not just the usual already “converted” art
educated types. […] P A N D E M I C has evolved in direct opposition to
the prescribed and elitist, market-driven nature of the artworld, and the
government funded stuff which is only commissioned because it ticks
agenda boxes. P A N D E M I C exists with no money spent or earned
at all.
P A N D E M I C is in direct opposition to the artworld and art
­market - this world is boring and dead - it consists of a series of ­cliquey
­institutionalised in-jokes, and is fundamentally controlled by rich
­buyers and investors.

This zine feature/manifesto put forward by the collective, situates the groups’
practice as oppositional to the art world and proposes an alternative mode
of producing, showcasing, and experiencing art that does not involve mone-
tary transactions of any sort, thus separating itself from government-funded
and third sector cultural organisations as well.
P A N D E M I C events brought people together in order to produce,
share, and experience art in a non-commodified manner and in a non-­
institutional framework, attempting to prefiguratively build an alternative
for artistic experiences. There was no selection process for participants and
the festival actively included and showcased artists with different kinds of
ability. The exhibition in Derby, for instance, included work by artists with
learning disabilities and mental health conditions. Furthermore, the polit-
icised nature of the event turned the creative act—and the consumption/
experience of art—into a political act, but a self-contained one. Instead of
144  Breaking the mould
targeting specific institutions in society, be it cultural ones, political ones,
or the media, P A N D E M I C built an alternative space that used art as a
tool for talking about politics, engaging with social issues, bringing people
together, and rethinking how art could function in society in an inclusive,
horizontal, and non-commodified manner.
But when thinking of the positionality of art activist groups in relation to
art institutions, it is paramount to consider that often it is difficult to escape
the art world all together, as oppositional practices can in fact be considered
part of that ecosystem. As Sholette argues:

Even those artists who claim to care nothing about the “art world”
in New York, London, Berlin, and so forth, or those artists who pro-
duce “community-based” projects and installations in small cities and
towns, or those who operate collectively at the outermost spatial and
geographical regions of the market, still inadvertently play a role within
this world.
(Sholette 2011:123)2

Furthermore, more often than not artists as well as grassroots activists

collaborate with and/or receive funding from NGOs and public agencies,
as well as sometimes from private organisations. In some instances groups
might collaborate with the same organisations they are challenging in their
work (Kester 2011:125), as in the case of critical work commissioned by mu-
seums.3 While a study of art activism need not centre on the art world, as
I have argued in the introduction to this book, considering how different
activist groups stand in relation to its institutions is useful in order to under-
stand the power dynamics in place between grassroots and institutional ini-
tiatives and how art activism practices might differ from institutional ones.
Speaking of Occupy in the US, for instance, McKee states that “artists
who engaged with Occupy undertook an exodus or desertion from the art
system, on the one hand, while taking that system itself as a target of ac-
tion and leveraging on the other” (McKee 2016:25). He adds that “Occupy
and its afterlives would be unthinkable without a certain proximity to and
entwinement with the art system and its attendant tensions and contradic-
tions” (McKee 2016:32). This is due to the fact that the movement often en-
gaged with the arts by adopting art as a language and as a resource, and by
making use of cultural venues as sites of protest and doing politics. This was
the case, for instance, for Occupy Museums, a collective that emerged from
Occupy Wall Street and “calls out economic and social injustice propagated
by institutions of art and culture”.4
The groups and practices discussed in this book range from those that
completely reject the framework of cultural institutions and operate outside
of it to those that challenge them while keeping a foot in, and those that on
occasion work together with institutions in an attempt to transform them.
What they all have in common, however, is the commitment to social and
 Breaking the mould  145
political issues that are at the root of their practice. Their work mostly orig-
inates from social movements, grassroots spaces, and political organising
rather than in the frame of the institution. In this sense, while sometimes
maintaining connections to the art world, these groups aim to preserve a
level of autonomy by framing their work outside of institutional frames and
criteria.

Site specificity
Art Not Oil is a coalition of groups that stand against oil sponsorship of the
arts and for a fossil fuel-free culture. While the coalition is diverse, includ-
ing grassroots groups, NGOs, artists, and different forms of campaigning
activity, the coalition includes several groups such as Liberate Tate, Shell
Out Sounds, and BP or not BP? whose main activity takes the form of per-
formance actions at the institutions whose sponsorship deals they are tar-
geting. Because of this, and regardless of the fact that these performance
actions are not commissioned by art institutions, it is useful to look at them
from the perspective of site specificity, as this will allow an interrogation of
the relationship between performance action and site, in terms of aesthetics,
processes, and politics.
Site-specific art can be understood as art that is created for a specific lo-
cation, and responds to the particularities of that space (Kwon 2002). Kwon
argues that in contemporary site-specific art there can be multiple layers of
sites, from the physical space of an artwork to the art world that frames it,
to specific social, political, and economic issues or sites the work addresses.
Sites can be understood as (inter)textual as well as spatial (Kwon 1997:95),
and indeed the museum as a site can be described as “the union of physical
place, including museum buildings, objects, and exhibits, with intangible
or virtual ‘places’ that create a multi-dimensional environment through the
connection of people with objects and memory” (Leach 2007:200).
As site-specific, performance actions by Art Not Oil groups adapt to
and respond to the physical characteristics of a space. ‘Recces’ at the early
stages of actions are common—see, for instance, the process behind the
BP ­Vikings action in Chapter 2—and actions are always planned keep-
ing in mind the specificities of the site. Art collective Liberate Tate’s 2015
performance Time Piece,5 for instance, took over the Turbine Hall at Tate
­Modern for twenty-four hours, beginning at high tide on 13 June and end-
ing at high tide the following day. During this time performers used willow
charcoal to write down phrases about art, activism, and climate change on
the Hall’s sloping concrete floor, beginning at the bottom end of the slope
and making their way up, as a tide, towards the top end. The performance
was envisioned specifically for this location, as the floor of the Turbine Hall
not only provided a suitable surface for writing, but also a striking visual
metaphor for a rising wave of resistance (Figure 7.1). Similarly, BP or not
BP? performances often take place in the vast, bright Great Court at the
146  Breaking the mould

Figure 7.1  Liberate Tate performing Time Piece at Tate Modern, London, 13 June
2015. Image by the author.

British Museum. This choice of performance space—which is due to several

­factors including accessibility, risk, mobility, and reaching a­ udiences—has
resulted in recurring tropes in BP or not BP? performances, such as the
use of the double staircase in the Great Court for a dramatic entrance, or
the ceremonial processions around the round Reading Room (a colossal
rotunda at the centre of the Court). Furthermore, several BP or not BP?
performance actions seek to include the various BP logos that are found
on banners and walls of the museum as central visual elements. This on
occasion determines not only the angles for photos and videos, but also the
scripts of performances
Another factor that influences how a group will choose to plan their ac-
tions is the type of artistic activity that takes place at the cultural institution
they are targeting. In all cases, be it theatre, visual arts, or music, the art
forms that are found at institutions targeted by Art Not Oil groups have
served as inspiration to activists planning performance actions against oil
sponsorship. Such was the case for Liberate Tate’s 2011 performance ­Human
Cost, which featured two veiled figures pouring an oil-like substance on a
naked man lying on the floor of the Tate Britain gallery, and marked the
first anniversary of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (Liberate Tate
2012:138). This performance, which used the naked human body as a focus
point, took inspiration in the gallery, as it responded to the sculptural dis-
play Single Form: The Body in Sculpture from Rodin to Hepworth, which was
sponsored by BP. Similarly, Shell Out Sounds’ Oil in the Water performance
 Breaking the mould  147
action at the Royal Festival Hall described in earlier chapters included a
verse sung in Portuguese, which was a tribute to the São Paulo Symphony
Orchestra performing at the hall on that evening.
In addition to being an aesthetic choice, the decision to respond to the
content and form of exhibitions can be seen as a strategic choice aimed at
avoiding confrontation with security forces and the police, considering the
power of art as a form of protest that generates confusion and is hard to
define and pin down (BAVO 2008:114), as well as hard to repress or control
(Graeber 2007). Danny Nemu from Shell Out Sounds explains that sing-
ing “gets you into places, you can do it with quite a small group of people
and it’s very hard for the police [to deal with]”.6 On the other hand, some-
times activists strive to make evident the differences between their kind of
grassroots, participatory, DiY political forms of art, and the often-elitist
art of large cultural institutions. In his formal analysis of the Occupy Wall
Street camp, McKee compares the horizontality of activists’ signs displayed
on the ground with the symbolic verticality of the Wall Street skyscrapers
(2016:105). A similar comparison can be made of the grassroots DiY aes-
thetics of BP or not BP? against the grandiose imperial walls of the British
Museum.
The response to the art forms that inhabit cultural institutions is a second
element that allows us to look at the performance actions of Art Not Oil
as site-specific work. But site-specific art that is at the same time participa-
tory also engages, on most occasions, with the community of that space. In
her work on socially engaged and applied performance, Shaughnessy ar-
gues that in most site-specific applied performances such as interventions
in neighbourhood buildings, in offender institutions, or in health facilities,
practitioners engage with participants that have a daily, emotional, and
sometimes long-term connection to a space (Shaughnessy 2012:97). Speak-
ing of site-specific dialogical projects, Kester argues that “[t]he particular
constellation of forces in place at a given site, brought into conjunction with
the consciousness and predisposition of participants, are generative in ways
that exceed both the conditions of site and the subjectivity of individual
actors” (2011:37). But how well do the performance actions of Art Not Oil
fit within a framework of site specificity, considering the particularities that
differentiate their aesthetic-political practice from institutionalised art?
In the case of anti-oil sponsorship interventions, participants in perfor-
mances include both museum-goers who have varying degrees of involve-
ment with the institution—from tourists to museum members—and activists
whose motivation lies in an environmental cause and a set of campaign ob-
jectives. Several Art Not Oil groups often resort to a narrative around the
relationship of oil companies to museums that relies on the emotional con-
nection of the London public to the city’s cultural institutions. The use of
phrases such as ‘Let’s kick BP out of our beloved cultural institutions’ in fly-
ers and petitions aims to appeal to people’s emotional attachment to certain
organisations, hoping they will support these actions, and/or feel compelled
148  Breaking the mould
to act themselves. But in these instances the objective of performances is
still not to transform a community’s relationship to a space, but rather, to
appeal to the public’s existing sentimental connection as a strategic way of
gaining support for a cause. Site specificity in this sense is determined by the
focus on the internal politics of the institution (the site) and the environmen-
tal damage caused by its sponsor(s), instead of the effect it has on the public
that is built around that cultural organisation.
At the same time, however, there is arguably another community that is
built around cultural institutions, which is composed by its workers. There-
fore, it is important to consider the ways in which gallery and museum staff
are intentionally and unintentionally affected by these interventionist per-
formance actions, whether or not they become involved in them. While dur-
ing my observant participation I have noted many occasions on which these
performances have caused confrontational encounters with security staff
at museums, I have also observed and experienced complicit support from
staff, as was the case of front desk workers at Southbank Centre quietly
humming along Shell Out Sounds’ songs and directing discreet smiles at
singers. When staff relate to the political issues that these groups bring up
in their actions, these performances act as a public statement on ideas they
have but can rarely voice themselves due to their roles in these institutions.
These actions therefore have the potential to alter staff’s relationship to their
work environment, by the mere fact of voicing and exploring questions that
relate to the ethics of the institution in which they work, and on occasion,
generating or furthering discussions on these issues among staff themselves.
The effect that these performances have on staff, however, can also some-
times be problematic, as a review of one of Liberate Tate’s 2015 actions
highlights. Referring to cleaning staff clearing up the fake bills thrown to
the ground by performers during The Reveal, a reviewer says: “One won-
ders about the effects of the campaign when it’s low-level museum staff who
have to deal with the messy realities.”7 Indeed, the tension between wanting
to generate an imposition to institutions but not wanting to inconvenience
cleaning and maintenance staff—who are often the most vulnerable em-
ployees in the institution in terms of pay and contracts—is present in the
planning of these groups.
The discreet agreement and support from staff in some London cultural
institutions has actually become extended and noticeably more open since
late 2014, when Art Not Oil and the Public and Commercial Services Un-
ion (PCS) began to support each other’s campaigns, drawing attention to
the links between the ethical concerns surrounding corporate sponsorship
and the move towards privatisation of gallery and museum staff, particu-
larly in the case of the National Gallery.8 Performances by Art Not Oil and
BP or not BP? specifically and PCS representatives’ speeches alike began
to draw the connections between different contentious processes and deals
in cultural institutions. Indeed, a survey conducted with British Museum
staff, many of which are represented by the PCS, revealed that 62 per cent
 Breaking the mould  149
of members thought oil sponsorship of the museum was not ethical.9 Both
movements began bridging issues under an anti-neoliberalism discourse
and a desire for change in the cultural sector as a step towards wider social
and political change (Serafini 2017). This, as I will argue later, has been the
result of an evolution of the campaign from a specific target that was fossil
fuel companies, towards broader issues of environmental and social justice.

Critiquing the institution

Site-specific art established itself as a genre around the late 1960s to early
1970s. In its beginnings, the “site” in question was initially a physical lo-
cation, composed of the material aspects of the said space. But soon af-
ter came forms of conceptual art, feminist art, and institutional critique
that, as argued earlier, “conceived the site not only in physical and spatial
terms but as a cultural framework defined by the institutions of art” (Kwon
1997:87–88). Site specificity then has come to mean to “decode and/or recode
the institutional conventions so as to expose their hidden yet motivated op-
erations”, and their “relationship to broader socioeconomic and political
processes of the day” (Kwon 1997:88). Site specificity is therefore, from this
perspective, akin to institutional critique, and increasingly falls into social
critique more broadly.
Emerging in the 1960s, institutional critique is an artistic practice and
genre that examines, critiques, and exposes the structures and politics of
galleries, museums, and other art institutions, as well as reflecting on the
role and condition of art itself (Alberro and Stimson 2011). Exponents of
institutional critique including Andrea Fraser and Hans Haacke have ex-
amined through their work such issues as the display of art in museums,
the role of museums as public institutions, and the politics of curatorial
practice. Institutional critique has been broadly divided into two stages. In
the first stage emerging in the 1960s, artists “examined the conditioning of
their own activity by the ideological and economic frames of the museum,
with the goal of breaking out” (Holmes 2009:55). This strand was linked to
the anti-institutional politics of the time. The second stage, starting in the
1980s, “pursued the systematic exploration of museological representation,
examining its links to economic power and its epistemological roots in a
colonial science that treats the other like an object to be shown in a vitrine”.
This stage adopted a “subjectivizing turn, unimaginable without the influ-
ence of feminism and postcolonial historiography” (Holmes 2009:57).
As critics of BP’s and other oil companies’ sponsorship of the arts, Art
Not Oil groups are also critical of the institutions that hold sponsorship
deals with companies from this industry. But these groups come from an
environmental background, and their main stance is against the oil indus-
try and its human and environmental impact. Is it useful then to look at
these performances as instances of institutional critique, or are these ac-
tions something else, considering their position in relation to institutions
150  Breaking the mould
and to wider social movements? In order to answer this question, it might be
useful to trace the evolution of Art Not Oil and the groups it brings together
in terms of their stance on issues of cultural policy and institutional politics,
to see what kinds of critique these performances give place to.
At the time when I began conducting research on these issues in 2013,
none of the Art Not Oil groups, despite the clear opposition to elements of
institutional culture such as what is described as unethical sponsors, and a
conscious preference for dynamics of art making that are open, collabora-
tive, and inclusive, claimed to have a transformation of arts institutions and
of the cultural sphere as their primary objective. I asked Greg from environ-
mental choir Shell Out Sounds about his thoughts on cultural institutions,
and whether he thought the work of Shell Out Sounds was in any way con-
testing the structures of the art world. He said:

In terms of the institutions and allowing people to think about them in

a different way, I think it’s a question of whether what you do is a way
of saying ‘do we need this institution at all?’ or, does it just mean to
fundamentally reconsider, you know; can we keep the good parts? Can
we keep the building and reorganise the structure? If there’s a board at
the Southbank that isn’t made out of bankers, property developers, en-
trepreneurs, if you just replaced those people with people who are seen
as more positive, would that be OK? Or do you need to fundamentally
rethink it? But that starts to diverge on this other anarchist critique of
cultural institutions, which I’m not afraid of.10

Greg’s position, which is shared by many activists I have encountered, is

that of acknowledging the problems with cultural institutions, but not want-
ing to distract focus from the environmental cause. This choice is partly due
to the fact that not all activists any one group agree on their views on insti-
tutions. Some critiques are more radical than others, even when it comes to
the issue of sponsorship itself. In reference to this, Greg adds:

Well there’s something about groups, isn’t it? There’s probably some-
thing to be said for a lot needing to agree on a programme of …
­statements of any kind really. […] It might be nice to think that we were
all passionately committed to a complete re-ordering or re-structuring
of society, including cultural institutions.

But in addition to the difficulty of getting a diverse group of people to col-

lectively agree on other issues beyond the environmental objective that
brings them all together, the lack of a stronger, explicit critique of other
aspects of cultural institutions was—and to an extent, still is—linked to a
concern around antagonising audiences, considering that the direct pub-
lic (and target) for these interventions is indeed the public that attends and
works at cultural institutions.11 As mentioned earlier, Art Not Oil groups
 Breaking the mould  151
have for years reproduced a narrative that positions cultural institutions as
beloved pristine organisations, which are being tarnished by oil companies
and which need to be saved or ‘liberated’. Even though these groups target
institutions directly, a more explicit and confrontational critique of insti-
tutional practices would mean a change in narrative from oil companies
being the ‘bad guys’ to this role passing on to arts organisations, and might
make the general public and professionals in the cultural sector more hesi-
tant about supporting the cause.
Shifting focus completely to the institution instead of the sponsor opens
up other questions related to the way the institution works. Speaking of the
tensions between campaigns that are ‘audience-friendly’ and a revolution-
ary rethinking of art, art activist John Jordan offers the following views:

I’m totally against the kind of institutionalisation of the art world, and
the Disneyfication of culture, and the whole elite bourgeois culture that
the Tate represents. And you know, in a way … of course you’re not
gonna win a campaign by saying you’re against the Tate, and against
BP, and against everyone. But I think you can be a bit more subtle and
careful […] because for me, as a revolutionary artist, I think the notion
of art is really problematic. I think we need to redefine art, expand the
concept of art … something that’s linked to everyday life, that’s funda-
mentally never separate from everyday life, and […] the idea of the artist
as a monopoly of creativity I think is an incredibly destructive thing.12

In this way, Jordan argues for the need to bring together the direct action
aspect of protests against oil sponsorship with a prefigurative challenge to
the art institution, placing emphasis on the processes of art activist prac-
tices and the way in which actors position themselves in relation to the
institutionalised art world. It is not enough then to engage in aesthetic-­
political practice that targets oil companies, it is also necessary, as argued
in Chapter 3, to do this in a way that puts forward certain values and ideas
around the role of art in society; namely the idea that art can be a demo-
cratic tool for revolutionary change. While many of these groups actively
seek a democratisation of art through the processes that guide their prac-
tice, the narratives around their work, which are focused on fossil fuels, can
sometimes contradict this, if they fail to acknowledge how other aspects of
cultural institutions beyond oil sponsorship are exploitative, undemocratic,
elitist, and/or unsustainable.
But while it remains the case that the Art Not Oil campaign still concen-
trates on oil sponsorship, in the last few years some groups like BP or not
BP? have begun expanding their scope, and including a critique of other as-
pects of institutional practice as part of their overall narrative and as part of
their performance actions. Ngũgĩ speaks of the memories that performance
spaces carry, referring in his study to the colonial history of the National
Theatre in Kenya. Indeed “site-specific art can lead to the unearthing of
152  Breaking the mould
repressed histories, provide support for greater visibility of marginalized
groups and issues, and initiate the re(dis)covery of ‘minor’ places so far ig-
nored by the dominant culture” (Kwon 1997:105). In the case of BP or not
BP? performance actions, we find a parallel with the politics and history
of the British Museum as a performance space, given its links to Empire,
and nowadays, to the oil industry through BP’s sponsorship. The history
and the collection of the British Museum have had significant influence in
the kinds of performances that BP or not BP? has carried out in that space.
Several actions have responded to the themes of BP-sponsored exhibitions
and events, such as the BP Vikings action described in Chapter 2, and more
recent actions in 2016 responded, for instance, to the Sunken Cities exhibi-
tion of Egyptian artefacts.13
Since BP or not BP?—previously known as Reclaim Shakespeare Com-
pany and targeting BP-sponsored Royal Shakespeare Company plays—
moved on to the British Museum as their main site of intervention, their
campaign has grown from BP-specific to a wider, more nuanced critique
of the relationship between BP and the British Museum, covering issues
of human rights abuses, repatriation of objects, colonialism, and the re-
pression of dissent. This can be seen, for instance, in a performance ac-
tion addressing the issue of stolen land, environmental threats, and stolen
Indigenous Australian artefacts coinciding with the Indigenous Australia:
Enduring Civilisation exhibition at the British Museum in 2015 (Serafini
2017) (Figure 7.2). Other groups such as Liberate Tate, however, have on
occasion engaged with the wider politics of the institutions they target but
never in such explicit ways, showing how within the same coalition there
are different ways of managing strategic approaches, aesthetic visions, and
prefigurative approaches that draw connections between environmentalist
goals, social justice, and the creation of a more democratic, harmonious,
and just culture.
Delivering a campaign and performing a set of actions that revolve
around such symbolically powerful institutions as museums and galleries
calls for a critique and a rethinking of the campaign’s objectives in relation
to those institutions, but also for a consideration of how the site and its
politics are part of a wider structure of power that can uphold the status
quo, or instead become points of resistance and change. In the words of
Boris Groys:

The museum is not secondary to “real” history, nor is it merely a re-

flection and documentation of what “really” happened outside its walls
according to the autonomous laws of historical development. The con-
trary is true: “reality” itself is secondary in relation to the museum—the
“real” can be defined only in comparison with the museum collection.
This means that any change in the museum collection brings about a
change in our perception of reality itself.
(Groys 2013:24)
 Breaking the mould  153

Figure 7.2  Banner signing in solidarity with Aboriginal Australian activists during
a BP or not BP? performance action at the British Museum, protesting
against BP’s sponsorship of the exhibition Indigenous Australia: Endur-
ing Civilisation, 19 July 2015. Image by the author.

In relation to this, Jess from BP or not BP? says:

We’ve realised that cultural spaces are fantastic spaces for this bat-
tle between society and big oil to play out. They are a brilliant way to
reach the general public, but also because of the cultural power of these
spaces, what we do in them also has extra power. So it’s this debate that
is a global and also a national debate. We are using the British Museum
as a stage for that debate to be had, and that seems like a really, really
useful and worthwhile thing to do, even if we lose and BP sponsors the
British Museum for ages.14

This understanding of the power of museums as site of contention has for

some time been of interest to scholars (Luke 2002), but has in the past few
years gained special attention from activists as well (Dean 2016, Not An
­A lternative 2016).
When considering the wider social and political issues that some Art Not
Oil groups such as BP or not BP? address in their performances, it is also
important to bear in mind that thinking of “site as something more than
a place—as repressed ethnic history, a political cause, a disenfranchised
social group—is a crucial conceptual leap in redefining the ‘public’ role
of art and artists” (Kwon 1997:96). BP or not BP?’s move towards a posi-
tion that stands against corporate power and privatisation in the cultural­
154  Breaking the mould
sector and for the decolonisation of cultural institutions stems from the
realisation that activism centred in and around such symbolically charged
institutions as museums needs to address the history, symbolic power, and
position of those institutions if it is not to be complicit in other injustices and
forms of oppression occurring in or connected to those spaces. One of the
ways in which this stance has been enacted is through solidarity with other
struggles taking place at the British Museum and other cultural institutions.
This includes the mobilisation of museum and gallery workers against the
privatisation of their jobs, and the campaign of blacklisted workers against
Carillion, one of the companies involved in the high-profile blacklisting of
construction workers case (Smith and Chamberlain 2015), which is currently
facilities operator for the British Museum. Another way is the gradual trans-
formation of the narratives behind the group’s performances, which have
evolved to include issues of human and workers’ rights. This was the case
in a performance carried out with Gilberto Torres Martinez, a former oil
sector union leader from Colombia who was abducted by paramilitaries in
2002, and who came to London to file a case against BP, a shareholder at
the time of the company he was working for and which is accused of order-
ing his ­abduction (Serafini 2017). As mentioned earlier, other performances
have made reference to issues of colonialism and the repatriation of objects,
while others have been staged in collaboration and in solidarity with other
campaigns and groups. Such was the case of an intervention planned with
the group London Mexico Solidarity against BP’s sponsorship of the British
museum’s Day of the Dead celebration in 2015. This took place at a time
when BP was negotiating a new business deal with the Mexican government.
BP or not BP?’s practice has slowly moved towards a wider anti-­corporate,
social and e­ nvironmental justice stance, which upholds a decolonial ap-
proach in terms of source communities’ rights, the democratisation and
rethinking of artistic practice, and the unearthing and exposure of the mu-
seum’s colonial legacy.
The campaigns for the transformation of cultural institutions that BP
or not BP? has worked in partnership and in solidarity with are just a few
examples of all the campaigns that are currently active in the UK and in
other parts of the world addressing these and other related issues. The year
2016 has seen the trending of the hashtag #MuseumDetoxFlash as a result
of the Museum Detox Network’s call for flash mobs to highlight the lack
of diversity in UK museums and advocate a diversification of the cultural
sector and its audiences.15 But also, the proliferation of groups and move-
ments addressing the ethics of the sponsorship and broader funding of
museums, as well as other issues related to museums’ governance, their re-
lationships with source communities, the narratives told in exhibitions, and
lack of diversity in exhibiting artists, has led, among other things, to what
has been called a ‘museum liberation movement’ (Not An Alternative 2016).
In the US, key exponents of this movement include Decolonize This Place,
 Breaking the mould  155
The Natural History Museum, and G.U.L.F. (Global Ultra Luxury Faction).
Decolonize This Place has gained significant media attention as a result of
staging protests at the Brooklyn Museum with the aim of drawing parallels
between the displacement of Palestinians as a result of the Israel-Palestine
conflict, the displacement of local communities in Brooklyn due to gentri-
fication, and the fact that the museum is built on Native American land.16
And G.U.L.F. have, among other things, staged spectacular performance
actions at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in opposition to the unfair
treatment and alarming conditions of migrant workers in the building of
new museums in Abu Dhabi (McKee 2016). In Europe, movements against
oil sponsorship of the arts have recently flourished in countries like France
(Libérons le Louvre) and the Netherlands (Fossil Free Culture NL). As US-
based collective Not An Alternative puts it, what all these groups, networks,
and movements have in common is that “[d]espite their differing objectives,
rhetoric, and strategic positioning, their strength comes from their common
practice of treating the museum as a site of insurgency. Institutions’ names,
symbols, perspectives, and ideals become objects of political struggle” (Not
An Alternative 2016:6).
Not An Alternative argues that institutional (or museum) liberation
is not reformist, but that it is rather about using cultural institutions as
bases for action against the capitalist state (Not An Alternative 2016:6–7).
But there is in fact a variety of approaches and objectives put forward by
the different groups that are currently making use of institutions either
as targets of their protests or as platforms for wider social and political
issues. There have indeed been several campaigns and movements under
the umbrella of museum liberation and that have been reformist in nature,
demanding rights for museum workers, the end to an unethical sponsor,
or the diversification of museum audiences and artists on display, with-
out demanding a complete restructuring of the way culture is produced,
shared and experienced. However, the trajectory of Art Not Oil as pre-
sented here suggests that many of these UK-based groups have indeed
discarded a reformist approach for more radical, holistic strategies that
are prefigurative and challenge the politics of culture as well as aiming to
advance environmental and social justice.

The museum as public space

In the performance actions of Art Not Oil, as well as in other comparable
actions by groups in the UK, the US, and elsewhere, the museum is not
only a site of performance and a target of critique but is also a public space,
within which art activists are exercising their right to protest, and where the
politics, processes, and ethics of that same space are also being challenged.
In her analysis of the relationship between art and public space, Rosalyn
Deutsche argues that
156  Breaking the mould
the term public space does not designate an empirically identifiable ter-
rain or even a space produced by social relations. Nor does public space
refer only to concrete institutional sites where meanings are manufac-
tured and circulated. It designates instead the relations structuring vi-
sion and discourse themselves.
(Deutsche 1992:44)

In this sense, museums can be perceived not only as public spaces but
also as entities in the public sphere (Barrett 2011), a concept most fa-
mously elaborated by Habermas (1991). Deutsche adds, however, that
because of their underlying aestheticist ideologies separating collections
from the rest of society, art institutions can act as fragmenting forces,
and as such can be considered “the antitheses of public space” (Deutsche
1992:46). In response to this, a new wave of museology beginning in the
late 1980s and early 1990s has attempted to democratise the museum by
rethinking its relationship not only to its public but also to its own history
(Barrett 2011:4). Attempts have been made to incorporate the voices of
source communities and local communities in the planning of exhibitions
and public programmes, with differing levels of success. Commissioned
works of institutional critique have also been an important feature of this
strand of museology. But the work of groups like BP or not BP? puts for-
ward a different kind of critique that challenges not only specific areas
of museum practice such as corporate sponsorship and the provenance
of exhibits. Their work also puts forward a different perspective of how
museums can be public spaces and how they can be platforms for and of
the public sphere.
Barrett argues that in the study of museums and the public sphere,

The performative aspect of democratic sites is often overlooked, while

the existence of physical space is prioritized over the practice of de-
mocracy. The practice of being part of the public in the space of the
museum—­recognizing how being a citizen in the museum constitutes
the public—is valuable for understanding the democratic nature of the
museum.
(Barrett 2011:16–17)

Adhering to the view put forward by Barrett (2011:22), who builds on sev-
eral critiques of Habermas’s public sphere (e.g. Fraser 1990), I argue that in
campaigns such as those described here, democracy is exercised in the mu-
seum by challenging norms and codes upheld by the status quo. The public
sphere is not one in which oppositional views need to adhere to normative
mainstream ones, but one where views are challenged in a variety of ways,
from direct confrontation to slower, discursive processes. It is the “acknowl-
edgement of the existence of different cultural values”—such as those put
forward by Art Not Oil groups and the entities and communities they work
 Breaking the mould  157
with—that “introduces a challenge to the normative aspect of Habermas’s
public sphere” (Barrett 2011:40). As Fraser proposes:

We should question whether it is possible even in principle for interloc-

utors to deliberate as if they were social peers in specially designated
discursive arenas, when these discursive arenas are situated in a larger
societal context that is pervaded by structural relations of dominance
and subordination.
(Fraser 1990:65)

Barret says that except for literature, Habermas sees cultural forms as be-
longing to the private, because the act of aesthetic judgement is subjective
(Barret 2011:40). But “the inclusion of aesthetic experience as a legitimate
part of the public sphere is […] significant for understanding the museum as
a public sphere” (ibid:31). As discussed in Chapter 2, the performances of
groups like BP or not BP? have the potential of allowing a kind of aesthetic
experience that is also political. These performances stand in line with what
is presented by Fraser (1990:62) as a revisionist historiography of the public
sphere that challenges the dismissal of private interests, advocates a plu-
rality of voices as a step towards democracy instead of a hurdle to an ideal
public sphere, and suggests that the bracketing of social inequalities among
actors is not possible, since equality is indeed a condition for democracy,
and hence the existence of inequalities needs to be visible in order to be
addressed.
In their attempts to reconfigure the space of the museum as a space for
a symbolic battle over issues of representation, the sustained consequences
of colonialism, the environment, and corporate power, the performance
actions of Art Not Oil groups have always been received with an attempt
to contain, be this by surrounding performers with security staff, denying
access to certain rooms, or enclosing performances as they happen so as to
contain them and keep them out of sight from visitors. Ngũgĩ argues that
“the more open the performance space, the more it seems to terrify those
in possession of repressive power” (Ngũgĩ 1997:26), whether in open public
spaces or in the space of the cultural institution. Situating the act of polit-
ical performance as oppositional to the figure of the state, Ngũgĩ argues
that “[t]he performance space of the artist stands for openness; that of the
state, for confinement. Art breaks down barriers between peoples; the state
erects them” (ibid:28). The attempt to contain, stop, or repress performance
is significant because the struggle for performance space as a site of dissent
is linked to a basic struggle for democracy and social justice (ibid:29).

Conclusion
Institutional critique as an artistic practice can nowadays be seen as can-
onised, and “characterised by a certain amount of depoliticization and
158  Breaking the mould
self-reference” (Raunig and Ray 2009:xv). As a result, much of the debate
on institutional critique has been on whether or not art is doomed to be con-
fined to its own autonomous sphere, as Andrea Fraser would argue (2005),
or whether artists can enact a form of critique that implies an exodus from
the institution (Holmes 2009, Raunig and Ray 2009), and engage with issues
and movements operating in other areas of the public sphere. But what is
not contemplated is what happens when ‘non-artists’ such as activists, or
artists operating outside of the institutional art world, come into the spaces
of institutions and utilise them as platforms for advancing social, political,
and environmental causes by means of critiquing aspects of their structures
and practices. Is this still institutional critique?
I have established earlier in this chapter that many art activists actively
reject the framework of cultural institutions and try to work outside of this
structure. But when we look at the performances put forward by some Art
Not Oil groups like BP or not BP?, it could be argued that since the inter-
ventions of cultural institutions take place within institutional spaces, and
performances interact with and affect the workers and publics of these insti-
tutions, art activist groups of this nature are functioning within an institu-
tional framework. Mel Evans (2015:160–161) borrows from Emma M ­ ahony
(2013), for instance, who argues that anti-oil groups such as Liberate Tate
stand at an “interstitial distance”17 from institutions, meaning the right
­distance—not completely within, but not completely outside ­institutions—
at which a powerful critique of the institution can be made. But even if inter-
ventions take place in the physical spaces of the institutions that are being
critiqued, and even if activist groups also engage with institutions in other
ways—be it hijacking their social media trends, sending complaint letters
through their official channels, or using the language of art as a form of pro-
test—the framework within which these interventions originate is different
to the framework of the art institution as a platform for the production of
symbolic value and social relations. Sholette (2011) argues that art activists
often cannot escape being part of the web of the art world. However, I argue,
they can choose the processes and frameworks they work from, and devel-
oping a practice from the context of grassroots activism a­ llows these groups
to somewhat resist the co-optation, isolation, self-­c ensoring, and adapta-
tion to funders to which institutional art is subject.
The performances by Art Not Oil groups analysed here emerge from
the context of political activism and are conceived as unsolicited acts of
transgression, produced by activists, artists, and non-artists, who enact a
­particular set of values such as horizontalism and the rejection of traditional
roles in collective art making, and who have specific targets and goals, in ad-
dition to an understanding of art that is different to that of the institutional
framework. These political interventions go beyond institutional c­ ritique,
as they are expressions of a wider anti-oil agenda that is embedded in is-
sues of environmentalism and social justice. For this reason, the interven-
tions of groups targeting oil sponsorship of the arts take place outside the
 Breaking the mould  159
institutional framework. Their physical presence in the space of a cultural
institution does not equate to operating within the institution’s framework,
but can rather be seen as a temporary appropriation of space, in which the
consensus of the museum is broken, its rules are bent and rejected, and the
values and processes of grassroots, democratic, anti-corporate activism mo-
mentarily triumph over those of institutional artistic practice.
If we look at the formal and symbolic aspects of these performance
­actions we could say that there is a form of institutional critique taking
place, as there is both an explicit critique of institutional practice and a
reference to an aesthetic and discursive canon of institutional critique as a
genre—some groups such as Liberate Tate in fact situate their work within
this tradition (Evans 2015). But given that these performances and instances
of critique emerge from and are tied to wider campaigns, the institutional
critique taking place originates outside of the institutional framework, it sits
within wider strategic objectives, and it is the product of prefigurative ways
of working and long-term goals rooted in environmental and social justice
campaigns. As Liberate Tate have argued, in these contemporary forms of
art activism “Rather than a dialectic of critique and containment, in which
an isolated critical artwork is inevitably commodified, these practices
­confront art institutions without relying on them” (Liberate Tate 2015:83).
Considering this connection to wider issues, we could argue that in activ-
ist performance actions:

[t]he real politics of the performance space may well lie in the field of its
external relations; in its actual or potential conflictual engagement with
all the other shrines of power, and in particular, with the forces that
hold the keys to those shrines.
(Ngũgĩ 1997:13)

In this context, participatory performances bring political protest into the

cultural institution: not a representation of protest, but the ‘real thing’.

Notes
1 Here Holmes speaks of autonomy from the institution, as opposed to the com-
mon understanding of autonomy as artists being autonomous from other spheres
of life by operating within a defined, autonomous, cultural sphere.
2 It is paramount to consider as well the drastic differences in terms of cultural
policy and funding of the arts across countries and regions. Sholette points out,
for instance, the difference between radical artists’ relationship to institutions in
the UK and in the US. In the latter, “A lack of public funding for art, as well as
the absence of an actual Left discourse or parties makes it difficult to avoid some
level of dependency on the institutional art world” (2015:97).
3 See for instance the work of London-based collective sorryyoufeeluncomforta-
ble, http://cargocollective.com/syfu.
4 See http://occupymuseums.org/index.php/about.
5 For more see www.liberatetate.org.uk/performances/time-piece/.
160  Breaking the mould
6 Danny, personal interview (2014).
7 Packard, Cassie (2015) ‘Performers Shower Tate Britain with Fake Pounds Over
Oil Money Ties’. Hyperallergic, http://hyperallergic.com/179114/performers-shower-
tate-britain-withfake-pounds-over-oil-money-ties/. Accessed 11 February 2015.
8 See Polly Toynbee, ‘Inside the National Gallery, a portrait of modern inequal-
ity’. The Guardian, 2014, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/20/
national-gallery-portrait-inequality-museum-privatise-staff-wages-squeezed.
Accessed 3 February 2015.
9 See a 2016 article by Liz Hill for Arts Professional www.artsprofessional.co.uk/
news/british-museum-breached-ethics-code-claim-protesters.
10 Greg, personal interview (2014).
11 I refer here to top management employees of cultural institutions, who hold the
power to cut ties with their current sponsors.
12 John Jordan, personal interview (2014).
13 See Ashitha Nagesh’s article “Protesters storm British Museum with massive
kraken for ‘splashmob’” for Metro.co.uk: http://metro.co.uk/2016/09/25/­mermaid-
protesters-with-massive-kraken-stor m-british-museum-for-splashmob-
6152114/.
14 Jess, personal interview (2016).
15 See, for instance, Nicola Sullivan’s post for the Museums Association, “BAME mu-
seum workers conduct flash mob at Museum of London” www.­museumsassociation.
org/museums-journal/news/02112016-bame-museum-workers-­c onduct-f lash-
mob-at-museum-of-london.
16 At the time of the protest the museum was hosting an exhibition titled This Place,
which  had received funding from organisations that were also donating to the
Israeli ­Military (IDF). The museum had also recently been host to an event for
property ­developers,  at a time when the effects of gentrification were displac-
ing local inhabitants. See Rebecca McCarthy’s article for Hyperallergic here:
http://hyperallergic.com/297401/faced-with-brooklyn-museum-inaction-­protesters-
target-two-exhibitions/.
17 Mahony employs Simon Critchley’s concept of interstice. See Critchley, ­Simon
(2007) Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance,
­London and New York: Verso.

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8 Towards a theory of art
activism

Introduction
This final chapter brings together findings from previous chapters in order
to begin to sketch the foundations of an interdisciplinary theory of art activ-
ism that places emphasis on the processes and politics of this practice. My
proposal is simple and reiterates the objectives set out in the introduction to
this book; namely, that in order to better understand art activism as a prac-
tice it is necessary to look at it from an interdisciplinary perspective that
considers organisational, relational, and aesthetic aspects, and to focus on
internal processes and experience in addition to motivation, outcomes, and
formal and symbolic characteristics. In this chapter, I will therefore return
to the main themes explored in this book: collective identity, participation,
embodiment, transgression, performativity, prefiguration, and the public
sphere. I will draw comparisons between the ways in which these processes
and elements develop and function in different art activist practices, and
look at how the tension between the aesthetic and the political is manifested
in these practices. This exercise will serve three purposes: to demonstrate
how a framework that looks at these particular elements can help us further
understand art activism; to offer some conclusions on the tensions between
aesthetics and politics in art activism and the centrality of this tension to
art activism as a practice; and finally, through this analysis, to also offer
insights that can contribute to expanding our understanding of issues such
as collective identity, prefiguration, embodiment, and transgression in ways
that are applicable beyond the specific practice of art activism.

Understanding collective identity in art activism

In Chapter 1 I looked at how collective identity develops in the case of the
protest choir Shell Out Sounds. Taking Melucci’s (1996) theory of collective
identity as a starting point, I suggested that the process of building a collec-
tive identity for art activist groups is defined by certain factors in addition
to those contemplated by Melucci and others (e.g. Della Porta and Diani
2007), and that these factors are exclusive to groups that resort to art as a
164  Towards a theory of art activism
form of action. These include the different ways in which people identify
with the movement (as activists or as artists), the ways in which they under-
stand and narrate their actions as art or as activism, and the ways in which
different understandings of art as a political force influence the internal
­dynamics of the group, as well as the planning of actions.
The case studies in this book have also shown that there are often ten-
sions between individual narratives and understandings of a practice and
the collective narratives built and presented by groups. The tension between
personal and collective narratives is further problematised when considered
alongside tensions between the aesthetic facet of a practice and the strategic
one. Different forms of identification with a group and different framings of
individuals’ narratives will amount to conflicting contributions to the build-
ing of the collective identity of an art activist group. This last point is not
necessarily specific to art activism, and attention to the tensions between
collective and individual narratives and different ways of identifying with a
group could be useful for the study of other groups and movements that are
multifaceted and offer more than one form of identification.1
Considering the tensions between the collective and the individual de-
scribed in previous chapters, alongside the different forms of identifying
with a movement, the formation of personal narratives, and the instances
of self-transformative experiences in the midst of collective action, one can
conclude that in order to fully understand the process of collective identity
building it is necessary to look at the personal narratives and experiences
of participants, as these bring to the surface the tensions and contradictions
in the wider, collective narrative. This does not suggest a focus on individ-
ual actors’ actions as opposed to the collective, or that collective identity
should be individualised. Rather, it means that it is important to embrace
an approach that acknowledges the experiences of passionate, collectivised
individuals who are connected to the embodied whole and through their
bodies and their experiences (Butler 2015) can provide evidence for under-
standing the ways in which affects and collectivity develop in the context of
collective action.
The experiences of activists explored here show that collective identity
is not only constructed around the meaning and objectives of ­a ctions,
but is in fact also largely constructed around the tactics, tools, and meth-
ods employed by these groups; in this case, art practice. Melucci argues
that social movements have “refused the predominant communicative
codes and they have replaced them with sounds, idioms, recognition sig-
nals that break the language of technical rationality” (Melucci 1985 in
Melucci 1996:357), but he does not look into the processes ­b ehind the
emergence of these codes, limiting his analysis to a macro level. This
is an indication of the fact that theories on collective identity tend to
focus on the collective identity of movements rather than that of activist
groups, a recurrent issue across different strands of social movement the-
ory. There is therefore not only the need for social movement theory to
 Towards a theory of art activism  165
consider the particularities of specific forms of action such as art activism,
but also the need for further work that builds a bridge between sociological
studies of social movements and in-depth ethnographic studies of activist
groups, in order to develop tools that allow us to better understand the dif-
ferent scales of collective action and their collective identity processes, from
small-scale groups and networks to the wider social movements that com-
prise them.

The individual vs. the collective in art activism

The cases examined in this book argue that performance action can be a
medium for personal transformations, as well as a practice in and through
which collective identities are formed, manifested, and negotiated. This
double potential of radical performance as a collective enterprise and tool
for self-transformation is echoed in Kershaw’s writings on contemporary
drama. Shaughnessy explains that,

For Kershaw, ‘contemporary drama and theatre’ in its form and content
needs to embrace ‘resistant’ and ‘transcendent’ practices, creating work
which empowers individuals as autonomous agents whilst also facilitat-
ing collective identities.
(Shaughnessy 2012:187)

Due to the evident importance of the differing ways in which personal

experiences contribute to the construction of a collective identity, it is
important to consider the relationship between the individual and the
collective experience in art activism. My analysis of the art and activism
youth programme Shake! showed that for the artists-activists and edu-
cators involved in the programme, working on personal transformations
and the development of political subjectivities is a necessary first step
in a path towards social change. Dealing with trauma and understand-
ing the concept of personal reparations, developing skills for enhancing
well-being, and examining the forms of oppression faced in daily life are
crucial, from this perspective, for participants to develop and strengthen
their political voices. Although Shake! acknowledges and reiterates the
importance of community building and solidarity, in their practice a focus
on self-­transformation is necessary in order to allow participants to work
through their personal traumas and experiences of oppression—whether
tied to race, gender, class, or other forms of oppression they experience—
and find their own position in the world and in a larger collective strug-
gle for social justice. Adopting a collective approach from the beginning
would not a­ llow these spaces for self-exploration, transformation, and ex-
pression and would risk negating the plurality of experiences of a mixed
group of young people, hence inhibiting the development of their political
­subjectivities. Rancière argues that “[a]rt and politics each define a form
166  Towards a theory of art activism
of dissensus, a dissensual re-configuration of the common experience of
the sensible” (Rancière 2010:140). He adds that “politics invents new forms
of collective enunciation” (Rancière 2010:139), while aesthetics create new
forms of individuality. In the case of Shake!, the individual creative expe-
riences undertaken by participants are necessary as a first transformative
step towards political action and social change after the course, be this in
the form of spoken word performances or collective action in social move-
ments and/or within their communities.
A similar dynamic between the individual and the collective can be ob-
served in other examples of art activist practice. Performances by artists
who are part of Left Front Art (a network of radical queer artists), as in the
case of artist Antonio Onio, begin with a moment of personal expression
and self-empowerment that leads to a collective, shared experience. But the
psychogeographic walks of LRM, on the other hand, create opportunities
for collective experiences first—group walks in opposition to capitalism and
systems of urban control—within which participants then have the space
for individual creative experiences of transformation as they become aware
of the relationship between their bodies and their selves and the city. Here,
it is the collective situation which gives place to the instance of personal
transformation.
It is perhaps in performances by anti-oil sponsorship groups that are part
of the Art Not Oil coalition where the emphasis on the collective over the
individual is greatest, both because the primary objective of these actions is
found outside of the participants themselves, and because the genre of col-
lective performance finds its strength precisely in its collective aspect. But
participation in these actions does also allow opportunities for participants
to engage creatively and politically in the transformation of their political
subjectivities, thus maintaining an experience that is transformative on an
individual level as well as collective. The difference between groups like
Shake! and Art Not Oil is that the latter take the collective act of perfor-
mance as a starting point, with the hope that the dynamics of horizontality
and the possibilities for political agency that these performances allow will
in turn result in instances of self-transformation within a collective setting.
The former, on the other hand, upholds self-repair and self-transformation
as a necessary first step towards collective action.
The relationship between the individual and the collective marks all of the
cases presented in this book. While different art activism groups approach
instances of self-transformation and collective action differently, taking one
or the other as a starting point, in all cases the embodied nature of activism
and the emotional and affective spaces inhabited by participants will be
crucial in managing this tension and the transition from one state to the
other. As Sara Ahmed argues, emotions work “to mediate the relationship
between the psychic and the social, and between the individual and the col-
lective” (Ahmed 2004:27).
 Towards a theory of art activism  167
Participation
The relationship between individual and collective experiences can also be
addressed from the perspective of participation. In previous chapters I put
forward the argument that art activism provides a space for participatory
practice that does not have the constraints of institutional art, and in which
participation can be an inherently political act as well as a creative one. Par-
ticipation in art activist practice, however, can take many forms, as despite
usually being committed to prefigurative forms of collaboration, different
dynamics and contexts can lead to a variety of forms of participation that
are more or less horizontal, inclusive, and collaborative.

Different forms of participation

My analysis of Art Not Oil groups Shell Out Sounds and BP or not BP? in
Chapter 2 showed that a larger part of performance actions intervening
museums and galleries are deliberatively participatory, and offer spaces for
participants to actively contribute to a situation, and to become politically
active in those interventions. At the same time, however, while the planning
of actions by groups like Shell Out Sounds and BP or not BP? is a horizontal
and collaborative process, performances that invite the public to take part
will never be fully participatory and democratic as newcomers do not have
agency in some of the basic aspects of an action, which are decided upon
by a smaller organising group during planning stages. This, as discussed
earlier, is linked to logistical issues that are inherent to activist practice
such as the need for controlling access to information, but also to the fact
that mass actions like flash mobs will by default entail a smaller group of
people working on the planning in advance and sending out instructions to
a wider one.
In Chapter 2 I referred to the case of BP or not BP?’s BP Vikings perfor-
mance action in order to explore the different stages of participation that
performance actions of this sort could take. I argued that in addition to
fully participating members, who are consistently involved with a group and
are part of the planning behind an action, there are other types of participa-
tion. The first one is people who are casual participants. They may occasion-
ally take part in these kinds of performance actions, responding to emails
or open calls. They are not involved in the planning stages of an action, but
know what will happen, when, and where. The second is spontaneous par-
ticipation of people who come across an action and decide to join in, and
this will depend on how open an action is, as some encourage the general
public to take part and some do not. And finally, a third kind of participa-
tion is that of spectators, who unexpectedly become part of an audience to
an action, and are therefore becoming part of the event as they become part
of the wider political action as well.
168  Towards a theory of art activism
This framework, based on levels of participation and the contribution
made to a performance action through participation, was developed as a re-
sponse to performance actions by Art Not Oil groups specifically. However,
it can also be useful in order to understand the dynamics of participation
in other forms of art activism that are durational and relational. If we con-
sider the case of the autonomous art festival P A N D E M I C, discussed
in ­Chapter 7, it could be argued that only those who contribute to the event
with their artwork are true participants of the event, as the strong DiY ethos
of this series of festivals aims to democratise art practice and counter so-
ciety’s consumption-like attitude towards the arts as well as the exclusive
nature of the term ‘artist’. A ‘passive’ public that enters a space in order
to ‘consume’ the art on display would therefore not seem different to  the
passive audience of a conventional gallery space. However, by entering this
countercultural space and contributing to the exchanges that take place
there, an audience or public becomes an agent, albeit with a limited kind
of participation, as their presence contributes to making P A N D E M I C
a live form of alternative culture. Similarly, in performances by Left Front
Art artists that enter the trade union spaces, as discussed in Chapter 4, a
public that engages with these artists is far from a passive audience, and is
actually contributing to a process of challenging and transforming the cul-
ture of that institution. Without an audience present, that challenge cannot
happen, as the transgressive performance is only effective in the face of a
trade union audience to engage.
But if we move away from performance actions and look at the prac-
tice of Shake! as a radical pedagogy arts programme, participation needs
to be approached differently, and in relation, once more, to the tensions
between the individual and the collective aspects of this kind of practice.
The experience of Shake! intensive courses is inherently participatory,
and based on an ideal of building community. At the same time, however,
the spoken word element of Shake! remains as an individual and deeply
personal act, that is highly political but thrives on being rooted in per-
sonal experiences and the significance of young people making their voices
heard. While taking part in the Shake! intensive course and sharing the
process of building and strengthening political subjectivities through the
arts are collective experiences, participation in Shake! (and, in particular,
for the young people specialising in spoken word) differs from participa-
tion in other art activist projects in that each individual voice is developed
and enhanced through training in and performing spoken word, instead of
­b eing merged into one collective project. We can see, then, how participa-
tion in art ­activism can take a variety of forms and levels of involvement,
and can be seen as both a collective and personal experience. Any frame-
work applied to the study of participation needs to consider the particu-
larities of a practice (Brown 2014)—its form, objectives, and politics—in
order to understand in what way participation plays a role within that
practice, and how it allows or inhibits artistic and political aims.
 Towards a theory of art activism  169
Participation as political
In Chapter 2 I looked at the performances of BP or not BP? and other Art
Not Oil groups, and argued that one of the reasons that participation takes
a political form in these performance actions is the fact that they have dis-
tinct political objectives. Participants that join in become part of a protest
event that offers the opportunity to become politically active, and unlike
most participatory artistic practices within an institutional framework, par-
ticipants are not targets of a performance—as the main objective is not to
transform participants—but rather become active agents in a specific strug-
gle. This is also the case for LRM’s walks. In their practice there is a search
there is the aim to engage new participants, but like Art Not Oil their work
has a common, external political objective; in this case, challenging the dy-
namics of the city and opposing certain mechanisms of control.
But is this still the case for more community-centred art activism that
does indeed have the transformation of the subject as one of its main ob-
jectives? Can participants still be active political agents when they are also
the subjects and targets of a practice? In Shake!, healing and empowerment
are key issues, and the development of participants’ political subjectivities
is at the core of the programme. However, Shake! is also very much about
changing the structures of power in society, entering and influencing spaces
of social activism, art practice, and knowledge building, and introducing
ideas of horizontalism, intersectionality, and embodied learning in these
spaces. As a result, while centring on personal transformations, Shake!
still ­encourages participants to be active agents in a programme for social
and political change. Similarly, the performances and events staged by Left
Front Art aim at influencing the perceptions of trade union members and
members of the LGBT community alike; these groups are the target of their
artistic interventions. Left Front Art’s overarching aim is to mobilise both
groups towards change in the trade union movement and in society at large.
Participants who are addressed through their art are therefore not only tar-
gets for transformation, but also seen as part of a collective to be mobilised
so that together they can address wider social and political issues.
What these types of art activism have in common is that participation
goes beyond the parameters of participatory art practice and into the realm
of political participation. And seen from the perspective of collective polit-
ical action, participation is not only political as in other kinds of protests,
but is also artistically creative. The cases presented here suggest that creative
participation acts as a path towards political participation. But art can only
provide a path towards active political participation when it occurs within
the frame of political action, as opposed to institutionalised art practice,
considering the limitations of trying to enact social and political change
from within an institutional art context, as argued earlier in this book. In
other words, creativity can only lead to political participation when the pro-
cesses of a practice, guided by political values and objectives, create a space
170  Towards a theory of art activism
for political participation to occur. This is because of the opportunity to
join a political, social, and/or environmental cause offered by activism, but
also because of the lack of constraints this space offers, in comparison to
institutionalised art. In institutionalised participatory practices there are
quite often set dynamics in place that condition and limit the way in which
a piece will develop (Jelinek 2013), hindering political participation in a way
that would not occur in the context of unsanctioned, political activism. To
say the least, “[c]ollaborative works that make a strong political claim run
into the problem that this free space of art is constituted, or at least sur-
rounded, by practices that re-inscribe social divisions” (Charnley 2011:39).
This understanding of participation and how it develops differently in an
activist context provides further support for Holmes’s (2004) proposal of
exodus from art institutions.
But in addition to the possibilities that participation opens up in art ac-
tivism, in Chapter 2 I also argued that participation is sometimes positioned
against aesthetic objectives, regarded as a kind of approach that could in-
terfere with the ability of achieving desired artistic outcomes, framed as art­
istic ‘quality’. It is therefore only when art activist groups embrace widened
participation and the aesthetic possibilities of an open practice, as in Shell
Out Sounds’ carolling event or BP or not BP?’s Viking funeral, that groups
are able to put forward practices that fully challenge this dichotomy, as well
as going beyond the standard participatory practices that emerge from insti-
tutional contexts. I will return to this point towards the end of this chapter,
when I analyse the relation between aesthetics and politics more in depth.

Embodiment
In this book I have used embodiment as a thread across different chapters
and sections, from participation to performativity, the use of this concept
has been important in order to describe the experiences and processes of art
activism, including the experience of participation as an aesthetic-political
experience, as developed in Chapter 2. Considering the arguments made on
embodiment in relation to different art activist practices, I will here ask:
how is the embodied experience of art activism a distinct kind of experience?
In order to answer this question, it is useful to first look at how these
groups think about and use bodies as part of their performance-based prac-
tices. The performances of Art Not Oil groups, for instance, show an under-
standing of the body as the locus of expression, knowledge, and resistance.
By producing performances that are deeply embodied—be they solemn
choreographies, human-made ships, or animals dying in an oil spill—these
groups move away from an overly conceptual and intellectualised approach
to environmental issues and instead present the body as fragile, exposed,
and vulnerable to climate change; both the individual expressive body and
the collective body of resistance. In the practice of Shake!, in turn, the body
is put at the centre, recognising that gendered, racialised bodies are harmed,
 Towards a theory of art activism  171
moulded, and oppressed by a capitalist system, and that trauma healing
through the arts is a first step towards personal, social, and political change.
In a similar way, Left Front Art artists often do work that centres around the
body, not only in performances but also in other artistic and social events
such as naked dinners. These are part of a vision for living that reclaims
bodies from stigma and control and advocates freedom and a different way
of experiencing our bodies and our relationship to others. In all these cases,
as in others such as the work of performance artist Liz Crow, whose work
explores the structural aspects of disability, placing the body at the centre
of art activist practice manifests a particular approach to art making, but
also to activism and to the practice of life in general. Focusing on the body
allows a re-connection with the body, and a path towards different ways of
experiencing the individual and the collective, as well as inhabiting a space.
This idea was developed in Chapter 4 in relation to Butler’s (2015) work on
vulnerability, precarity, and collective assemblies.
A second way of looking at embodiment in art activism is the double role
of performer/activist taken on by members of performance action groups
like those in Art Not Oil. On the one hand performers are in character, mod-
ifying their bodies with costumes and props, using their voices for song and
for enacting theatrical scenes, and following choreographed moves in order
to portray mischievous oil company managers, oblivious museum directors,
or even take on the shape and form of oil spills. On the other, however,
the body is the place of resistance, the object of transgression, and a body
at risk. By putting on an unsanctioned performance, art activists are also
situating their bodies in opposition to the institution, occupying a space,
exerting pressure, and transgressing norms. This means activists’ bodies are
fulfilling, as well as experiencing, two roles at once.
It is necessary to point out, however, that this dual nature of the em-
bodied experience of art activism does not imply a Cartesian separation
of mind and body. I am not positioning the practice of art activism as the
simultaneous experience of the ‘rational’ pursuit of a political objective and
the ‘physical’ act of performing. Quite the contrary, I argue it is a complex
embodied experience in which the subject embodies two kinds of objectives,
and two (albeit intertwined) positionalities: that of the artist and that of
the activist. At points the two facets can be identified and experienced as
distinct, and sometimes they become one. This conception of art activism
corresponds with the way in which participants have described their expe-
riences and narrated their involvement in art activism, as evidenced by the
interviews and conversations with art activists presented in this book. Also,
this way of thinking about the embodied experience of art activism aligns
with the way in which art activist performances, interventions, and projects
are developed, and with the emotions and affects that surround the practice.
Furthermore, my experiences as a participant and/or organiser in several
art activist actions has allowed me to observe that this complex, dual expe-
rience is also confirmed by the way in which these practices are perceived
172  Towards a theory of art activism
both by the general public and by figures of authority. While sometimes they
are perceived as protest, sometimes they are seen—especially by the general
public—as artistic performances, evidenced, for instance, in visitors’ differ-
ing reactions, from anger and dismissal to applause, video recordings, and
requests for repeated performances. Navigating the space between these
two categories is something art activists often find themselves doing when it
comes to liaising with authorities, with the public, and with the media. But
while choosing to present oneself as an artist in certain spaces or situations
is a strategic choice, the risks of the activist action are still present for the
embodied subject—and this risk is particularly true for activists who are
targets of discrimination, institutional violence, and police brutality, as is
the case, for instance, for black activists in the US and in the UK. Despite
the fact that the art activist actions examined here are manifested as perfor-
mances (what I have referred to as performance actions), the interventionist
aspect of these actions means that they are not representations of political
acts, but actual political interventions (Serafini 2014).
In the different context of the psychogeographical practice of LRM, we
can see how the embodied act of walking is also approached as both a politi-
cal and a creative act. On the one hand, walks are ludic, creative, and enjoya-
ble, allowing bodies to open up to sensing the city, loosening the constraints
of expected behaviour in certain parts of the urban environment, and tak-
ing part in a collective, imaginative game. On the other hand, walks often
lead to instances of transgression, in which bodies occupy urban spaces for
uses other than those they were designated for. Also, as Morag from LRM
explains, some of the walks they do take the explicit form of walking pro-
tests, bringing out the political aspect of the practice even more explicitly.2
A similar dynamic takes place in the practice of Left Front Art and the
artists they bring into trade union spaces. While their embodied perfor-
mances attempt to create connections with audiences through an aesthetics
of honesty and vulnerability manifested in the use of the naked body as a
form of communication, the naked body is at the same time the locus of
transgression, challenging societal norms—more precisely, the rules and the
culture of the organisation they are performing for and within. Finally, in
the spoken word performances of Shake! participants we can see how the
embodied act of performing a piece is at the same time an artistic perfor-
mance and a defiant political act, returning to Rancière’s (2010) redistribu-
tion of the sensible. While spoken word performance is a creative act, in this
context it is also the act by which a young person develops their political
subjectivity, and penetrates the public sphere in order to speak their mind
and interrupt the dominant discourse.
In these kinds of art activist practices, the body is reclaimed from a
state of commodification and rationalisation through the parallel embod-
ied experiences of creativity and political action, which allow instances of
agency, creativity, and freedom. This view of art activism as an embodied
experience made up of two facets that are intertwined can provide useful
 Towards a theory of art activism  173
insights into the nature of embodiment and the embodied experience more
generally, especially when considering the individual and collective aspects
of this practice. Research presented here suggests that while aesthetic-­
political experiences can be individual performative acts, as in the spo-
ken word of Shake!, collective participatory performances—like those by
BP or not BP? and walks by LRM—can also act as a gateway towards the
embodiment and development of political subjectivities. Collective and in-
dividual ­aesthetic-political experiences in the context of art activism are
deeply connected, and feed into each other. The reclaiming of the body from
the increasing processes of rationalisation and control fostered by a post-­
industrial society is facilitated by the creative and the political aspects of
this kind of embodied practice, and takes place through both the individual
and collective experience of art activism. Indeed, if the embodied acts of
appearing and assembling in public are, as Butler (2015) argues, inherently
political, and constitute forms of resistance in themselves, then politics are
enacted without or before the act of speech. This understanding is in tension
with positions such as Rancière’s (2010), which situate the act of speech as
the definitive political act.

Performativity
Art activist performances, being acts of creative expression and politi-
cal action, can be considered to be performative in nature, as they allow
the development, enactment, and reproduction of political subjectivi-
ties. These performative instances can take different forms and develop
in different ways across a variety of art activist practices. The perfor-
mance ­actions of Art Not Oil allow instances of performativity by cre-
ating a space where participants are not only performing a role in a play
or performance piece, but also enacting politics at the same time. These
performances allow m ­ oments of collective performativity, when groups
collectively chant performative statements such as “’Til our concert halls
are fossil free, our voices will be singing Hallelujah”, or use their bodies
to occupy a ­museum space and generate and enact an alternative, coun-
terculture ­dynamic within that space—it is worth noting, for instance,
the chants of “Whose museum? Our museum!” that took place during BP
or not BP?’s Viking Funeral action at the British Museum (Chapter 2).
Similarly, when LRM go on psychogeographical walks, a new connection
with the urban space is generated as participants create new performative
narratives about their surroundings that change their relation to the city.
Finally, while Left Front Art artists put on performative acts of transgres-
sion that begin with their own embodied experiences, Shake! participants
engage in performative acts of spoken word as they confront the oppres-
sions they face through their own writing and performing. Following once
more from Butler (2015), these acts are performative on a discursive level
as well as an embodied one, as the presence of certain bodies occupying
174  Towards a theory of art activism
cultural venues, public spaces, and claiming back the art sphere is as polit-
ically significant as the words they utter.
The cases of Shake! and Left Front Art in particular are evidence of how
affect and emotion are linked to performativity, as affect and emotion are
often both the starting point of an embodied performative act and the way
in which that act is shared with others through personal, aesthetic-political
performances. As Ryan argues:

By invoking the concept of affect, it becomes possible to broaden dis-

cussions around performativity in art interventions; to consider the
ways in which activists might be inadvertently moved to create or be
moved by affective intensities tied to world events or indeed to their own
creative acts.
(Ryan 2015:46)

Affect is therefore a key aspect of art activist practices in two ways. While it
is linked to the motivations and values underpinning the development and
processes of performance actions, as discussed in the introduction to this
book, it is also a main aspect of the experience of participating in art activist
actions, linked to both the creative and political aspects of the embodied
experience.
Acknowledging the performative aspect of performance actions is impor-
tant because it is one of the ways in which the dual aspect of a­ esthetic-political
performances is manifested, as the creative act becomes political through
the performative enactment of certain political ideas and values. It is also
a quality of the transgressive act, which will be analysed in the following
section, and a necessary element of prefiguration, since performative utter-
ances, processes, and actions are some of the ways in which art activists can
put into practice their values and/or objectives in the now.

Transgression
A discussion of the embodied performance of politics and the performative
aspect of political action inevitably leads to a discussion around transgres-
sion. Transgression in art activism is closely linked to the idea of dissensus
(Rancière 2010), as dissensus is the transgression of boundaries and the dis-
ruption of dominant discourse, be it by a voice, a gesture, or, as argued ear-
lier, a body standing, sitting, or lying down ‘where it shouldn’t’. Art activism
thrives on the idea of transgressing boundaries, be these the spatial bound-
aries of art institutions or other public and private urban spaces, or the
structural, symbolic, and ideological boundaries of these institutions and
spaces. The transgressive act can be found in the content of a lyric, or in the
way in which the processes of art practice are subverted, and transgressing
certain kinds of boundaries does not imply also transgressing others. For
instance, while certain groups are happy to trespass spatial boundaries and
 Towards a theory of art activism  175
reclaim artistic spaces, the art practices they put forward can remain in line
with the aesthetic canons of institutionalised art practice, as is the case of
art collective Liberate Tate. Other groups, on the other hand, combine spa-
tial transgression and spectacular tactics with prefigurative challenges to
the processes of institutionalised art practice. The different ways in which
transgression is embraced by art activist groups is often a manifestation of
the tensions between aesthetics and politics characteristic of this kind of
practice, as different groups negotiate their own limits as well as their ideas
around what it means to be transgressive in politics and in art.
As argued in Chapter 3, while certain forms of transgression such as
­trespassing are defined in legal terms, others are not as clear-cut and rather
function as a relationship; an action is only transgressive if it is received as such
by an audience (e.g. the public and staff at a cultural institution). Transgression
for art activist groups is an important part of their practice not only because
of its symbolic significance in defying the norms of the targeted institution,
but also because it pressures the institution by altering its functioning, and
because it gains attention from the public and, on occasions, from the press.
In the work of LRM discussed in Chapter 5, spatial transgression is an
important aspect of their practice, but instead of transgressing institutional
spaces, LRM explore and subvert public—and sometimes private—­outdoors
urban spaces. Transgression in their practice is linked to two objectives. In
the first place, challenging the culture of control of urban spaces by sub-
verting the uses of particular sites and transgressing spatial boundaries as
a political act. This is also true of Liz Crow’s piece Lying Down Anyhow,
discussed in Chapter 4. Second, transgression is part of a personal process
of connecting with one’s city in a new and different way, and building new
narratives around one’s experience and place in the city. Transgression is
therefore an important part of challenging structures and forms of govern-
ance, and an important part of personal transformations. Similarly, in the
performances of Left Front Art artists such as Antonio Onio, transgression
starts with the artist reclaiming their body and transgressing social bound-
aries around sexuality and nakedness, but it goes on to push the boundaries
of a specific institution: the trade union. Transgression can therefore also be
an embodied act that defines the art activist experience, and a way of relat-
ing to other people and to physical and institutional spaces.
Finally, transgression is in many cases the first step towards prefiguration,
in that it opens up spaces for new, prefigurative approaches to art and to
activism, and to the practice of social change. To transgress current norms
and boundaries is necessary in order to break through those limits and be
able to conceive and begin to build something new. But also, in the case
of interventions in cultural institutions, transgression and prefiguration are
linked in the sense that bringing prefigurative forms of art making that have
certain political values and objectives at their core into institutional spaces
is a transgressive act in itself, because it goes against the norms and canons
of sanctioned, institutional art.
176  Towards a theory of art activism
Prefiguration
Throughout this book, I have argued that the various art activist groups ex-
plored approach their practice in a prefigurative manner. I have described
how prefiguration is found in horizontal forms of organising (Maeckelbergh
2016), in the open nature of performances, in the relationship to spaces, and
in the challenge to and rejection of institutional frameworks, among other
things. In Chapter 3, I explored how prefiguration and strategic transgres-
sion interact, arguing that art activist practice can at the same time be in-
terventionist and prefigurative. I looked at the processes behind the actions
of BP or not BP?, and explained how the idea of authorship is dissolved by
the groups’ horizontal and democratic practice, and how their process of
script writing, for instance, defies both hierarchies and specialised divisions
of creative ­labour. Other examples have also shown a variety of prefigurative
approaches: Shell Out Sounds, for instance, makes specific claims to a prefig-
urative kind of culture that functions outside of institutional standards and
frameworks and that is opposed to the corporatisation of the arts. And LRM
follows a prefigurative approach that challenges the institutional category of
artist, democratises psychogeographic practice, and, most i­ mportantly, re-
claims the streets as a place for creativity and everyday politics.
When discussing the revolutionary potential of art, artist activist John
Jordan says:

[M]ost artists think ‘oh, I’m an artist, I’ll work in a social movement,
that’s what I’ll do. I’ll do the posters, I’ll do the graphics, I’ll make the
films’. And in a way I am more interested in ‘no, help design the forms
of disobedience, help design the way we have meetings, help design the
way we live, help craft post-capitalist life’. That’s the role of the artists
to me. It’s, you know, ‘how do we craft a post capitalist life?’. Not ‘how
do we make the fucking posters for the revolution?’.3

Through aesthetic-political practice, these groups are simultaneously de-

vising more democratic forms of art making outside and at the margins of
cultural institutions, fighting for social change, and creating blueprints for
different aspects of social life.
In theoretical terms, the way in which these groups embrace prefigurative
politics poses a challenge to contentious politics (McAdam et al. 2001) as
a framework for the study of movements, as it problematises the category
of mechanism. By developing art activist practices that allow a merger of
certain values and new forms of making art with strategic practices and
forms of intervention, protest, and direct action, these groups create a pre-
figurative practice that does not see a clear separation between mechanisms,
objectives, and values. While certain processes of art activism can be trans-
ferrable or emulated in different contexts, they cannot be regarded sepa-
rately from a set of values and objectives that inform them.
 Towards a theory of art activism  177
Having argued that these groups have a prefigurative approach to art ac-
tivism, it is worth noting that looking at some of these movements as prefig-
urative poses certain challenges. Many of these groups stand in opposition
to something, and have built narratives around their practice that are based
on this opposition—while Art Not Oil opposes oil sponsorship of the arts,
LRM opposes gentrification and mechanisms of control in urban spaces.
These groups’ raison d’être is to bring an end to something, and in the case
of Art Not Oil, the thing opposed is concrete and localised, meaning s­ uccess
is easily measurable. What this means is that if these groups were to be
­successful, they might cease to exist. It is worth wondering then, how one
can prefigure a practice that is tied to an oppositional stance. But going back
to my earlier chapters, which looked closely at the actions of Art Not Oil,
prefiguration does not necessarily need to be aligned with the cause that de-
fines a movement or activist group, and can actually occur parallel to it, or
in spite of it. In the case of Art Not Oil groups like Shell Out Sounds and BP
or not BP?, prefiguration is found in the processes behind the performance
actions of these groups, and prefiguring performance is not a primary ob-
jective, but rather the result of a particular approach to art as politics and
the group’s commitment to horizontalism and democratic values, which al-
lows prefigurative forms of art making to emerge (Serafini 2015). So even
when these movements achieve their strategic objectives, the forms of art
making they put forward have the potential to live on in other projects, both
because their struggles are part of wider movements towards environmental
and/or social justice, and because the series of processes and values they
enact in their practice can inspire other work. Indeed, when the Tate an-
nounced in 2016 that they were parting ways with their sponsor BP, this did
not stop the collective Liberate Tate from staging performances against the
fossil fuel industries at the Tate galleries and other cultural venues.4
It is important as well to consider that no movement or practice can be
purely prefigurative (Yates 2015), particularly within a system that c­ reates
dependence on its existing infrastructures for most activist activity. Rather,
prefiguration is found in some elements of groups’ practices, more often than
not coexisting with strategic approaches (Maeckelbergh 2011). ­Furthermore,
while all the groups presented here are prefiguratively constructing alterna-
tive ways of producing, sharing, and experiencing art and culture, in most
cases they are not generating completely new artistic forms, media, or gen-
res. Rather, they are using—and sometimes reclaiming—­practices such as
choir singing, performance art and theatre, and developing them in uncom-
modified ways, and in line with a particular set of values and political objec-
tives. In these actions there is not a rejection of art, but rather a reclaiming
and reconfiguring of artistic practice, that is based on rejecting structures
of power and devising a kind of practice that is in line with a more just and
democratic social and political project.
When looking at the way in which prefiguration relates to aesthet-
ics, there are a few further issues to contemplate. In her study of applied
178  Towards a theory of art activism
performance, Shaughnessy (2012) describes certain practices that, similarly
to performance actions, are dialogical and process-based, prioritise con-
text over content, and allow subjectivities to be formed through dialogue
and exchange. This kind of creative work is particularly concerned with the
politics and ethics around it, in addition to aesthetics. Shaughnessy then
presents Bishop’s views, which question the possibilities for such kinds of
work. Bishop argues this type of work relinquishes artistic autonomy and
jeopardises aesthetics for the sake of prioritising social betterment, because
it is too concerned with the politics of the art itself—for example, being
politically correct and aware of privilege—and thus hinders the possibility
for any art that is highly provocative or challenging (Bishop 2006:178, in
Shaughnessy 2012:199). But authors such as Kester (2004, 2011) argue that
the ethics of participatory art are indeed important. Indeed in all kinds of
artistic practices, as bell hooks argues,

[O]ne can be critically aware of visual politics—the way race, gender,

and class shape art practices (who makes art, how it sells, who values
it, who writes about it)—without abandoning a fierce commitment to
aesthetics.
(hooks 1995:XII)

In the cases of art activism studied here, a prefigurative approach included

the consideration of the wider politics of art practice. From LRM’s stance
against ‘ruin porn’ to Shell Out Sounds’ open policy, all these groups uphold
a set of values that they prefiguratively enact through their practice. This, as
suggested earlier, inevitably affects the aesthetic choices they make. But is
this necessarily, as Bishop would suggest, an impediment towards creating
work of aesthetic value? As discussed earlier in this book, in her critique of
relational aesthetics Bishop points out the difference between judging art
based on aesthetic merit versus judging art according to its ethics—which
in the case of relational aesthetics means looking at the type and quality of
social relations created as a result of a piece (Bishop 2004). She argues that
if relational work is to be judged on the social relationships produced, it is
important to establish what relationships we are looking at.
In this book I have referred to the differences between participatory
art forms that take place within an institutional framework and those
that emerge from the context of activism. Some of the main differences
I have explored are the kind of social relationships and instances of self-­
transformation and of political agency that participatory performance ac-
tions allow. From this then, two points emerge. In the first place, the kinds
of social relations and political experiences that emerge from art activism
provide a response to Bishop’s sceptical take on the social relationships
formed through participatory work. This is possible because contrary to
institutional art practice, in the context of activism certain ideals of trans-
formative social interactions can be fulfilled, instead of remaining purely
 Towards a theory of art activism  179
symbolic, both in terms of the transformation of political subjectivities
through political action and in terms of the formation and enactment of
collective identities. And second, Bishop’s dichotomy begs the question:
can’t artistic work be considered on the grounds of both ethics and aesthet-
ics? While this study is not preoccupied with the aesthetic judgement of art
­activist practice, but is rather an exploration of its processes and politics,
I suggest practices that merge the artistic and the political in an attempt to
escape an ‘either this or that’ framework should be appraised accordingly. A
focus on aesthetics alone would negate the important distinction between art
activism and other forms of artistic practice. But a sole focus on ethics and
politics, on the other hand, would negate these performances’ claim to art5
and the redefinition of art that comes with this claim. An interdisciplinary
framework such as the one proposed in this book is therefore necessary in
order to address this kind of hybrid practice and escape the urge to analyse
and frame aesthetic-political work in one discipline or the other.

Art activism and institutions

The argument against art institutions as spaces that do not allow truly radi-
cal art making (Holmes 2010:19) is founded on a variety of factors, including
the corporatisation (Stallabrass 2004) and neoliberalisation (Jelinek 2013) of
the arts, and the recuperation and neutralisation of critical and political art
(Rancière 2006, Holmes 2010, Trevor 2010). This does not mean that there
is no value in art that is produced within an institutional circuit, or that
institutional art cannot make any kind of impact in society. What it means
is that art that is not bound by funders, sponsors, curators, hierarchical or-
ganisations, and the trends of the art world can transgress certain cultural
and social boundaries that other art cannot, and in this way prefiguratively
facilitate processes for social change.
In Chapter 7 I looked at how certain Art Not Oil groups position their
practice in relation to the dynamics of the art institutions they target. I
­argued that even though these groups operate within the spaces of cultural
institutions and can therefore be understood as a kind of site-specific prac-
tice, their performance actions still function outside of the institutional
framework. These unsanctioned performances defy the exclusive definition
of art upheld by the institution; they are the product of processes akin to
grassroots activism, and they deliberately break the rules and transgress the
boundaries of the said cultural spaces. Increasingly, some groups like BP or
not BP? have also engaged in forms of critique that target curatorial prac-
tices and also other aspects of institutional politics, such as the conditions of
gallery workers and struggles for the repatriation of artefacts. In many cases,
as argued earlier, these instances of transgression and reclaiming of cultural
spaces gives place to prefigurative forms of art activism that challenge the
processes and dynamics of institutional art. But tensions between the artis-
tic and the political present in each of these groups’ processes influence the
180  Towards a theory of art activism
way in which their practice acts as an oppositional form of art. In the case
of Liberate Tate, for instance, the group maintains a narrative around their
practice that positions them as an art collective, thus aligning themselves
closer to institutional art practice. In addition, Tate Modern currently holds
documentation of one of their performances—The Gift—in their archive,6 a
fact that can be seen both as legitimisation of their aesthetic practice and as
recuperation of their transgressive act.
Left Front Art’s position in relation to institutions is a particular one.
While Left Front Art operates as an informal network of artists, they do a lot
of work jointly with the trade union Unite. Their objective is to build bonds
between the LGBT community and the union, and also to influence the cul-
ture of the union, pushing its boundaries through artistic performances and
events. Left Front Art therefore do not operate under the framework of art
and cultural institutions—although individual artists who are part of that
network might—but their work aims at changing the culture of another type
of institution: the trade union. In their work there is a contradiction between
their radical queer politics and the reformist approach they have towards their
work with the institution, and this comes as a consequence of acknowledging
and embracing the power that the trade union has as a form of organising
workers, despite the limitations and problems it might have as a ­hierarchical,
­traditionally-structured organisation. Similarly, Shake! artists and activists
advocate a way of practising art that opposes the elitist and exclusive canon
and dynamics of the art world, but they still aim at introducing young, mar-
ginalised voices into these spaces, in order to change the dynamics of the art
world and effect wider structural change through these channels. The pres-
ence of young people of colour and their perspectives in these spaces is seen
as an important stand against racial oppression, even if there are still other
problems with those institutions that contradict Shake!’s values.
Contrary to this approach, P A N D E M I C fully rejects the idea of any kind
of institutionalised and/or commercial art practice, and creates its own alter-
native spaces. Similarly, LRM’s ‘First Sunday’ walks are a collective practice
that remains non-commercial and detached from any institutional affiliation.
Morag from LRM explained in a personal interview that despite the fact that
she sometimes leads walks on commission and has worked with cultural and
academic institutions in the past, these walks are deliberately unaffiliated to
any programme or source of funding so that they remain completely auton-
omous and independent. LRM’s stance changes, however, when we consider
the exhibition they organised at the People’s Museum. The way in which art
activist groups make art inevitably takes as a reference the mainstream models
of production and consumption of art in society, acknowledging the place of
cultural institutions as symbols of capitalist democracy, elitism, and Empire,
but also heritage, education, and culture. Whether reformist or abolitionist,
and whether concerned with issues of access, inequality, or censorship, the
different positions taken by art activist groups are always narrated in terms of
their relation to the mainstream art world.
 Towards a theory of art activism  181
The public sphere
The concepts of public art, public space, and the public sphere have been
discussed in previous chapters in reference to cultural spaces as sites of con-
tention, public spaces in the city, and the idea of ­aesthetic-political action as
embodied and discursive acts of dissensus that break the c­ onsensus of the
public sphere. In Chapter 7 I challenged the idea of a Habermasian public
sphere in which citizens leave aside their private interests and subjectivities
for the sake of participating in a homogenous public sphere in which issues
of ‘public’ concern are addressed. I presented this challenge by arguing, in
line with critics of Habermas such as Nancy Fraser (1990), that there is no
possibility of a homogenous public sphere and that the public sphere is made
up of multiple voices (Tucker 2010:19), and embedded in it is the struggle for
recognition of the oppressed. Considering this, it is of utmost importance
for subaltern publics to have spaces to create new languages and rethink
identities and subjectivities before moving on to challenges for space and
legitimacy in the public sphere (Fraser 1990:67). This was evidenced perhaps
more prominently in the case of Shake!
In this book, I have also addressed the issue of the personal as political,
a statement that contradicts the core of the public sphere as theorised by
Habermas. Butler, for instance, challenges the private/public distinction (an
argument also made by Harendt), in her claim that in assemblies formed
around issues of precarity, ‘private’ issues such as health, subsistence, and
reproductive rights result in these issues becoming visible in the public
(­Butler 2015:86). In this book I have showed how art activists working on is-
sues such as race, sexuality, and disability blur the private/public distinction
in their work. But I have also argued that they do not do this by merely mak-
ing the personal public, but through interventions that address the systems
and structures that perpetuate forms of inequality affecting everyday life.
Another issue that was developed was the role of the body and the embod-
ied experience in acts that intervene in the public sphere. Through the ana­
lysis of different forms of performance-based activism I was able to argue
that the political act is not just a discursive one or a speech act, as Rancière
(2010) argues, but also an embodied one, following Butler’s (2015) argument
on the importance of bodies appearing in the public space, where the public
sphere is enacted. This puts forward an understanding of the public sphere
as a discursive space (Barrett 2011:18), as described by Habermas, but also
as a spatial and material one. As Butler argues, in mass demonstrations in
the streets “the very public character of the space is being disputed, and
even fought over when these crowds gather.” We must therefore look at how
“[a]ssembly and public speech reconfigure the materiality of public space
and produce, or reproduce, the public character of that material environ-
ment” (Butler 2015:71).
It is worth noting, however, that the embodied and the discursive aspects
of the political act of intervening in the public sphere should not be seen as
182  Towards a theory of art activism
distinct; as one or the other, or as one occurring before the other. It is only
too easy to fall into distinctions of the discursive as the rational side of pol-
itics and the embodied as the irrational and emotional. If we look at the ex-
perience of participating in performance actions, for instance, as discussed
in Chapter 2, we can see how embodied experiences that are creative and
political position actors in two roles at once, and allow for multiple expe-
riences and interactions with others (as artists and as activists) during the
same event. The relation between the embodied and the discursive can be
compared to that between the aesthetic and the political. We must defy the
urge to see them as separate, or as easily distinguishable stages of an action
or an experience, and instead think of them from the perspective of experi-
ence, and therefore, as simultaneous. Thus the question becomes not only
how does the embodied presence of actors in a space allow for discursive
acts to happen, or what is the embodied character of discursive political
acts, but most importantly, how are the embodied and the discursive both
part of political action, and in particular, how are these aspects manifested
in practices that merge the political with the artistic.

Aesthetics, strategy, and ethics

Aesthetics and process

Even though I have maintained a focus on the processes, internal politics, and
experience of art activism throughout this book, I have also explored issues of
aesthetics, mostly in relation to these three other components. When explor-
ing the aesthetics of Shell Out Sounds, for instance, I looked at the content of
the songs performed, the way in which they were arranged for singing, and the
overall tone and mood of performances. In the work of Left Front Art, I made
reference to the body and nakedness as a kind of embodied aesthetics that
attempt to transgress the space and culture of the trade union. But when talk-
ing about aesthetics, we should not restrict ourselves to the visual or auditory
characteristics of an artwork or performance. Aesthetics include the sensorial
and the embodied in a wider sense (Berleant 1992, 2004), and this extends to
the way in which we interact with a space, the way we embody a specific art
form or medium, and how we connect with other people. Considering this, the
distinction between aesthetics and process begins to blur, and it becomes evi-
dent that the process behind an artwork and/or creative action is as significant
when talking about aesthetics as is the final output.
In the case of BP or not BP?, for instance, participation and interaction
are elements that drive the planning of most performance actions, deter-
mining what a performance will look like and how it will be experienced by
participants. In the work of P A N D E M I C, a total openness to exhibits
and performances by any interested person, without selective or curato-
rial criteria, is a politically motivated but also aesthetic choice, which rests
on an anti-institutional agenda. In all of these cases, the aesthetic choices
 Towards a theory of art activism  183
made by art activists stand in relation to the values, ideology, and objectives
that make up an agenda for social change. Sometimes they are in line with
groups’ values and objectives, as in the cases just presented, and sometimes
they are in tension with certain values and objectives of a group, as was the
case of a Shell Out Sounds action in which certain participants were aiming
for a ‘tight’ or good quality musical performance at the expense of the open-
ness and participatory potential of the action.
I have argued in this book that in art activism the processes behind an
art piece or action are important as political practice, and that therefore
there is a reason why art activists continue to resort to certain forms of art
making. In the cases I have presented, embodied, dialogical, and perform-
ative art forms clearly dominate the field, as these allow prefigurative forms
of building community as well as spaces for self-transformation. But even
when the processes behind certain practices attempt to be prefigurative in
terms of organisation and the rejection of the structures and canons of insti-
tutional artistic practice, these are in many cases also defined by a strategic
element, as in the case of performance actions by Art Not Oil groups. It is
therefore worth looking at how strategy interacts with both the prefigurative
processes and the aesthetics of art activism.

Strategic choices
Each group that makes up the Art Not Oil coalition has a different ap-
proach towards the shared aim of ending oil sponsorship of the arts. While
Liberate Tate adopts a sombre, dignified, and minimalist aesthetic that is
marked by the use of veils and black clothing and props, BP or not BP?
uses theatricality and humour as its main weapons. In Chapter 7, I argued
that each group’s approach not only depends on members own artistic and
activist backgrounds and personal preferences, but most importantly on
the context of each particular institution, which conditions what kind of
aesthetics might work best in a particular space. In all cases, however, the
chosen ­medium and aesthetic repertoire are not only influenced by the wider
­processes of the practice and the values guiding it, but are also in constant
negotiation with the strategic choices made in order to achieve the goal of
ending oil sponsorship of the arts. This issue is present in considerations
such as choosing a specific space or moment for a performance, making a
performance video friendly (Serafini 2014), and creating costumes that are
easy to smuggle into a museum. Art making in these cases is not a ‘pure
pursuit of beauty’, or a reflection on the question of art itself. Rather, art
activism is defined by the fact that aesthetic choices are in direct dialogue
with both the values that a group or individual holds—equality, inclusion,
and horizontalism to name a few; the strategic choices made by the group;
and the objectives for change that they wish to accomplish.
Liberate Tate’s mode of action, for instance, is subverting performance art
against the museum, employing it as a form of protest. Using performance
184  Towards a theory of art activism
art is strategic for many reasons. In the first place, performance allows a
space for intervention and direct action, which is particularly appealing to
activists (Liberate Tate 2012). The potential for participation and duration
of performance can be turned into tools for pressuring the museum: a large
amount of people dominating a space for a considerable amount of time
poses an inconvenience to the institution, and an artwork that invites the
public to watch and/or participate also makes it harder for the institution
to block, repress, or dismiss that action. But furthermore, performance art
has since its beginning been regarded as an avant-garde practice that pushes
the boundaries of art (Berghaus 2005). The Tate galleries—and especially,
the Tate Modern—position themselves as bastions of the arts and leading
figures in the contemporary art world. Subverting performance against the
museum places Tate in an uncomfortable situation in which by intervening,
they would be shutting down the same kind of avant-garde and progressive
art of which they claim to be advocates. In a similar way, BP or not BP?—
who started out as a Shakespeare-themed theatrical activist troupe called
Reclaim Shakespeare Company—has reclaimed and subverted Shakespeare
in order to stage anti-BP plays that denounce the oil company. Their first
performances involved invading stages minutes before the curtain would
go up at the BP-sponsored Royal Shakespeare Company plays, and their
­Shakespearean form helped them ensure audience support in that context.
While there are many reasons why activists resort to art practice as a form
of action, which include enhancing the experience of activism and gener-
ating spaces for imagining new alternatives (Shepard 2011), in the case of
protests that specifically target cultural institutions this choice is in large
part also a strategic one.

Instrumentalisation
Considering the role of strategy in certain art activist practices—­particularly
those that have a direct action or interventionist aspect—it is inevitable that
I return to the issue of the instrumentalisation of the arts briefly discussed
in the introduction, and implicitly or explicitly addressed by various art ac-
tivists whose words I have included in this book. Art activists within Shell
Out Sounds, for instance, offer contrasting views on the strategic and in-
strumental use of art as protest and direct action, some supporting a view
of art as a strategic way of occupying certain spaces and performing con-
frontational politics, and others advocating for a view of art as intrinsically
political and able to effect change because of its potential to communicate
and move people.
A long-standing question is whether a kind of art practice that is condi-
tioned by a political agenda and a set of objectives that frames it can truly be
‘free’ or not, and whether this freedom from instrumentalisation is indeed
a necessary condition for something to be understood as art. In the realms
of art history and art theory there still seems to be a strong resistance to art
 Towards a theory of art activism  185
that is closely tied to concrete campaigns and political objectives (­Sholette
2017), and these kinds of practices are usually dismissed as not art, but
something else (Jelinek 2013). As part of her argument differentiating art
from activism, Jelinek claims that,

If an artist is concerned to make art, they will conform to artworld dis-

course and its prescriptions. If, on the other hand, a person is concerned
with doing good things in the world, their focus will lie elsewhere, with no
regard to artworld norms and discourse.
(Jelinek 2013:95)

The first problem with Jelinek’s argument is that she positions the norms
and discourse of the art world as necessary conditions for art, when these
are only conditions for art that functions within the institutional and/or
commercial circuits. Limiting the concept of art to that which is institu-
tionalised would automatically dismiss endless other art forms, from street
art to the work of non-professional artists and of course, art activism.
­Second, as previous chapters have shown, while art activists might reject
the norms and institutions of the art world, Jelinek’s proposal that activists
making art do not care about art world discourse is not true. Many activ-
ist groups that produce art as a form of protest are very much interested
in producing work that has ‘high artistic value’, especially if they have a
background in the arts themselves. Having emerged from the context of po-
litical activism, the political goal or objective of these actions is ultimately
what initiated them, but their aesthetic considerations can in most cases be
as important as their goals—even if they do stand against the norms and
structures of the institution. This divide between arts and politics not only
affects the way art activism is regarded by art critics and historians, but
it is also a division that is applied within the institutional art world itself,
and that is utilised for dismissing the work of artists working on social,
political, and identity issues (this brings us back to the earlier debate on
aesthetics versus ethics). As bell hooks explains, in relation to political art
made by people of colour:

The inability of unenlightened critics and artists who have not divested
themselves of white-supremacist thinking to accept that an individual
may engage the particular in relation to race, gender, or class while si-
multaneously evoking an aesthetic that transcends these categories con-
tinues to be the standpoint that overdetermines the critical reception
of art created by people of color. Any work by these artists that overtly
articulates and calls attention to these concerns is automatically seen
as “political” and lacking in appreciation for aesthetic concerns. Yet no
artist from any marginalized group has ever suggested aesthetic merit
is not relevant.
(hooks 1995:102)
186  Towards a theory of art activism
It is important to note that while so-called ‘political’ or ‘activist’ art has had
its moments of being in vogue, most notably in the last five to ten years, the
dismissal of work by artists of colour and Global South artists working on
political issues is still ingrained in the art system.
Returning to the idea of instrumentalisation, and considering the relation-
ship between aesthetics, process, and strategy in art activism, we can see art
activism as instrumentalised art practice, a concept discussed in ­Chapter 6.
But does this necessarily mean that artistic freedom is compromised, or that
art becomes just an instrument in a campaign or action? Marcuse states that
“the risk to the degradation of the meaning of art through its instrumen-
talisation, as always with its commodification, is great” (Marcuse 2007:23).
But as Stallabrass argues, contemporary institutional art practice, which is
widely regarded as autonomous and free, is indeed increasingly instrumen-
talised by the forces of capital:

The uses to which art is put, and the identity of those who use it, are
often far from mysterious. Since the fall of Eastern European Com-
munism and the emergence of capitalism as a truly global system, these
uses have become both more advanced and more evident.
(Stallabrass 2004:10)

Art activism is distinct from institutional art in that it is instrumentalised

not for reasons of economic development or for sustaining the power of a
‘regime culture’ (Marcuse 2007). Instead, it is guided by visions of social
change that allow it to be a prefigurative practice, a space for expression,
and a space for developing political subjectivities, in an attempt to enact
through practice the values and processes of a future ideal social config-
uration. Instrumentalisation, in this case, is not the restriction of artistic
freedom, but the reason why these practices adhere to democratic, open
and horizontal principles, and what leads them to become alternative non-­
institutional spaces for transformative art practice. As Stallabrass argues,
dismissing the myth of the useless artwork as most pure, “it is works of evi-
dent use that press on the contradictions inherent in the systems of art, that
seek to liberate themselves from capital’s servitude” (Stallabrass 2004:201).7

Ethics
Issues of ethics are intrinsically interwoven with both politics and aesthet-
ics. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the aesthetic from the
political and the ethical in collaborative art (Charnley 2011:42) as the cate-
gories of form, content, and objective blur. Furthermore, as this book has
argued (for instance, in relation to psychogeographical practice), the issue
of ethics in art is inseparable from context and the wider relations of power
that surround a practice, since “ethical questions are invariably implicated
in social and economic ones” (Butler 2015:23).
 Towards a theory of art activism  187
In the debate on participatory and socially engaged practices led by
figures such as Bishop (2012) and Kester (2011), and discussed at multiple
points in this book, the place of ethics in art is an issue of contention. Kim
Charnley argues that

The ‘aesthetic’ in Kester’s ‘dialogical aesthetics’ is fundamentally an

ethical practice of engagement with the other. Yet for Bishop, the ‘ethi-
cal turn’ is a threat to the authorial autonomy and complexity that are
the sine qua non of art as aesthetic practice. Both critics accuse the other
of placing in jeopardy the political power of art.
(Charnley 2011:39)

Bishop, continues Charnley, ends up naturalising the exclusive nature and

economic power of the arts for the sake of autonomy, while Kester equates
this autonomy with inequality. “Both arguments are struggling with the
contradiction that is created when art’s autonomous criticality is superim-
posed onto art as a socio-economic nexus of power” (Charnley 2011:49).
But both authors remain focused on professional art practice (as Kester’s
dialogical art is still art produced by professional artists who collaborate
with local communities). Looking at art activism and in particular its po-
sition with respect to the institutional art world opens up other perspec-
tives on ethics and power, particularly around the negotiation of artistic
objectives, strategic political ones, and the commitment to prefigurative
processes and social relations that do not reproduce forms of social and
political oppression.

Conclusion
Having brought together what I argue are some of the key elements of
art activist practice and applied these as analytical categories for look-
ing at the processes of different groups, I have attempted to provide the
reader with a deeper understanding of the way in which art activist
practices work, and what it is that distinguishes this kind of aesthetic-
political practice from other aesthetic and political forms of expression and
action. Art activism, as this chapter has shown, is defined by its dual na-
ture as aesthetic and political practice, and by the tensions and negotiations
through which this duality is manifested. In this last section I will explore
these tensions further in order better to understand how this tension in-
forms art activist processes, and suggest a framework that can explain the
ways in which the political and aesthetic facets of this practice interact.
The tension between aesthetics and politics in art activism is present
from the stages of creative planning to the dual embodied experience, the
construction of collective identities, and the forms of participation that
it allows. It also governs the relationship these groups have with cultural
institutions as political targets, reclaimed sites, aesthetic referents, and
188  Towards a theory of art activism
symbols of elitist culture. The specific negotiations in which this duality
and tension are manifested include not only the relationship between po-
litical strategy and aesthetic objectives, but also the ways in which both
strategy and aesthetics relate to the prefigurative approach taken by art
activists.
The duality that emerges from the aesthetic and political aspects of art
activist practice is therefore manifested in a triad relation that includes both
strategy and prefiguration as ways in which the political aspect of the prac-
tice is developed and manifested. What examples given in this book sug-
gest is that the tension between aesthetics and strategy means a negotiation
between artistic objectives and efficacy towards achieving political goals;
the tension between aesthetics and prefiguration is manifested in the nego-
tiation between artistic quality (and artistic freedom) and ethics; and the
tension between strategy and prefiguration is visible in the choices made
between efficacy and ethics, meaning producing work that is not only stra-
tegic towards achieving a political goal, but that enacts a groups’ values in
the now (Figure 8.1).
The tension between strategy and aesthetics, between aesthetics and pre-
figuration, and between prefiguration and strategy are present in the prac-
tice of all the groups presented here, but the ways in which they negotiate
and reconcile the different aspects of their practice will vary. In the work of
Left Front Art, for instance, the transgressive values and aesthetics of art-
ists often need to be negotiated in the trade union context, sacrificing pre-
figurative forms of action and art making for the strategic sake of bringing
a political message inside the institution of the trade union. This is different
when they organise events and actions in other contexts. In the work of Shell
Out Sounds, aesthetic quality is in constant tension with both the group’s
intention to maintain an open, democratic, and prefigurative practice, and
with their need to put on strategic, effective performances. The way in which

PREFIGURATION

Artistic quality Ethics vs.

vs. ethics efficacy

AESTHETICS STRATEGY

Artistic quality
vs. efficacy

Figure 8.1   Strategy-aesthetics-prefiguration triad of art activism.

 Towards a theory of art activism  189
these tensions are negotiated is also linked to the ways in which individual
and collective experiences interact, as previous sections in this chapter have
shown.
In the instances of prefiguration that these groups enact, however, there is
an attempt to reconcile the tensions present in their practice. As discussed
in reference to participation, for instance, performances in which partici-
pation is not regarded as irreconcilable with artistic quality, but rather em-
braced as an opportunity for a particular kind of (ethical) ­aesthetics, give
place to actions that allow a prefigurative form of art making to emerge, in
which the aesthetics of a performance are the result of political values and
objectives in action. Strategy, aesthetics, and the prefigurative enactment of
horizontal and democratic values can be seen as the three components of a
triad of art activism, but prefiguration in this case is not only one of three
components; it is also the process and approach that can allow the solving
of tensions between strategy and aesthetics, allowing each e­ lement to feed
off the other. Prefiguration is the key towards reconciling tensions between
aesthetics and strategy because a prefigurative approach entails building a
kind of practice that is sustainable, reflects and enacts a series of values, and
strives to make art in a way that brings together means and ends. When pre-
figuration is embraced and it is in synchronicity with strategy and a­ esthetics
rather than in tension, transgression and strategic approaches become
part of a constructive—in addition to antagonistic—force, ­opening spaces
that go beyond critique and instead build alternative forms of art making
rooted in the political. It is key here to think of p­ refiguration as “a way of
understanding the broader significance of movement praxis—and as such
any numbers of seemingly ‘instrumental’ actions have their place within the
larger process of prefiguration” (Maeckelbergh 2016:125).
As Lucy Lippard has argued, “[t]he intricately structural quality that
characterizes activist art results from the complexity of the position these
artists find themselves in, fraught as it is with economic, aesthetic, and polit-
ical contradictions” (Lippard 1984:355). Pursuing a holistically prefigurative
approach opens up greater potential for art activists to build a kind of prac-
tice that can pursue and achieve their political and aesthetic goals, while
building sustainable, democratic artistic practice and forms of organising,
sharing, and living.

Notes
1 An example of this would be religious-environmental direct action groups.
2 Morag Rose, personal interview (2014).
3 John Jordan, personal interview (2014).
4 This was also the case for Shell Out Sounds. When Shell stopped sponsoring the
Southbank Centre Classical Season, the group went through a hiatus, but then
continued to do sporadic performances at other Shell-sponsored venues.
5 It is important to also consider whether an aesthetic judgement of a perfor-
mance action necessarily implies referring to a certain canon—for example,
190  Towards a theory of art activism
one emerging from a Western tradition of art making and understanding of
­aesthetics—or whether judging a piece on aesthetic grounds can escape this, a
question I will hopefully be able to explore indepth on another occasion.
6 See Milliard, Coline (2012) ‘Tate Turns Down Activists’ Wind Turbine Gift’,
Blouinartinfo, http://uk.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/833991/tate-turns-down-
activists-wind-turbine-gift#. Accessed 8 May 2015.
7 The idea of instrumentalisation as freedom can also be considered in relation
to the work of William Morris, who rejected the idea of art for art’s sake and
advocated an abolition of the specialised, autonomous art sphere. Morris be-
lieved that the advancement of capitalism and the division of labour had caused
a separation between art and everyday labour, and that bringing back art into
everyday life would not only make for a better society, but was in itself a right of
every worker (Kocmanovà and Purkyné 1967). While Morris’s ideas are framed
differently to contemporary critiques of the art world and art activism and to
ideas of instrumentalisation, his work was seminal in questioning the need for
artistic autonomy, and is still relevant today when examining the relationship
between art, labour, and activism.

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Afterword

Chapter 8 presented my proposal for the foundations of a theory of art ac-

tivism that is focused on the processes and politics of practice, as opposed to
formal aspects and outcomes. In the introduction to this book I argued that
there were methodological as well as ontological issues to consider in rela-
tion to the literature on art and politics. Until now, processes of art activism
have not been examined in depth in the literature on social movements. At the
same time, most literature on art activism and political art seems to emerge
from the limited framework of art theory, and, more often than not, work
looking at the politics of engaged art practice still focuses on art that develops
within an institutional context. Furthermore, there is a lack of ethnographic
studies on art activism that offer an inside perspective on micro-politics.
This book aimed to provide an interdisciplinary perspective to the study
of art activism that would bridge this gap by bringing together theories from
social movement studies and art theory, in order to grasp some of the often
neglected particularities of art activism as a practice. This study is therefore
not only an ethnographic exploration of art activism in the UK, but also a
call for further interdisciplinary work that can lead to a deeper understand-
ing of creativity and politics at a time of global social and political unrest.
The current climate calls for flexible, adaptable techniques of opposition,
resistance, and political mobilisation (Amin and Thrift 2013:130). It also
calls for innovative and sustainable ways of creating alternative structures
and organisations.
The findings presented here emerge from research on art activism in the UK,
but speak to wider contemporary issues in research and in practice. Rethinking
collective identity and the idea of the personal as political are paramount at a
time when the individualisation of everyday life is being fuelled by increasingly
precarious labour practices and the myth of meritocracy, and when identity
politics are both crucial to movements fighting against institutional violence
in the Global North and South, yet are being challenged by the Right as well
as by sectors of the Left. Considering the multiple layers of transgression in art
activism and approaching it as a contextualised experience as well as a kind
of relationship lays the ground for important questions on the relationship be-
tween personal transformations and structural ones, and how art and creativity
194  Afterword
can facilitate experiences that address both. The findings in this book therefore
speak to other contexts beyond art activism, including education, community
work, and other forms of art practice and of organising.
Findings on prefiguration will also hopefully speak to such practices, as
will my analysis of the relationship between art activists and institutions.
While this analysis was focused and looked specifically at how art activists
interact with these organisations, it is hoped that this will contribute to fur-
ther thinking on the role of cultural institutions in contemporary society, and
whether cultural institutions can be allies in initiatives for structural change,
or whether unsanctioned appropriations of cultural spaces are the only way
of shifting the symbolic power of museums and galleries and using them as
platforms for uncompromised demands. It is also hoped that the analysis of
prefigurative art activist practice offered here can be useful for both scholars
and practitioners in imagining new ways of making art that reacts to the in-
creasingly commercialised and ‘neoliberalised’ state of the art world.
These final thoughts are being written at the time of a Trump presidency.
At a time of the UK’s negotiations for exiting the European Union. At a time
of a resurge of the Right across Latin America. And at the time of major
displacement of people in North Africa and West Asia who are fleeing war
and repression. But while several major political events and instances of
institutional violence, austerity measures, and war have shaken the world
in the last few years, we have also witnessed the emergence of strong move-
ments of resistance. Black Lives Matter in the US stood up against contin-
ued institutional racism and violence on black citizens. Menos in Argentina,
Brazil, Guatemala, and other countries in Latin America rose against gen-
der violence and for gender equality. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has
put the struggle between environmental justice and land rights and ruthless
capitalism, on the international news agenda. And the Labour Party in the
UK has seen a resurge under a new leadership, backed by young voters as
well as strong networks of grassroots activists and organisations that are
beginning to re-engage with mainstream politics.
Considering the global economic and political climate, this book ends
with one final affirmation of the crucial role of art and creativity in surviv-
ing hardship, in fighting the good fight, and in constructing new alterna-
tives. We must continue to create spaces for embodied, collective, creative
experiences of political agency. And we must continue to search for the bal-
ance between artistic goals, strategy, and prefigurative approaches, in the
hope that we can fulfil the ‘dual function of affirmation and negation’ (Bell
2017:80) leading to a sustainable practice in art activism that is transforma-
tive on individual, collective, and structural levels.

References
Amin, Ash and Thirft, Nigel (2013) Arts of the Political: New Openings for the Left,
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Bell, David M. (2017) ‘The Politics of Participatory Art’, Political Studies Review
15(1): 73–83.
Index

aesthetics 5, 6, 7–8, 182; and politics 42, ethics 186–87

82, 133, 134; and process 182–83
art activism 1–2, 18, 37, 71, 121, 132, flâneur 108 see also dérive
133, 135, 138; in the UK 18, 100,
133–34 horizontality 80 see also prefiguration
Art Not Oil 26, 145, 147–48, 150,
158–59, 167 institutional critique 149–150, 157–59
autonomy of the arts 141–43 instrumentalisation of art 134–35, 137,
184–86
Bishop, Claire 46–7, 66, 83, 178–79, 187 interdisciplinarity 3, 179
Black Lives Matter 96, 194
BP or not BP? 76, 80, 146, 167, 176–77, Kester, Grant 8, 47, 64, 187
184; BP Vikings performance
action 50–4, 55–6, 59–60; and other Left Front Art 88, 97, 168–69, 171–72;
movements 153–54, 179; and site- and the LGBTQIA movement 91–2,
specificity 145–46, 158, 152–53 93; and the trade union 89–91, 93,
Butler, Judith 72, 95, 96, 173, 181 180, 188
Liberate Tate 84n9, 145, 146, 177, 180,
carnivalesque 12, 87 183–84
collaboration 54, 105–06 Loiterers Resistance Movement
collective identity 10, 30–2, 163–66; (LRM) 101–02, 166, 172, 180;
and ideology 32, 38–40, 42; and internal processes 105–06, 107,
individual narratives 164, and self- 110, 111–12, 176; and play 104;
transformation 165–66 and transgression 103, 175; walks
Collins, Onysha 122 101, 102–03, 180 see also Loitering
contentious politics 9, 176 with Intent
Crow, Liz 94–6, 97, 171 Loitering with Intent: The Art and
Politics of Walking in Manchester and
decolonisation 118, 154 Beyond (exhibition) 106–07
democratisation of the arts 151 London Mexico Solidarity 154
dérive 100, 108
disability 94, 110 Melucci, Alberto 10, 30–1, 164
dissensus 5, 68, 131, 133, 136, 174 Museum Detox Network 154
Museum Liberation Movement 154–55
embodiment 11–3, 103, 111, 172–73; in
performance actions 57–8, 94–6, 123, neoliberalism 1, 84
170–72; and performativity 123 new social movement theory (NSM) 10,
emotions 13–15 11, 30
196 Index
Occupy Movement 144, 147 Shake! 115–16, 180; and participation
Onio, Antonio 88, 95, 175 168, 169, 180, 181; and radical
pedagogies 116–18; and spoken
P A N D E M I C 143–144, 180 word 124–26, 173; and self-
participation 45–6, 47–9, 56, 59–60, 107, preservation 126–28, 165; and
167–68; political participation 58–9, storytelling 120–21, 136; as activism
169–170 see participatory art 131–34, as prefigurative practice
participatory art 46, 54, 57–8, 178; types 137–38
of participation 55–6 Shell Out Sounds 26, 38, 47–9, 55,
pedagogy (radical) 116–18 66–9, 73–7, 146–47, 148; and
performance 15–7, 184; and politics 141, prefiguration 79–81, 176–78, 184,
157, 159 188; Carols not Barrels performance
performance action 16, 49–50, 171–72 78–79; collective identity of 33–6,
performativity 17, 72–4, 122, 123, 40–1, 163–64
173–74; and affect 174 site-specific art 145, 147–48, 151–54
play 103–04 Situationist International (situationism)
politics 5, 8 100, 111
political subjectivity 123, 124, 133 socially-engaged art 6–7, 47
prefiguration 65–6, 75, 79, 80–1, 83, 131, social movements: and narratives 32–33
137–38, 176–77; and aesthetics 177–78 social practice 7
psychogeography 100, 102–03, 108–09, spoken word 119–120, 123; techniques
110, 112; and ethics 110–11; and of 124; as transformative 125–26
gender 108, 109; and magic 103–04; strategy 183–84
and race 108 subaltern public 132
public art 99–100
public space 99–100; and gender 109–10; transgression 64–5, 68–70, 71–2, 82–3,
museum as 155–56 87, 174–75; and embodiment 90, 93–5,
public sphere 3–4, 133, 156–57, 181; and 97; and prefiguration 175; spatial 175
counterpublics 136, 181 see subaltern trade unions 89; and the arts 89,
public; and embodiment 181–82 91–2; and the LGBTQIA movement
89–91, 93
Rancière, Jacques 2, 5, 7–8, 165–66 triad of art activism 188–89
Resource mobilisation theory (RMT)
9–10 Voices that Shake! see Shake!
Reverend Billy 34, 71, 73 vulnerability 95, 96
Rockson, Annie 122–23
walking 108; as art 105, 172; and class
self-transformation 119, 125, 126–27, 110; and disability 110; as politics 105,
129; and story-telling 120–21; and 172, 110
structural change 137, 138, 165–66 Well-being 127–28