Artivisme, Art, action politique et résistance culturelle

Art’s aim is not only to look pretty. It is also an instrument of resistance or of social or political protest. There is nothing new in this, since from Courbet’s disturbing realism to Picasso’s Guernica, up to the performances against the war in Vietnam, History is full of this «Artivism». This book ventures to describe its current dimensions. We find different movements against male chauvinism, globalization, the destruction of the environment, or apartheid. Other artists call the population to recapture the city by posing in the nude (actions by Spencer Tunick), by renaming the streets, by organizing a carnival against capital (in Barcelona in 1999). Action against over-consumption opened the door to the wildest events, in particular with the Church of Life After Shopping and its picturesque Reverend Billy, who blasts into supermarkets to exorcise the cash-registers …

• Artivisme, Art, action politique et résistance culturelle, by Stéphanie Lemoine and Samira Ouardi, Alternatives publishing house, 2010, 192 p., 39 €. December 2010.