Yates McKee: Strike Art: Contemporary Art and the Post-Occupy Condition (2016)

“The collision of activism and contemporary art, from the Seattle protests to Occupy and beyond

What is the relation of art to the practice of radical politics today? Strike Art explores this question through the historical lens of Occupy, an event that had artists at its core. Precarious, indebted, and radicalized, artists redirected their creativity from servicing the artworld into an expanded field of organizing in order to construct of a new—if internally fraught—political imaginary set off against the common enemy of the 1%. In the process, they called the bluff of a contemporary art system torn between ideals of radical critique, on the one hand, and an increasing proximity to Wall Street on the other—oftentimes directly targeting major art institutions themselves as sites of action.

Tracking the work of groups including MTL, Not an Alternative, the Illuminator, the Rolling Jubilee, and G.U.L.F, Strike Art shows how Occupy ushered in a new era of artistically-oriented direct action that continues to ramify far beyond the initial act of occupation itself into ongoing struggles surrounding labor, debt, and climate justice, concluding with a consideration of the overlaps between such work and the aesthetic practices of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Art after Occupy, McKee suggests, contains great potentials of imagination and action for a renewed left project that are still only beginning to ripen, at once shaking up and taking flight from the art system as we know it.”

Publisher Verso Books, London and New York, Feb 2016
ISBN 9781784781880, 1784781886
296 pages

Reviews: Marc James Léger (Marx & Philosophy, 2016), Philipp Kleinmichel (Radical Philosophy, 2018), Paloma Checa-Gismero (Field, 2016), John Ayscough (Visual Culture in Britain, 2017), Kristin Gecan (Chicago Review, 2016).
Discussion: Gregory Sholette, a.o. (e-flux supercommunity, 2016).
Book launch

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Jan Cohen-Cruz (ed.): Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology (1998)

“Radical Street Performance is the first volume to collect together the writings by activists, directors, performers, critics, scholars and journalists who have documented street theatre around the world.

More than thirty essays explore agit-prop, invisible theatre, demonstrations and rallies, direct action, puppetry, parades and pageants, performance art, guerrilla theatre, circuses.

These essays look at performances in Europe, Africa, China, India and both the Americas. They describe engagement with issues as diverse as abortion, colonialism, the environment and homophobia, to name only a few. Introduced by editor Jan Cohen-Cruz, the essays are organized into thematic sections: Agitating; Witnessing; Involving; Imagining; and Popularizing.”

Publisher Routledge, 1998
Performance Theory series
ISBN 0415152313, 9780415152310
302 pages

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Tim Jordan: Activism! Direct Action, Hacktivism and the Future of Society (2002)

“Many schools of thought assert that Western culture has never been more politically apathetic. Tim Jordan’s Activism! refutes this claim. In his powerful polemic, Jordan shows how acts of civil disobedience have come to dominate the political landscape. Because we inhabit such a quickly changing, high-tech and fragmented culture, the single-issue political movements and stable, conservative authorities of the past are continually being questioned. Traditional political battles have been replaced by the popular, collective practices of a new political activism. From Europe to the USA, from Australia to South America, from the Left to the Right, Jordan introduces us to the citizens who make up DIY culture: eco-activists, animal liberators, neo-fascists, ravers, anti-abortionists, squatters, hunt saboteurs and hacktivists. In his view, activism comprises a new ethics of living for the 21st century.”

Publisher Reaktion Books, 2002
Focus on Contemporary Issues series
ISBN 1861891229, 9781861891228
164 pages

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