Artistic and Political Activism

Call for Papers, PERIPHERIE, Issue 144 (November 2016)

English version
The journal PERIPHERIE is planning a special issue on the intersections of art and political activism. The encounter, cooperation and entanglement of artistic intervention and social movements
are, of course, no new phenomena. Artists and graphic designers have long designed banners,
yers, posters and wall paintings, thus expressing political content through an aesthetic form.
The same is true for political songs, prose, lyric poetry, grafti, lm and photography. Performative concepts such as the Theatre of the Oppressed create temporary space for public
actions. These identify social grievances, and experiment with alternative ways of acting and
reacting. In a similar vein, guerrilla communication seeks to shed light on situations that are
often overlooked. Guerrilla gardening projects, that have become popular over the past years,
intervene in urban planning, and create new space for interaction and communication. At the
same time though, they have been integrated into the commodity system of art, as could be
witnessed at the last documenta art fair in Kassel. A further example for the combination of art
and political activism are the escraches developed by the Argentine group H.I.J.O.S. Escraches
are colourful and noisy protests that seek to confront and expose those military ofcials that
are accused of having committed human rights violations during the last dictatorship and which
are not held to account by the State. From this collaboration between social movements and
artists collectives, new forms of civil disobedience emerged.
Within the European solidarity movement and in the context of protests against migration
regimes, activists experimented with new forms of happenings. In many cases, both the planning
of the protest and the reections on conceptual questions and its form is supported by artists.
There are also numerous examples in which critique targeting the legacy of colonialism draws
on aesthetic forms of expression. Refugees and migrants that ght for their rights in Europe
have created and participated in artistic projects. Drive, that is, the unplanned discovery of
urban spaces as introduced by French situationists, serves as a source for inspiration until now.
In this vein, the feminist collective Mujeres Creando (Bolivia), Precarias a la Deriva (Spain) or
Mujeres Pblicos (Argentina) have invented new variants of the drive. Here, the intention-less
wandering around, characteristic of the Flaneur, has been turned into a situated space of inquiry
for the investigation of everyday situations. In many African cities Hip-Hop groups occupy a
terrain between youth protest and gang crime. In Burkina Faso, the band SamsK Le Jah has
played a central role for mobilisation. Grafti and graphical works became important ways of
expression within the democratisation movement in northern Africa and Turkey.
This special issue seeks to inquire into the conditions under which political and artistic
activism cross paths or even become undistinguishable. It is interested in the potentialities and
problems that follow from this merger for an emancipatory project. In accordance with the

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Call for Papers, English version

Artistic and Political Activism

general focus of the PERIPHERIE, we are particularly interested in peripheral regions and in the
global movement of ideas, concepts and people.
- How do mass media, event culture, political censorship, literacy rate, the art market, public
and private funding inuence the concurrence of artistic and political protest?
- In which ways do changes and processes of differentiation in our understanding of the
arts inuence the way in which artists participations in social movements is perceived?
- In which ways do artistic forms and positions contribute to the formation of social movements and political analysis? To what extent do social movements provide the material for
art projects. Does this cooperation open up real or utopian space?
- In which ways does the art market impinge on the relationship between art and politics?
What happens to protest and political demands when they become part of an exhibition?
- How does the label art change the way in which activities are perceived that otherwise
would be considered to be political? To what extend does this open up space for political
action?
- How to understand the relationship between those affected by social inequality, exclusion
and oppression on the one hand, and those that express their solidarity, on the other? In
which ways does artistic activism inuence who speaks when, and for whom? Can social
movements contribute to a democratisation of the arts?
- To what extent do western funding institutions support art projects in the global South as
a means to strengthen civil society? What are the dangers and paradoxes that come with
this praxis?
We are looking for contributions that look at examples of cooperation between artists and
social movements in the global South and situate them within the context of their historical
political, social and economic backdrop. We are also interested in pertinent theoretical inquiries into the conictive relationship between art and political activism.
We welcome academic articles (30.000-50.000 characters) as well as artistic investigations
into the subject matter in different formats (essays/images/fragments). Texts can be submitted
in German, English or Spanish. All contributions will be peer reviewed. If accepted for publication, a translation into German will be arranged.
Deadline for submissions is May 3rd, 2016.
Please send inquiries and manuscripts to info@zeitschrift-peripherie.de
A style guide is available at http://www.zeitschrift-peripherie.de

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