How is arts related to politics

Art is politics.. I will read your article often and sympathize with it. A Korean man who loves art sends it to you. Search this site Submit Search. The Daily Utah Chronicle.

Google Courtesy of luxelifeatl. Share on Facebook. Share on Twitter. Share via Email. Write for Us. Want your voice to be heard? Submit a letter to the editor , send us an op-ed pitch , or check out our open positions for the chance to be published by The Daily Utah Chronicle. Latest Stories. Close Modal Window. To be sure, photographs that abstract from the conditions they reference without specifying these conditions with nonphotographic means are problematic.

Photography, then, produces knowledge not only about the event it references but also about the wider social, economic, and political configurations within which it operates.

In the course of the project, the subject moves from being a subject to being a co-artist, exerting much more influence on the way he or she gets represented than can normally be observed in photojournalism.

I revisit this idea in the section on peace and participation. But what prevents us from defining peace as the main event? Visual representations of peace in journalism and the visual arts most often reference peace negatively: by depicting its absence; by showing war, violence, and destruction realistically within the limits of visual representation in order to trigger opposition to war; and by intervening photographically in violent situations so that others can intervene in the conditions depicted with other, nonphotographic, and supposedly more effective means.

Positive approaches to the visualization of peace are not the rule; the question of what a photography of peace would have to look like is not often asked. Peace photography as a concept depends for its emergence and establishment on the linguistic designation of meaning: a specific body of photographic work has to be defined and subsequently understood as peace photography by a significant number of people in order for peace photography to come into existence.

Thus, what are the conditions for a specific body of photographic work meaningfully to be referred to as peace photography? Meaningfully , because in principle, every photographic work can discursively be constructed as peace photography. Furthermore, based on a narrow, negative understanding of peace—peace as absence of organized, large-scale physical force—the vast majority of photographs produced at any given point in time, including the most trivial ones, would qualify as peace photographs; every photograph of a conflict that is dealt with nonviolently would be a photograph of peace.

Such a wide understanding of peace photography reflecting a narrow, negative understanding of peace would be misleading. Many photographs collected in family albums or their electronic equivalents are, due to the absence of depictions of physical force, photographs of at least negative peace. Such photographs tend to hide power relationships and forms of domination and exploitation that would undermine the seeming peacefulness of both the photographs and the relationships depicted; other portraits may fail to communicate patterns of love and amity prevailing among those depicted.

Thus, a wide understanding of peace photography would offer little satisfaction, devaluing and trivializing the whole idea of peace photography by endlessly expanding it. One path toward a narrow concept of peace photography is a wider understanding of peace; the more ambitious the understanding of peace is, the fewer pictures qualify as peace photographs.

What some viewers, based on their individual and collective socializations, may regard as a photograph of peace may be seen by others as a photograph of violence. Seemingly peaceful photographs may show conditions that, for some at least, are not peaceful at all. It is for this reason that no attempt is made here to identify a given image as a universal peace photograph. Perceptional discrepancy, interpretive openness, and cultural contextualization make the search for generalizable laws governing the operation of peace photography and its perception difficult and perhaps even pointless.

What is not pointless, however, is exploring the general conditions of possibility for peace photography. However, any conceptualization of peace photography is derivative of the underlying concept of peace, and this dependence limits the applicability of any conceptual approach to peace photography. Given the absence of a universal understanding of, and the impossibility of a neutral, unpolitical approach to, peace, any conceptual approach to peace photography reflects the culture within which it is being developed and can claim validity only within this culture.

In the absence of universal agreement on the meaning of peace, there can be no universal agreement on peace photography, either. Any conceptual approach to peace photography is limited, but different approaches to peace photography can be discussed and compared with one another.

Furthermore, it is also difficult to establish a causal connection between photography and peace. Even in the absence of a causal connection, however, things may be connected with one another.

For example, they may be connected episodically. A good starting point for reflections on peace photography—or peace photographies—is aftermath photography see above. After all, aftermath photography visualizes the end of the use of physical force.

Without visualizing paths to peace, then, aftermath photography does not qualify as peace photography. One possible approach to peace photography would be to focus on the visualization of the evolution from aftermath of war to prelude to peace. Without ignoring history, such an approach would have to go beyond constantly referring back to what was and instead point forward to what will be or to what might be, to peace or to peace as a potentiality. Such photography would at the same time be linked with and decoupled from preceding violence, the existence of which it nevertheless acknowledges.

Focusing on peace as a potentiality makes peace photography possible even in the absence of peace and this would be the answer to the question of how that which does not exist could possibly be visualized. Photography can also look back, in times of, or following, war and violence, at photographs taken at a point in time when peace still prevailed. Regarding such photographs may seem to be looking at photographs of peace at least in comparison to what came later.

Rather than being only an expression of nostalgia which probably is part of the viewing experience , showing that some form of peace had been possible before violence gained the upper hand may also indicate that peace might be possible again should violence stop. Photography can also visualize postconflict cooperation between former perpetrators and victims. If such cooperation emerges authentically from the community bottom-up rather than being imposed by policymakers top-down , then photographic documentation, as one element among many others, can contribute to the normalization of cooperation and perhaps to reconciliation.

Peace photography may also reference a point in time when the preceding violence stops being the single most important reference point for individuals and groups of people formerly exposed to violence. It may visualize the replacement of experiences of violent change with expectations of peaceful change while simultaneously acknowledging that this is not a linear process, but rather one characterized by ups and downs, progression and regression.

None of these visual approaches, however, will create peace photography without assistance to be provided by linguistic designations of meaning shared by a significant number of people. Artivism is a term used by the visual artist JR to describe his double subject position as an artist and a political activist acting on behalf of and together with the subjects depicted in his work.

To assess his work, it is insufficient to analyze audience response, either. Ideally, the artist takes exactly the pictures that the subjects depicted would have taken had they themselves taken the pictures. The subjects depicted become agents of their own image, and the photographer becomes a vehicle by means of which the subjects exert agency.

Why is this important? First, being an agent of their own image is important because, based on a belief in the power of the visible, it gives the subjects the chance to present their points of view; to break with visual stigmatization and routinized patterns of representation; to transform representation into self-representation; and to confront viewers with unexpected images, thus potentially altering the ways the subjects depicted are seen by others.

Second, being an agent of their own image is important because it challenges some of the criticisms regularly articulated in connection with photographic representations of human beings see above , especially criticisms of exploitation and subjugation, indicating that things are slightly more complicated.

The women represented by JR, or better, the women who represent themselves with the help of JR, do not seem to feel exploited, exposed as they are to the gaze of others. I think that this project will help the women of Kibera. Furthermore, that individual voices support this project, hoping that visibility will somehow improve their living conditions, is sociologically quite irrelevant as long as it disregards the overall political and economic configurations within which the project unfolds.

Still, many critics focusing on exploitation and subjugation seem to underestimate the importance of such projects to local people, and this importance stems from two factors: visibility connected with hope; hope, however, can be frustrated and participation.

This is so regardless of the limitations of such collaborative projects—and the occasional hyperbole linking such projects with emancipation, democratization, and empowerment—as noted by photographer Eric Gottesman:.

There are questions like: Who is editing this material? Where is it being shown? For what purpose? As such it does not devalue the importance of collaborative projects to those who are involved in them as co-artists and therefore as political actors communicating, through art, with a wider community.

Artivism is not limited to artists. Politically engaged citizens can become artivists too—as citizen photographers see Figure 1 , for example, or as citizens engaged in countersurveillance that challenges authority. And the open-access nature of their work is a contribution not only to political transparency, but also to the visual-discursive construction of democracy. Furthermore, challenging state authorities as citizen photographers is not a contest among equals, but one characterized by profoundly unequal power positions from which actors operate.

Indeed, identity cannot be thought of without memory; it serves as glue with which to connect with one another otherwise disconnected points in time so as to form a seemingly coherent narrative. Furthermore, for people who have nothing other than photographs to remember people they knew and loved by, photographs have an important memory- and identity-constructing purpose. Art assists marginalized people in reappropriating memories that have been expropriated in violent social processes.

Africa remix is part of a larger trend to address African photography—and to address Africa photographically—in terms of African subjectivity, self-determination, and self-representation. Such self-representation has been noted above in connection with participatory photography projects as an important departure from traditional ways of representing marginalized groups of people.

It is also important to note that these artists, by employing all sorts of digital technologies and combining them skillfully, successfully challenge widely held assumptions of African backwardness, technological and otherwise.

While it would be tempting to engage with this photography in detail, I want to stop here. Images are unpredictable and uncontrollable, no matter how hard authorities try to control them. Hyperbole should be avoided, however. Causal connections alleged to exist between the regime of the image and the social world—for example, between images and digital culture on the one hand and emancipation, democratization, and empowerment on the other—are often wishful thinking and largely useless unless supported by evidence.

And if it is a common language, are we facing a non-hierarchical kind of communication among equals? Do networks bypass boundaries—and if so, what does that mean precisely? The production and distribution of images may be more democratic than before, but it does not follow that each and every person worldwide would equally participate in image making and dissemination.

Patterns of exclusion and inclusion can be observed with regard to both people participating in different subject positions in digital media and areas covered by digital media.

Shapiro, eds. Tauris, , Tauris, In such cases art, though not being critical of the established opinion, may or may be regarded, by some at least, as critical of something else: it may be critical of criticism of the established opinion , for example, thus stabilizing the prevailing power configurations.

Sherman and Terry Nardin, eds. London and New York: Verso, ; W. Nancy S. Daniel J. Cynthia Young, vol. Tauris, , 97— Norton , The following page references in the text are to this book. See also Simon Baker and Shoair Mavlian, eds. Tauris, , 53 emphasis added. Love and Mark Mattern, eds. Awam Ampka Lisbon: Sextante Editora, , All Rights Reserved.

Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice. Oxford Handbooks Online. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. And art can serve as a way of preserving important historical events. Take the collection of portraits in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

Every year, the Smithsonian commissions portraits of a U. Apart from being magnificent art pieces in their own right, these portraits also serve as chronicles of American history. The unveiling of Barack and Michelle Obama portraits was particularly significant, since for the first time in history both the sitters and the artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald were African Americans.

Of course, not all political art is aimed at making the world a better place and changing the status quo. There are certain art pieces, deliberately created to support the current power structures in society. Sometimes artists are even commissioned to make pieces that support a certain political doctrine. This type of politically-charged art is usually called propaganda.

Propaganda art can take many forms such as paintings, sculptures, public art, etc. Political posters created during the Cold War are usually considered the purest form of propaganda in visual arts.

Since politics and art are entangled in so many ways, it is almost impossible to cover all aspects in one post. Our expert speaker will show you how artists from diverse backgrounds are using their creative practices to deal with current political and social problems.

Arts , Politics By thedifferentlevel 0 0. Memory Preservation Everything we do today will eventually become history. Leave a Reply Cancel reply. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. Manage consent. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website.

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