[E]ssentially, it’s about: how can you subvert an artistic process to also be a useful one?...I think what’s happening in my practice is that I’m realizing that there’s an archipelago of ...
[P]eople want to have it both ways. They want to say "This is my form of intervention in the world. This is how I'm going to change the world -- but don't ask me how because I'm an ...
I think of that “why?” question. For artists who are really serious about doing this kind of change based work, many of them come to it with a kind of moral imperative. And the folks ...
What kinds of worlds do not yet fully exist for these people that they would like to see enacted? And they just sort of come together and they know. World-making [as José Muñoz names it] ...
“If we can somehow observe the process that happens between a work of art and an idea reaching a community, and then that community taking a defiant form of action, that’s the black box. ...
I think it’s about creating a situation where we do art with political discourse inside an economical-political structure that is in itself transformative. So it’s not so much what we ...
I think that art is the language of possibility. Art is the language of the future, and through art we can actually create the vision of the world we want to see...To document how you're ...
“[I]t's kind of a witnessing. It's kind of an active witnessing where someone is giving you feedback. It's dialogic as you go, and that to me is a lot of the value. There's much to be said ...
I think that the arts, in terms of social change, create an indirect way for people to be able to speak and express themselves. So, you can use theatre, spoken word, visual art, ...
“We’re bringing about these extreme situations, we’re bringing about that choice where people have to respond just like in Iraq. We’re making people respond to us. The whole idea was to share that, because ...
“When I was doing grassroots work… around specific issues associated with trauma [like] state violence [and] sexual violence. I found that I wasn’t offering enough just documenting it. Witnessing is very ...
“You could go down to any commercial gallery and see political art. It has political content, it has a critique, opposition, maybe a submerged expression that was not readily validated by dominant culture. ...
“I noticed whenever something happens whether it’s some kind of disaster, some people get killed or one person gets killed, well that’s just what happens the world just keeps on turning, life goes on, and it’s disgusting but that’s just what happens. So that kind of stuff I sometimes put into ...
Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect, and filmmaker who lives and works in New York City. He was born in Santiago de Chile. Jaar has realized more than sixty public ...
It’s a long wave. I think of everything as being interdependent or part of an ecosystem, philosophically and biologically. There are urgent moments of crisis where the waves are crashing on the land, which are ...
Images operate the same way that memories do; images have this deep-seated attachment to your mind and I like to think that the images ingrain themselves into people...It really makes them want to stop for a ...
[T]here’s socially engaged art, there’s socially engaged business, and there can also be socially engaged horticulture; flowers working for different social issues, whether that’s fundraising or awareness or ...
Visual appreciation for my art is wanted I suppose, but not totally necessary...Ideally, I want my audience to react in some way either positively or negatively to my art and either a smile or smirk will keep ...
My theory is one of creative collaboration and joyous affirmation -- activating change through the inspirational power of the arts and affecting the individual on a deep emotional level, which can be ...
[T]he change has to come from socialization. It’s the way that people are being taught to interact with other people. I don’t think it’s something that’s going to come quickly; I think it’s a generational ...
It’s not that we have a vision necessarily, but we try to poke holes in the scenery - a scenery which is built up by the politicians, by the media. They are playing theatre, too, with our lives and with our ...
“Art actions relevant for today come from a place of vulnerability and radical love, from fighting back. They push back and it creates a little space, and that little space could be something more meaningful, ...
“[My] intention is to raise the topic, and on one side, be funny, and on the other side be really serious underneath; to find a way into people’s minds in a way that isn’t confrontational, because then most ...
Going back to the early days at the March on Washington...to watch people respond to us as we walked by was...people just lit up. It was 6-7 years into the epidemic by then and people were just looking for ...
“I think there is something affirming of our humanity in culture - in the community building side of things. A connective tissue, quilting all of us together and creating meaning as you strive for these ...
“That’s the thing about history, you know, history is capital. The reason why I think the distinctions are worth knowing about is while communal responses, political responses, like ACT UP are incredibly ...
"People don’t like the things that I do. At all. The problem is that I still do them. So it’s kind of like, it would be easy to throw me out for a lot of reasons, and I have gotten bounced. But I’m still ...
Innovation, surprise… when you surprise someone, you’re earning a moment because you’re opening up a space.
The surprise can open up a temporal, experiential space where anything can come in. There’s opening ...
"They denounced my work on the floor of the Senate as they passed the legislation. And President Bush publicly said he thought the work was disgraceful. So here I am 24 years old and the President of ...
"It may not effect change in the kind of physical sense that maybe we’ve been talking about, but I ...
"...in terms of success, it really became more than just the art project that’s sitting on the wall. It became something that people wanted to engage in and talk about the wider implications."
"We actually ...
In a few short years, Eve Mosher went from being an abstract sculptor who cared about the environment to an artist making powerful, engaging, and interactive public works about the climate crisis.
Kitra Cahana/The New York ...
Aaron Gach is the founder of the Center for Tactical Magic and has a notable background. As part of his art training, he studied with a magician, a ninja, and a private investigator. Under the auspices of the ...
Hans Haacke lecture
Gallatin School, New York University, April 15, 2008
S&S: As a political artist, how can you know when you’ve been successful?
Haacke: I’ve been asked that question many times, and that ...