Welcome to The Art of Occupy, a mini blog salon taking place all this week. Each day this week, two invited Bay Area guest authors discuss aspects of the art of the Occupy Movement. These authors then begin a dialogue about their ideas, which readers can continue and develop. What compels you about the Art of Occupy?
Right now, there is a lot of talk about the Occupy Movement's varied and vibrant works of art, in all media – and how these artworks have reactivated fierce debates about the possible intersections of art and political action. Today's guest authors are Theatre Bay Area staffers: Editor-in-chief Sam Hurwitt and Clay Lord, director of communications. Their blog pieces jointly address memes and meaning, and the difference between entertainment and political efficacy. Read on:
Author: CLAY LORD
TITLE: FOCUS, PEOPLE, FOCUS
If you Google image search "tea party art," you'll see a lot of pictures of little girls (and stuffed animals) drinking tea, which is to say that the vast Borgbrain that is Google cannot find, in its billions of results, a picture that more accurately portrays the art of the Tea Party movement than a watercolor of Winnie the Pooh. There is no art in the Tea Party movement—neither in their techniques (blunt, loud, indelicate) nor in their materials (diatribes, shouting matches and draconian laws). There is no art there at all.
And then there's Occupy. For every hard edge and needling demand of the Tea Party you'll find a gauzy non-specificity, a vague sense of outrage coupled with entitlement in the Occupy encampment nearby. Occupy is an extraordinary social movement, one that takes the absolute hierarchical get-in-line-ness that the Tea Party—as the right-most feathers of the right wing—epitomizes, and flips it on its head. It eschews hierarchy, eschews collective demands, takes pride in having a million different flowers blooming. It says, "Control the message? Why would I control the message? More pepper spray memes for everyone!"
And it has gathered artists to it like moths to a flame. Closet artists, performance artists, authors, actors, filmmakers, musicians. Art, in the form of the book, sat at the center of the Zuccotti Park encampment, in a shrine-like library, and is expressed in everything from the dance-like hand signals of the Community Meeting to the witty, memorable, even subtle protest signs. Maybe it's the camping, maybe it's the elaborate ritual, but there's a whimsy in the Occupy movement that belies its seriousness—a tendency to look on and say, like the Church Lady, "Well isn't that special."
Occupy is a movement that welcomes artists with open arms, but I'm not quite sure that's as great as it sounds. Because, like the queasiness I have about the entire movement, I worry that the art movements inside Occupy are more about nonspecifically feeling active than about real change. Even as Occupy continues to function like Babel after the smiting—a thousand demands, a thousand tongues, cacophony without leadership—I worry that the art of Occupy will be viewed as a happy distraction, a bon mot, a trifle—and not, as it should be, as the driving force of a movement.
I'm happy there's room there for the art, but I hope that those artmakers ensure they aren't just making their art as a welcome entertainment for the protestors, and instead work to empower the movement to real change and unity as only art can.
To read the companion piece in this salon, click here.
Clay Lord is director of communications for Theatre Bay Area. He also authors New Beans, an ArtsJournal blog on new art and new audiences.
The views represented in this Chatterbox Art & Opinion post are those of the individual author, and do not necessarily represent the views of Theatre Bay Area or its staff.
Clayton Lord
A summary of Audience 2.0, the new report on tech and the arts from the NEA
Elana McKernan
Envisioning Alternatives in #SupplyDemand
Amy Mueller
And the New Play Sector Talked (and talked, and talked, and talked)
