Joshua Wong

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From the course by Duke University

ART of the MOOC: Activism and Social Movements

49 ratings

Duke University

ART of the MOOC: Activism and Social Movements

49 ratings

This course is for activists, artists, and thinkers who wish to better understand and participate in social change. We will focus on the prolific and exciting overlap between socially engaged art and cultural practices generated by recent social movements around the world. Rather than assess the political efficacy of activities like mourning, listening, organizing, dancing, or partying, the lectures examine such cultural activities next to, and within, contemporary art practice. Included in the course are guest presentations by key artists, activists, and scholars, like: Rebecca Gomperts, Chido Govera, Gulf Labor, Hans Haacke, Sharon Hayes, Jolene Rickard, Gregory Sholette, Joshua Wong, and many more. Designed by artist and Duke professor, Pedro Lasch and co-taught by Creative Time artistic director, Nato Thompson, the course challenges learners to treat the MOOC itself as a social and artistic form. This happens mostly through the practical components, local project productions, global exchanges, and critical feedback. While no prior art making or activist experience is required, projects also offer challenging options for advanced learners. For other course offerings or language versions in this series, just search 'ART of the MOOC' inside the Coursera course catalogue.

From the lesson

Activism and Social Movements: Lectures, Guest Presentations, and Quiz

This opening segment is dedicated to the prolific and exciting overlap between socially engaged art and cultural practices generated by recent social movements around the world. Environmentalism, AIDS activism, Queer movements, Zapatismo, immigrant rallies, alter-globalization, the World Social Forum, Occupy, the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, museum boycotts, and democratic uprisings in the Middle East will be seen in dialogue with cultural producers who participate in these movements or are inspired by them. Rather than assess the political efficacy of such cultural activities, we will examine their place within contemporary art practices. Based on Listening, Organizing, Dancing, or Partying, each student’s contribution will respond to a particular social movement of their choosing.

Beka Economopoulos16:29

Gulf Labor16:17

Rebecca Gomperts10:40

Leonidas Martin14:35

Naeem Mohaiemen11:30

Joshua Wong11:32

Meet the Instructors

Nato Thompson
Chief Curator
Creative Time
Pedro Lasch
Visual Artist and Associate Research Professor
Duke Art, Art History & Visual Studies

Hello everyone, we're here at Art of the Mooc with Joshua Wong.

Joshua is very young, but he's done many, many things in his life already.

[LAUGH] He's a key part of the Hong Kong student movement,

scholarism and many other fantastic social movement initiatives.

And so we're very lucky to have him.

Thanks so much, Joshua.

>> Thank you, yeah.

>> For being with us.

And so for the first question many of our students are learning

how to even initiate a call for a social movement or something they care about and

think things should change.

What have been, in your years of activism,

the main kind of tools and methods that you use for organizing?

>> From my experience, and now I'm 18 years old, and

I start to organize the movement from 14 years old.

Actually I have organized two main movements named

the MT National Education Movement, and

the second one is the Umbrella Movement and then last year, Occupy Action.

And from my point of view, I think the strategy behind is to

let yourself turn from the minority to be the majority.

I mean at the first time actually, you will just be the minority.

No one will really support you or care about your issue.

But you need to have your goal should set to be,

I need to turn my value or my belief to be the majority supported.

So how to get the majority support it.

From my point of view, two sides, also we need to have some progressive action

to give more pressure to the ruling class, businessman, or the government.

Other than that, we should also have the some of

the propaganda to get the majority support.

I mean, in a movement,

actually only minority group of people will join your action.

Say, for example, in Hong Kong even with 7 million people,

only 1.2 million people involved in the Umbrella Movement.

If you're counting the whole presentation is around

20% of the people join the movement.

But why we can continue to get the global support

we used a lot of propaganda, I mean, I used Facebook,

Instagram, even a lot of the singers, artists.

They will have produced a song to talk about the Umbrella Movement.

And a lot of the artists in the past, they would just talk or

discuss about some issue that not related to politics,

but this is the first time for them to support and

show their stand to support democracy.

So anyway to sum up, it's been in the edge on organization movement,

we are the activist, we may really interest

in organizing that direct action even civil disobedience.

But other than that, don't forget the part of propaganda to get the majority of

a group of people to support.

Even the majority of people just support, but not involved in the action.

They may also create the more bargaining power for

yourself to continue your movement.

>> Right, great.

One of the really striking parts of your involvement in these two movements has

been the success in involving youth, right?

Like, many of the people who show up at these protests are 12 year olds, 14 year

olds, and this is incredible, and it's inspired many people around the world.

Are there specific methods that you have found are better for

these age groups, or is it all the same?

>> Okay, there's really important strategy behind.

Actually in Hong Kong,

I see a movement where 14 years old student join student strike, 14 years old,

and for civil disobedience, and 15 years, arrest by policemen.

I think it's quite unusual, uncommon, for

secondary school student in junior involved in strike or direct action,

I mean in foreign country is really special for the situation in Hong Kong.

But what is the strategy behind is first,

we put a lot of effort to manage our Facebook, I mean my Facebook page have

250,000 people like for 310,000 people like it.

But compared to the political party in Hong Kong,

they were just around 40 or

50,000 people like it.

Yes, quite that at first because we come from Internet, and we organize

from Internet for our generation, and that means people born after 1990.

We would not use email.

Email is old already.

And we will all use Facebook group to manage our things and

to have more discussion and while we can build our network.

In Hong Kong, there's only 7 million people, but

my Facebook page can reach 1 million people, per month.

This is the importance of it.

In Hong Kong, people about 30 years old will not know what is Instagram.

They do not know what is Instagram.

There's not the things that they would use for the old generation.

That's why we put a lot of effort to establish different hashtags to let

the people upload their photo,

to show their stand on some of the Umbrella Movement.

This is the strategy, I mean, put more resources and

effort to manage the Facebook and Instagram 24 hours per day.

>> Right, right.

>> Yeah, it's really important.

But from the security forum, actually,

email have been hacked by people from Mainland China last month.

>> Mm-hm.

>> In one year, we have been hacked for two times.

Actually, or because all of the person's information,

database, the minutes of our meeting, all we save in Google Drive,

and it's been hacked by others already.

And of course, someone may worry about the safety or security program of Facebook.

But from my point of view, Gmail or

using email actually is more danger than using Facebook.

Yeah, because it's more easy for you to access in our system.

Anyway, if we are talking about something that's really sensitive or

really important or confidential, we would not leave any minute on the Internet.

Just take an example, someone may know that actually while last year we were

start Occupy Movement on the 28 of September, is because in 26 of September,

we have the action to regain the Citizens' Square.

I mean, climb through their three-meters barrier and go into the Citizens' Square

is the action we planned before the action start, three hours.

We're playing at evening, 6 o'clock, and we start the action at 9 o'clock, and

all of the action, we do not add the minutes.

Record safe and Facebook, Gmail, Google Drive, or

any Internet or WhatsApp application, and

the advantage is the policemen would not know any detail.

>> So there's no records of any of this.

>> No, no record at all. >> How did you manage to do that?

In person meetings mostly?

>> We asked everyone.

Because we did plan a radical action in the evening around 9 to 10.

So in around 6 o'clock in the evening,

we ask every member to come to the meeting room.

And all of our mobile.

>> And the reason I ask is so that our students can learn how to do these things.

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah, actually- >> There's no organizing school, right.

You have to learn it from the street.

>> And even the normal university, so if your major is politics or sociology, you

may learn some theory behind movement that we would not teach you how to face the.

>> No, not at all.

>> Yeah, it's really important, yeah.

Actually in Hong Kong always we would define politician as

a councillor member in the legislative council.

And it's quite special for the relationship between activist and

politician in Hong Kong because most of the time,

activist such as like Joshua Wong,

we will always challenge those politicians and give more pressure to them.

Such as some of the politicians even they say they support democracy, if you ask

them to involve in civil disobedience, they would say that, it's too radical.

We should if it would blossom like water support.

Yeah, I think it is quite special situation for

them because they may just want to keep this rather than pushing forward,

continue to fight in the realm of democracy.

Yeah, and from my point of view, it depends on how you define politician,

if you define politician as anyone who involved in a political discussion,

or even organizing the political movement, of course,

I'm a politician because I organize the last year Occupy Movement already.

But from a point of view, actually every Hong Kong will ask, Joshua Wong will you

run an election in the future, actually if I need to run in an election,

the minimum requirement is I need to be 21 years old.

So is even next year, we will have the election of the legislative council,

I could not reach the requirement because I am just 18 years old now.

Of course, I would not say that I would never run in an election.

But I think it's really important for every activist to remind ourself.

If we involve in social movement for a period of time, some of the politician or

party may ask, hey, would you interest to run in election?

If you're running in election, you will get a and you will have high salary.

You will have really great power and more inference.

Actually, in Hong Kong if you become one of the council member really high.

If we organize in social movement, if we to push forward

to get our own right, regain our right from the ruling class,

we should set our target and run the election.

It's just only one of the methods to reach our goal, yeah.

>> Right, well, thank you so much, Joshua, for being with us.

>> Okay, thank you.

>> And I think students will learn a lot from you and

be inspired by you as a student.

[LAUGH] >> Okay, yeah, thank you.

>> Bye.

>> Bye.

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