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.
Leonidas Martin
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From the course by Duke University
ART of the MOOC: Activism and Social Movements
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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.
Meet the Instructors
Nato ThompsonChief Curator
Creative Time
Pedro LaschVisual Artist and Associate Research Professor
Duke Art, Art History & Visual Studies
Hi, my name is Leonidas Martin and I teach art and
politics at the Barcelona University and some other universities around Europe.
I'm also part of a group called Enmedio, which means in the middle or in between.
We give ourself this name because we are all cultural agents.
So my artist or their photographers or their freemakers can find their place in
the spaces allocated by neoliberalism for these practices.You know
the professor in the academy, the designer in the design agency making designs for
private companies, the artist, the art world in galleries, museums, etc.
We did not find ourselves comfortable that way.
We did not believe that we could develop our potential in an way.
So we invented another space.
A space halfway between any space and at the same time in between.
[LAUGH] And from there, we research how to create good examples
that counter-post the other values and, at the same time, create new ones.
The other values are many that can be summarized basically one which
is competition.
Today we are that compete against each other.
A sort of particular personal enterprise that competes with the other to survive.
Against these, we want to counterpost other cultural values, for
example, cooperation, as a fundamental value, and capacity building.
Or the creation of a better life, a good life, buena vida.
That represents something different to what it means to us today.
So you could tell that what we are doing is trying to find an exit from which
is not easy at all, because does not operate just outside.
It is not a system you relate to from one place to another.
But it also operates inside of you.
This is why it interests us to work with science, symbols and cultural expressions.
Because we think that the spirit that embraces everything the outside and
inside of one's self is based on symbology and in culture.
And we are active agents within this cultural system.
Therefore, the work we try to do is a kind of cultural contrast period
that there's no response to nearly [INAUDIBLE] values but to other.
So today I'm going to show you a couple of
things I've been doing in the last 15 years, in order to get.
Okay, ready.
Here we go.
So our journey starts in 2001.
That year the World Bank and
IMF were scheduled to meet in Barcelona, we didn't want that happen.
So, we came up with this idea La Bolsa O La Vide,
which means something like your money or your life.
Bolsa in Spanish means a bag, plastic bag or paper bag and
also means stock exchange.
So, we were trying to do something with these two meanings when someone just
realized that this [INAUDIBLE] building Barcelona is a historical building.
So that means that you can schedule a tour.
And that's exactly what we did.
We called them and we were like hi, we would love to schedule a tour.
We wanna visit the building.
And they were like yeah, no problem.
A very polite girl said that yeah, for sure, just tell me when and
how many people.
And we were like you know.
Thinking for a while and then we answer like, we are like a round 10,000.
After our call, the girl just call a police.
In the mean time, we send these pictures to the press
because they were we take our selves in front of La Borsa building in Barcelona.
We send them to the press and
then publicize them because they were like searching for it.
These people, these going to come to our town and destroy
our properties in order to put this against this more about meeting.
But they didn't have any picture of them, so
anything you send to them, they were open to.
And that's what they did with our picture.
Calls the government in, a group of policemen to the door.
The every time they wanted to enter.
So finally the brokers were so
pissed off that they decide not go to La Bolsa building anymore.
Believe it or not, the stock exchange building of Barcelona, it was closed in
two days just because of funny phone call and a bunch of stupid pictures.
So we just went out to celebrate the news.
So with this action, we learned a very important lesson.
The less you do, the better.
This is important if you are an activist.
But this is even more important if you are an artist.
Remember that, okay.
2006 Spain built more houses than Germany.
If France and Italy combined,
that create the biggest economical bubble in the country ever the Housing Bubble.
Banks create a 40 years mortgages to pay those houses.
Can you believe that.
40 years of your life paying the place your living in.
As you can imagine, we could not take it anymore.
One day, an unknown email jumped from inbox to inbox, far and
wide across the internet, saying Next sunday at
7pm sit-in all the main squares of spanish cities, and that was a big success.
Here, have a picture of that day in Barcelona, for instance.
Many people respond to this call, so we repeated this action for Some days.
And that create a kind of new social movement, and we wanted to
get to the next step to organize bigger demonstrations in our staff.
And in order to do that,
we realized that we need a kind of that represent this new movement.
Represent something like this wasn't easy at all,
because when you look at the people, you couldn't find a common thing out there.
People were totally diverse.
People came from different situations,
like some people wanted to leave their parents' house.
Old people that couldn't afford mortgages anymore.
So we couldn't find a common ground to create that image that represent all.
So we start to think what about inside.
Is there something inside of the people that is acting in the same way for all.
We went out to the streets and start asking to the people hey,
is there a sentence that comes to your mind when you try to buy a house and
when you try to rent a house, or something.
And there was one sentence.
We all had in mind.
Men, you will not have a home in your whole fucking life.
We create a poster with that sentence.
We decided to paste that poster all over.
Here you have some pictures of that.
Yes, we use it to organize big events, like this one with 10 thousand people, or
this one with 50 thousand people.
We were screaming this.
For almost a year and still the government didn't listen so
we didn't know what else we could do and
someone had a brilliant idea to say, I know what we have to do.
What we have to do is just this even louder.
So that's how we came out with the idea of breaking the World Record of
people screaming, I'm not going to have a home in my whole fucking life
in different cities at the same time.
So we called the Guiness World Record and we proposed that.
We were like, hey we want to break the world record of people shouting,
you're not going to have a home in your life at the same time in different cities.
So, they were considering our proposal for a while, and then after a week
they answer that they were very sorry, but they don't accept that.
When we ask why, why they don't accept
our proposal they answer because it's too weird.
These people tell to us that our proposal was too weird.
As you can imagine we didn't give a shit and
we continue with the idea of breaking that world record.
We designed some costumes for the occasion, we always design costumes for
our something that we like, don't ask me why.
And every time I wore.
But anyway, we also designed this machine that was called Putometer,
which means something like Fuck meter, and in some machines that actually measure
how pissed off you feel about a situation, right.
So the idea of a whole [INAUDIBLE], we also design and create some videos for
the Internet.
Videos that we use for calling the people [INAUDIBLE] .Videos like this one.
[FOREIGN] [SOUND] So
when all these was ready,
you know the videos
from the internet,
the are ready for
the people to scream on it.
The costume design, when we went to the street,
different cities of Spain at the same time,
And this is what we did.
>> [MUSIC]
[FOREIGN]
>> [APPLAUSE]
>> [APPLAUSE] The
Reflecto Cube has three different uses.
The first one is to point out the evil wherever it is.
Second one is to entertain people and demonstrations,
because demonstrations can be very boring, sometimes.
You know why demonstrations are boring sometimes.
Demonstrations are boring sometimes because demonstrations are theater piece.
The problem is that we all know the plot of it.
So the reflect to give is breaking that plot,
and make appear as again, The Unexpected.
And the third use, and the most important one.
The use that actually this [INAUDIBLE] is made for is this one.
[INAUDIBLE] >> The reflective cube can actually stop
police brutality.
We tried these two during the last general strike in Spain.
In that moment there were like 25,000 people on the street and
these guys dressed in black came, beating up everyone,
and creating a terror scene on that square.
We we're there as protectores.
So we took this cube to police and they didn't know what to do so they stop.
So, finally what they did was to toss it back to us so
we toss it right back to them and we created this ping pong scene.
>> Very funny.
That transformed the whole mood from terror to comedy.
And we saw that potential, and from that day on
we started to create some of them and
testing them out in different demonstrations in Europe.
Transforming police
brutality into comedy, and saving people.
As you are going to see in this TV report.
>> [FOREIGN]
>> So the lesson of today is very easy,
transform your anger into fun.
We try to apply this any time we can, because it's healthier for
you and more annoying for them.
That's everything I wanted to show you today.
Hope these examples can help you understand
how one can contribute to social transformation.
Margaret Thatcher say once, the economy is the excuse,
the goal is to chase people's soul.
We say something similar.
Art is an excuse, the goal is to change people's life.
Thanks for your time, and I hope we see each other again soon.
For more information, you can check out my website, leodecera.net, and
enmedio website, enmedio.info See you.
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