Artistic Activism: Harnessing the Power of Art for Social Change - Essay Sample

Introduction

Artistic Activism is an active practice that requires combining of power of the arts to change the people emotionally with the intention of strategic planning of activism essential to convey about social change. The phenomena of this art activism are based on our time since it is a new phenomenon which is quite different from the critical art and familiar in the ancient days.

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The art activist barely wants to criticize the work of the art system or the general social and political conditions under this system of functions. Art activism's tries to put together social action and art which comes from the same attack of this perspective which are either traditionally activist ones or traditionally artistic.

For the traditionally activist criticism works agreeing with the notion of artistic value. From this view art activism tends to be not good enough, thus many moral critics are good but turn to be an option for artistic quality. According to the writings of Benjamin and Debord, it is clear that spectacularization and aestheticization of politics, still including political protest, are bad possessions since they avert attention away from the applied set goals of the political protest against its aesthetic form.

In other terms, the art component composed in art activism is regularly seen as the key reason why this activism flops on the pragmatic, practical level which can be an intermediate political and social impact (Hazelwood, 2011). In our community, art in the traditional is viewed as useless and of no need at all.

The criticisms of art as useless and thus politically and ethically immoral is not a new one. In recent years, the critiques obligated by many artists to lack restraint of art altogether and to begin practicing something more valuable sometimes is morally and politically correct (Hazelwood, 2011).

The same can also be stated about politics. We are living in a period of political design, which constitutes to making professional images. If someone's talks more about the aestheticization of politics referencing to, let reflect Nazi Germany, one somebody usually means aestheticization as a strategy of an effort to make the Nazi association more seductive or attractive.

Contrary, artistic aestheticization directly means that there is no proper functioning of this tool, the powerful annulation of the practical part of the efficiency and applicability (Hazelwood, 2011). It is easy for one to follow these waves in the situation of Protestantism, originated from the Spanish overthrow of the Americas, or the collapse of the socialist regime in the part of Eastern Europe.

In fact, this is true that some of the artists of the avant-garde did a mistake as interpreted as being proclaimers of the new technological progress. Nothing more from the historical truth. However, they were influenced by the interest in industrialization and technology intervention. When one speaks of the avant-garde in the comparison relationship of technology, it entails that one has a specific historic character in mind: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and his "Futurist Manifesto" that was printed on the very page of the newspaper Figaro in 1909.

Hence, the modern and current art permits us to look at the historical background period in which we can live with the perception of its end. The figure of Angelus Novus as defined by Benjamin depends on the practices of artistic aestheticization as it was experienced by post-revolutionary European art. There is no hesitation that we are all living in the time of total aestheticization. This fact is mostly interpreted as a signal that we have definitely reached a state after the close of history.

There is no sign of such an individual, existential revolving point in Benjamin's text only referencing to the modern art, to an appearance of the image by Klee. Novus turns against his back to the future just because he knows how to handle it (Groys, 2008). He knows because he cultured this technique from modern art, also from Marinetti.

In the 1930's the union of law, art, and politics was achieved through some critical mass which allows one to think beyond the aesthetic form of authority as reflected by Nazi Germany and also Fascist, in spite of the different radical ideological alignment which was not much ahead in cultivating the close inter-relationship of aesthetic, political, and legal expose.

The key important point of leaving the celebration of Benjamin essays, "The artwork in the periodic age of Mechanical Reproducibility" and withdrawal of the dialogue with two main exemplary occasions occurring at the same time, peeling a new light on his work and on disclosure of their heart. It is ambiguous in taking the agreement between communism and fascism at the extent of face value. Benjamin makes it clear that fascism was barely developing extensive aesthetic trends. Marinetti's futurist strategies embraced and explaining deep that world war as a 'cleaning purge' termed as the most beautiful futurist poet till to date (Benjamin, 2006b).

The work on art and politics is established on the assumption that it is clear that art plays an important role in the building of social life, allowing people to take the role of creating a history of their own by participating in the management role of social and political realities (Ranciere, 2007). The analyzing of art can be done through art theory and history of the art point of opinion, but also the view of political science.

It is understanding that art is a form of a contribution, descriptive, political disclosure, interpretive, and transcending political aspects. Looking past the fine art tries to be an obligation with respect to visual and photography art. Art is not that simple, it extends the better understanding and recognition according to the previous was seen as known (Ranciere, 2007). Also, art is political has been employed and seen as an alternative understanding to emerge.

Interpreting again helps to see-through the current power relationship within the community, which enable to determine what was earlier and known with the worthy of analyzing from the first place and identification should also be seen. Artworks better on analysis are serious on the existing the order of the social facts but still, the affirm of artwork is very old.

Certainly, there is no good reason for assumption, either, that artwork, artists can attain what extra social agents failed to accomplish. However, besides reasons to take up such binaries as a political-unpolitical or critical-uncritical doubtful more than they seem to reveal. The research was done on art assumption that art stretches somewhat that other human race cannot offer to us (Ranciere, 2007). It is essential to use art and political exploration of art while paving our ways if given chance if possible.

The theory futurist Alex Danchev suggests that "art enunciates a vision of the globe that is consequential and perceptive, and the more insight can be analyzed. The procedural approaches predominant also in other areas of social review are not usually appropriate deep analysis of art, thus this deliberately in various writing on politics while restricting the first-person tale or implicitly admitting that no written text without its author.

Knowledge of art and politics, diffidently, enhancements knowledge produced elsewhere in the social or political sciences that help in detailed explains of other many forms of inquiry which cannot be explained (Manderson, 2018). The effort on political and art enlarges the frame of work within the political unfolds, thereby creating new forms of political activity, and exposes the biases and limits of establishing the form of social research. This camerawork evades visual fixations of the specific continents together with its inhabitants as a target of economic, political, social exploitation, culture, diseases, environment curbed by war, and violence which seems to be a graphic approach in the continent of Africa photography.

In the book Articial hells, Claire Bishop articulates important Historical overview concerning the global emergence of participatory art and also the politics of spectatorship (Bishop, 2012). The conclusions that Claire makes are controversial and thought-provoking which continue to trouble the assumptions regarding the efficiency of political artworks. The conclusion also questions the oppositional quality, the effects they have on the audience that read them and also the kind of relation that they have to the institutions which enhance their promotion.

Claire points out that artists that have worked throughout the 20th century and in ideological concepts tended to explore the available opportunities such that their actions would be beyond the gallery limits in that they would cast their audience into the work they did.

The results of their performances and interventions were the main reasons for raising crucial aesthetic questions concerning issues of visibility, individual and collective authorship and also the blurring of art and life (Bishop, 2012). Bishop also argues that majority of the debates that have been made concerning the social art practices have so far been entangled in ethics where people are use as the materials in the same art.

This book is Bishop's bold attempt to address and give her opinion concerning critical oversight then provide a set of criteria whereby they are supposed to judge the artistic work and also the social value of having people as the participants in the art (Bishop, 2012). The book also talks about confirms the authority of Bishop through the critic of social turn that is found in the 1990s art.

However, in the end, Bishop refuses to resolve the issues that she points out through the book which is to show her aim of relieving artists of the kind of responsibilities that lie outside the specific area of art for the social and political activities (Bishop, 2012). Generally, she makes observations on how artists have internalized huge amounts of pressure to take on the burden of coming up with new models for social and political organization which is a task that they are not always well-equipped to undertake.

The gravity of art states that the work done on politics and art is on the basis of the assumption that there is a formative role that art plays in the social life constitution through ways where people take responsibility of creating their own histories (Moller, 2016). The creation is for the sake of participating in managing their own realities both socially and politically (Moller, 2016).

The role of art can have its analysis through different points of view which may either be theoretical or in the notion of political science (Moller, 2016). The understanding of art can also be in the form of or contribution to a political discourse which then is as interpretive, descriptive or a kind of critical approximation which then will flow in the line of politics.

The analysis of the contribution of art to the political discourse can also be through reflecting the (inter)textual turn, pictorial turn and aesthetic turn (Moller, 2016). It tries to find out the relationship between politics and art where there is eventual engagement and expansion of research limits.

It is also mandatory to look beyond fine art which regards visual arts and photography (Moller, 2016). The characteristic of visual image production is the increase in overlap between photojournalism and also art photography and it is evident that most photographers necessitate thinking the operating procedures and also typologies.

Art is particularly important because it encompasses development domains. Artists have been able to showcase their particular skills by forming a print of fine and gross specific people and they also have their manipulative mo...