1st Edition

Performance Action The Politics of Art Activism

By Paula Serafini Copyright 2018
208 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

208 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

208 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Performance Action looks to advance the understanding of how art activism works in practice, by unpacking the relationship between the processes and politics that lie at its heart. Focusing on the UK but situating its analysis in a global context of art activism, the book presents a range of different cases of performance-based art activism, including the anti-oil sponsorship performances of... Read more

List of Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. ‘Harmonic Disobedience’: Constructing a Collective Identity in an Activist Choir

2. A Viking Longship: Participation in Performance Action

3. From Transgression to Prefiguration: Performance Action as a Blueprint for Social Change

4. Breaking Barriers: Bodies, Institutions, and Codes

5. Loitering in the City: Psychogeography as Art Activism

6. New Narratives: Rethinking Activism through Art in the Youth Project ‘Voices that Shake!’

7. Breaking the Mould: Art Activism and Art Institutions

8. Towards a Theory of Art Activism

Afterword

Index

Biography

Paula Serafini is a cultural politics scholar, practitioner and organiser. Her work is concerned with the relationship between aesthetics and politics, and with artistic and media interventions in art institutions, labour struggles, and environmental and social justice movements. She is currently a Research Associate at CAMEo Research Institute for Cultural and Media Economies, University of Leicester, and holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Analysis (King’s College London), an MA in Anthropology & Cultural Politics (Goldsmiths College) and a BA in Art History and Cultural Management (Universidad del Salvador, Argentina). Her previous publications include journal articles in Third Text and Anarchist Studies, and the edited collection artWORK: Art, Labour and Activism, co-edited with Alberto Cossu and Jessica Holtaway (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017).