Protestors across the world use aesthetics in order to communicate their ideas and ensure their voices are heard. This book looks at protest aesthetics, which we consider to be the visual and performative elements of protest, such as images, symbols, graffiti, art, as well as the choreography of protest actions in public spaces. Through the use of social media, protestors have been able to create an alternative space for people to engage with politics that is more inclusive and participatory than traditional politics. This volume focuses on the role of visual culture in a highly mediated environment and draws on case studies from Europe, Thailand, South Africa, USA, Argentina, and the Middle East in order to demonstrate how protestors use aesthetics to communicate their demands and ideas. It examines how digital media is harnessed by protestors and argues that all protest aesthetics are performative and communicative.
Author(s): Aidan McGarry, Itir Erhart, Hande Eslen-Ziya, Olu Jenzen
Series: Protest and Social Movements
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 298
City: Amsterdam
Cover
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface: Devisualize
Nicholas Mirzoeff
Introduction: The Aesthetics of Global Protest: Visual Culture and Communication
Aidan McGarry, Itir Erhart, Hande Eslen-Ziya, Olu Jenzen, and Umut Korkut
Part I. Performance, Art and Politics
1. Queer Visual Activism in South Africa
Tessa Lewin
2. The Use of Visibility in Contentious Events in Northern Ireland
Katy Hayward and Milena Komarova
3. Maybe, We Will Benefit from Our Neighbour’s Good Fortune: An Exhibition on Collectivity, Community, and Dialogue in Turkey
Işıl Eğrikavuk
4. Political Street Art in Social Mobilization: A Tale of Two Protests in Argentina
Holly Eva Ryan
5. Archiving Dissent: (Im)material Trajectories of Political Street Art in Istanbul and Athens
Julia Tulke
6. The Introvert’s Protest: Handwriting the Constitution and the Performance of Politics
Interview with Morgan O’Hara by Aidan McGarry
Part II. Visual Activism and Digital Culture
7. Photography and Protest in Israel/Palestine: The Activestills Online Archive
Simon Faulkner
8. Drones, Cinema, and Protest in Thailand
Noah Viernes
9. Bearing Witness to Authoritarianism and Commoning through Video Activism and Political Film-making after the Gezi Protests
Özge Özdüzen
10. Music Videos as Protest Communication: The Gezi Park Protest on YouTube
Olu Jenzen, Itir Erhart, Hande Eslen-Ziya, Derya Güçdemir, Umut Korkut, and Aidan McGarry
11. The Activist Chroniclers of Occupy Gezi: Counterposing Visibility to Injustice
Dan Mercea and Helton Levy
12. When Twitter Got #woke: Black Lives Matter, DeRay McKesson, Twitter, and the Appropriation of the Aesthetics of Protest
Farida Vis, Simon Faulkner, Safiya Umoja Noble, and Hannah Guy
Part III. Conclusion
13 Conclusion: Reflections on Protest and Political Transformation since 1789
Jim Aulich
Index
List of Figures and Tables
Figure 0.1. Whirling Devish with gas mask, Taksim Square, 2013. Photo by Seamus Travers.
Figure 1.1. Sulaiga. From The Sistaaz Hood Gallery, 2016. Photo credit: Robert Hamblin.
Figure 1.2. Stills from the video piece InterseXion, 2016. Photo credit: Robert Hamblin.
Figure 1.3. FAKA, 2016. Photo credit: Nick Widmer.
Figure 2.1. Map of Ardoyne from Google Maps. Map data ©2019 Google.
Figure 2.2. The Orange parade through Ardoyne on 12 July 2012, including the marchers (A), their supporters at Twaddell/Woodvale (B), the protestors (C), the police (D) and journalists (E). Image © Katy Hayward.
Figure 3.1. HAH, Without Encountering, site-specific installation.
Figure 3.2. Dadans, Playing House, performance.
Figure 4.1. First Siluetazo, 20-21 September 1983. Two silhouettes on an urban wall. The two silhouettes have identifying labels but the image is blurred and the names are hard to distinguish. Photograph courtesy of Edward Shaw.
Figure 4.2. First Siluetazo, 20-21 September 1983. Silhouette of a baby/toddler on an urban wall. This silhouette represents a child born in captivity, Carranza-Goites, born on 19 August 1976. Photograph courtesy of Edward Shaw.
Figure 5.1. Memorial for Alexandros Grigoropoulos and Berkin Elvan in Athens-Exarcheia, 2015. Photography by the author.
Figure 5.2. Graffiti slogans on the floor of Taksim Square during the Gezi protests, 11 June 2013. Photograph by Eser Karadağ via https://flic.kr/p/eJQdsv.
Figure 6.1. ‘We the People’.
Figure 7.1. Oren Ziv, ‘Protest calling for the release of Israeli soldier Elor Azaria, Tel Aviv, Israel, 19.4.16’, 2016. Reproduced with permission of Oren Ziv/Activestills.
Figure 8.1. Drone Space. Self-sketch of a drone capture.
Figure 8.2. Throwing stones scene from The Asylum (dir. Prapat Jiwarangsan, 2015).
Figure 8.3. The continuity of work during a military coup, from Night Watch (dir. Danaya Chulphuthipong, 2015).
Figure 9.1. Özatalay’s drawing of Semih Özakça. This image became a touchstone of digitally shared posts on the hunger strike of Özakça and Gülmen.
Figure 10.1. A çArşı supporters’ banner in Gezi Park with the slogan ‘Taksim is ours. çArşı is ours. The street is ours’. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Figure 11.1. The time distribution of Occupy Gezi tweets for May-June 2013.
Figure 12.1. The arrest of the African-American celebrity-activist DeRay McKesson during a Black Lives Matter event. Source: AP Photo/Max Becherer.
Figure 13.1. Darko Vojinovic, Opposition Rally, Belgrade Yugoslavia, 14 April 2000. Members of Otpor (Resistance), a student organization, arrive in central Belgrade’s Republic Square during an antigovernment rally. In one of the biggest protests against
