Paper short abstract:

Our purpose is to question how the production of graphic artefacts can activate processes of politicization. This paper is based on the ethnography of the artefacts produced by Mexican artists and members of European activist groups to accompany the journey of a Zapatista delegation to Europe.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the political agency of art through the ethnography of artistic practices undertaken by artists and activists as part of the "Journey for Life". This is a project carried out by the Zapatista movement to meet activist groups, which call themselves "Europe from below", in the five continents, and whose first act, called « Capitulo Europa », was achieved in Madrid on 7 December 2021.

Several artists and collectives have joined this initiative, such as Antonio Griton, who contributed with the sale of his works to finance the journey of a Zapatista delegation or the Mexican street artist Grand OM who has taken charge of the production of posters and communication elements for this unexpected journey to Europe.

At the same time, in the countries destined to host the delegation, other artists and activists have deployed several strategies to support the Zapatista journey by producing collective fanzines, posters, or even board games. This is the case of a French illustrator who, since April 2021, has been publishing episodes of a comic strip documenting the meetings between the members of the Zapatista delegation and the social collectives that, from Europe, adhere to the project of social and political transformation defended since 1994 by the EZLN.

This case allows us to reflect on how the political performativity of art manifests itself at the articulation of an aesthetic of resistance and social movements.

If we rely on the work of anthropologists who have theorized the agency of art at the iconic (Gell, 1998) or ontological (Descola, 2019) level, however, it is in the field of political agency that we wish to question the operational modes of artistic productions as well as the functions that are devolved to them in contexts of political protest.

How do actors mobilize art to produce forms of autonomy or resistance to neo-liberal logics? How do these practices structure the organization of militant collectives?

Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to explore the issue of an ethics of obligation grounded in precarity in the light of the Judith Butler’s performative theory of assembly.

Paper long abstract:

I will use the theory to describe the phenomenon of the protest graffiti and stickers that emerged on the Polish streets in 2020 in the aftermath of the mass political demonstrations.

According to Alfred Gell, an art object is endowed with the ability to “produce an effect” in its immediate vicinity, so it is not merely a material trace of someone else’s intentional action but it has the ability to generate a network of social relations (nexus) in its immediate vicinity.

The causality of an art object consists in its ability to “captivate” the viewer. Importantly, however, the causality of the art object involves establishing an asymmetrical power relation between human and the object. The human being is to be, as it were, “caught by the object” so that the complex relations of domination and subordination linking the human participants in the exchange transaction can also be altered in this way.

In this paper I would like to argue that iconoclashes mediated by the protest graffiti insriptions are the results of the unwanted, hostile cohabitation that – although not chosen by anyone – still requires the ethics of obligation.

Paper short abstract:

In recent years many migrant artist-activists have produced visual repertoires of border-crossing that challenge binaries of the "seen" and the "unseen". Weaving between anthropology of migration and art-activism, this paper revisits the notion of trespass.

Paper long abstract:

In September of 2015 an image emerged as an iconic symbol of displacement endured by migrants and refugees out of the Middle East and North Africa. The image of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Kurdish boy, faced down and lifeless on the pebbled beaches of Bodrum, revealed the scale of human suffering embodied in the figure of the displaced. Captured in this photo, border-crossing and displacement were humanized evoking ideas of empathy, dignity, and social responsibility.

The visual power of an “artistic eye” - in this case manifested as a photograph - revealed a sense of urgency about the predicament refugees arriving at Europe's doorstep faced. Interestingly, here, the catastrophic loss of life endured by the border-crossing migrant body is transformed into the language of a “European crisis!” While millions more remain stateless and/or forced into temporary camps across the “Political South,” once trespassed into the European shores, the figure of the “displaced” becomes both “visible” while posing a threat to the “stability” and “coherence” of European identity, economy, and political-economy.

In recent years artistic expressions have come to stand as effective modes of mobilization against the growing xenophobia against border-crossing "other." Many migrant artist-activists have produced visual repertoires of crossing border, thus opening new spaces for dialogue between the "seen" and the "unseen".

Weaving between anthropology of migration, refugee studies and art-activism, this paper revisits the notion of trespass and exile - how can art be an integral part of the story of the "displaced" arriving in Europe?

Paper short abstract:

I explore the transformative power of artistic acts of decolonization in the U.S. South. Using Million's (2009) feminist indigenous theory of felt knowledge, I highlight Black performance set in a 200 year-old mansion that recalls the experience and agency of the black diaspora.

Paper long abstract:

I explore the transformative power of artistic acts of decolonization in the U.S. South. Using Million's (2009) feminist indigenous theory of felt knowledge, I highlight Black performance set in a 200 year-old mansion that recalls the experience and agency of the black diaspora.

The study is part of a larger ethnographic project that analyzes the process of decolonizing public history, in the U.S. South and beyond, through an interactional and linguistic anthropological lens. Participant observation, informal interviews, and other data collection at historic preservation organizations and historic sites in two South Carolina cities, as well as a review of popular media at the national and global level documents the quickening pace of this shift over the past three years. Within and beyond historical houses, increasingly multi-vocalic narratives surround, and, sometimes, fill up houses and other spaces that have traditionally been defined by a single, dominant discourse.

While discourses outside of museums have increasingly contested a supposed "post-racial" normalization of white supremacy, so, too, have historic house museums been questioning an unproblematic, whitewashed portrayal of antebellum (and colonial) opulence. As Black voices and Black bodies have been increasingly claiming space—in the streets, on the airwaves, in social media—Black subjectivities occupied public and private historic spaces in ways they had not previously.