Art is influential in times of war, conflict, and hatred. It's propaganda can be wielded from all sides. Art is powerful.
It breaks my heart that all my thoughts and feelings around one issue swirl and morph into another issue, another place, another injustice. These atrocities are unfolding across the globe over and over again. All of them rooted in power, oppression, corruption, etc. Spin the globe and blindly point your finder, you will find war, genocide, violence. It's hard not to be overwhelmed, to get swept up in manipulative harsh bias and binary. But the true enemy is not a people, a race, a nation, or a person who ascribes to a certain political party. It is the systems of power that exploit the people. Fight power not people.
Protest is powerful. Our voices are powerful. End the genocides. End the wars. End all apartheids. Freedom for all. Peace for all. We can create a better world.
Here are a few pieces of art that have been on my mind.
Please listen to Saul Williams reading Not In Our Name by clicking the YouTube link. I've copied it below if you would like to read it.
A pledge to resist:
we believe that as people living in the united states it is our responsibility to resist the injustices done by our government in our names.
not in our name will you wage endless war.
there can be no more deaths.
no more transfusions of blood for oil.
not in our name will you invade countries, bomb civilians, kill more children, letting history take its course over the graves of the nameless.
not in our name will you erode the very freedoms you have claimed to fight for.
not by our hands will we supply weapons and funding for the annihilation of families on foreign soil.
not by our mouths will we let fear silence us.
not by our hearts will we allow whole peoples or countries to be deemed evil.
not by our will and not in our name.
we pledge resistance.
we pledge alliance with those who have come under attack for voicing opposition to the war or for their religion or ethnicity.
we pldege to make common cause with the people of the world to bring about justice, freedom and peace.
another world is possible and we pledge to make it real.
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From MoMA, "This civil-disobedience suit, to be worn by street protesters for protection against police batons, draws attention to the risks demonstrators face in order to defend their convictions. A wireless video camera mounted over the head acts as a witness, recording police action. A speaker in the center of the chest amplifies and projects the wearer’s heartbeat. In a group action, when many people are wearing these suits, the increasing heartbeats become audible as tension and excitement mount, like a natural soundtrack arousing the crowd. At the same time, the heartbreak exposes the vulnerability of the individual and the fragility of the human body exploited as a shield —almost as a weapon—against police munitions."
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The work of Kathë Kollwitz. She intimately knew the heavy weight of grief and loss in war. These are powerful works. Picasso's Guernica is often touted as one of, if not, the most powerful war related art work. To me, nothing is more emotionally impactful than these simple prints by Kollwitz, especially 'Mother with Dead Son.'
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Stop the Bombing by Sister Corita Kent, as relevant today as it was in 1967.
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This work by Jenny Holzer is always pertinent.
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For many years I've made my own resistance art, protest posters, and street art. Power corrupts absolutely, it's the root issue that links all atrocities and wars.
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Some thoughts to chew on...
”...a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice." — MLK Jr.
"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." — 1984 by George Orwell
"No more apologies for a bleeding heart when the opposite is no heart at all. Danger of losing our humanity must be met with more humanity." — Toni Morrison
