On Art & Activism: A Day of Art Action, January 20, 2018
A participant in Tilt West’s September roundtable on Art and Activism said afterward, “What you are doing is activist: getting people together in person and in conversation in a free flowing and non-hierarchical way.” Tilt West aims to catalyze the cultural conversation in the greater Denver arts community. To that end, and as a continuation of our conversation on Art and Activism, we invite you to join artists and arts organizations across the country in participating in a Day of Art Action on January 20, 2018.
The Day of Art Action is the brainchild of filmmaker Laurie Anderson and a group that Tilt West has joined, called The Federation. The event is a response to pressures on arts organizations in the current environment. The Day of Art Action will celebrate the idea that art unites; it will showcase the fact that art is in every community across the country. Artists and art organizations are invited to mark the day in whatever way they deem appropriate and to post their activities on social media.
To sign up to participate, and for a free, downloadable, Day of Art Action toolkit, please go to the Federation’s website, www.wearethefederation.org, and see the attached flier. We hope to see broad participation by Denver area artists and arts organizations. You are also welcome to contact us at info@tiltwest.org.
To mark the Day of Art Action on January 20th, Tilt West will be hosting a special roundtable discussion on The Lure of Spectacle in Politics and Art.
Traditionally, spectacle derives its appeal from its visual power to engage an emotive response in the viewer — a notable goal of art. Although spectacle is endemic to theater and performance (Aristotle’s Poetics, for example, discusses the proper arrangement of dramatic elements to elicit an emotional response from the audience), the use of spectacle crosses virtually all artistic genres.
With the advent of technology, philosophers and social thinkers from Roland Barthes to Marshall McLuhan observed a temporal and spatial separation between the spectator and the spectacle. For Guy Debord, the political and consumer apparatus hijacked the artistic vehicle and created a situation in which authentic social life became replaced with its representation.
With the dominance of social and digital media and the presence of algorithms in today’s society, we’ve experienced another leap in the iteration of spectacle. This roundtable will discuss the use and abuse of spectacle — its potential for both destructive and generative ends as applied to political and artistic expression in the current environment.
Stay tuned for more information on this upcoming roundtable in the coming weeks.