And one concept that is central to our module is the idea of the detournement which basically means to subvert something, to take the image making of one power structure etc and kind of turn on it itself, do something to it that redirects it. So they not only theorize it but they practice it. They had so many artists architects working as part of the group. And to this day we're decades later. We see this kind of stuff all the day through ad busters. In fact if you think about Occupy Wall Street, that effectively started in part as an ad busters project. >> I know, it makes it crazy. >> So it's- >> And not in a good way. >> It's, but it's pretty wild. >> Yeah. >> But basically, some of these ad busters artists themselves then get hired by corporations. >> Yep. >> To do their work because they actually are so good at subverting things. And subverting can also be catchy, it can attract people and so on. But I mean we also brought up the idea of camouflaging and culture jamming in another module but not in depth. So I think this is a good module to go a little bit deeper with that. Many of these artists who use detournement or humor parody have actually used what we call culture jamming or camouflaging. So the Yes Men have created fake website for the World Trade Organization. >> Yeah. >> Where they say that the organization's mission has radically transformed and they will now start to work on resolving world hunger. >> Yeah. >> And then people have actually invited them as official speakers for these organizations. So there's the idea of taking the image of either a corporation or this, and basically completely copying it, but transforming it. It's not just about an ad campaign, it's about the entire skin of that institution, right. >> It's interesting too, because just thinking historically, a lot of this kind of work was really popular ten years ago. There was a lot of intervention stuff, the Yes Men, there was a lot of movement towards that. And I think in the Internet age it's become very different, this kind of camouflaging movement just to say, and I also am just thinking out loud, but I think the dominance of the Colbert Report. There was a magazine called The Onion which was kind of critiquing major media. But who would have thought at the time the Onion would become the dominant news form. >> Yeah. >> And now it's almost so accepted, it doesn't even feel transgressive to speak like this. >> Well but for people who have lived in repressive or totalitarian regimes, it's actually not a surprise. The more repressed your news are, your truth-telling or your fact-telling, the more you have to resort to humor and hidden ways to represent reality. So this is actually a common experienced around the world and that's, it just interesting that in these times in the US it's become such a mainstream type of production. But you know, there's also one thing that perhaps we could talk about the Gorilla Girls to highlight this. >> Yeah. >> There's artist groups who are doing, who are such parts of social, such a great part of social movements that they realized what they were doing was radical. And they had to, not only protect the work from the narcissism that often accompanies art making and individualism. >> Yeah. >> So they would use pseudo names or kind of hide under a collective skin. >> Yeah. >> But they also often had to do covert action. So a critical art ensemble, a collective doing radical work, is very different from say electronic disturbance theater. One, the second one believing more in what is called radical transparency doing everything in the open, right. Hasan Elahi, a really great artist who was basically he realized he was being followed after 9 11. >> Yeah. >> By the CIA, and he basically made his entire life public. He put every single part of his everyday life on the websites to say, CIA here is it is. >> And that's ultimate transparency. >> Right? And that's different than the Guerrilla Girls whose identities we still, to this day, kind of don't know. I mean, people in the art world know, yeah, yep. >> You know what's amazing? I don't know the identities >> Nope. >> I think I'd know by now. >> I think people like to speculate. >> I got suspicions. But just to say in short, the Gorilla Girls would wear these gorilla masks, and critique the art system. And as you can imagine, the art world can be a very closed system. And for people that don't want to, if you're going to critique major museums or critique creative time, or critique the new museum. Not all artists want to put themselves out there because their lives, their livelihood, is dependent on these relationships. So they don these masks in a way to protect themselves. >> And what they did was always, and still do, is kind of attractive, beautiful, flashy, but it's also apart of sustained organizing, right. >> Yeah. >> So that's where again there's this fluidity. Moving from humor, we only have two more of these forms of action that we're going to cover. >> Yeah. >> And to end on a high note, we will go first through a bit of a low note. And that's the idea of mourning and pain, right. For people who have struggled, and social movements struggled a lot, it's important to not hype things that you're experiencing, right, epecially emotions. And so women like the [FOREIGN] in Argentina but also the women in black. There's different groups that have actually put the idea of public mourning at the forefront. It's also the same actually with the [FOREIGN] and [FOREIGN] movement Mexico, people are putting literally plaques on municipal palaces of the names of those who've died in their families. So the entire walls of this municipal palaces are covered with names, right. >> And in terms of social movements, they call this conscious raising, consciousness raising and just to think about that in prospective. If you are part of a group that's gone through a lot of trauma but you feel like the dominant group does not understand that. It is important for those that have suffered that to, a, share those experiences so you're not alone, but then to also get the dominant culture to understand that it is a valuable experience and one that needs to be addressed. >> And both awareness raising and consciousness raising were central concerns of the feminist movement and other movements. And there were actually planned ways of becoming aware, becoming conscious. And it turns to highlight their slight differences, but important differences. For many activist or artist who use consciousness raising or awareness raising, becoming aware makes you kind of, you realize something that was not in your field of vision. It brings it to your attention. But consciousness raising is transformative, right. So while they're related, there's different types of activities for each one. >> It's true. Yeah. >> So the act of this public mourning often for people, let's say the AIDS quilt, right. >> Yeah. >> Imagine you're in DC and the Mall gets covered with this quilt of all the people who have died from AIDS. >> Yeah. >> That was a powerful, for many people it was consciousness raising because it transformed their view on life. For others it was an act of awareness, right, they became aware of something that they didn't realize was such a huge problem. >> I mean the AIDS awareness movement in general is such a great example. A because there were so many artists involved in it. But also too because, A, people were dying literally. And because there was such a vast disconnect between the dialog you would hear on TV and the direct experience people were having. So consciousness raising out of that movement produced a group called Act Up and their art group called Grand Fury really invested in kind of raising the issue into the public light. So they produced that campaign that said SILENCE = DEATH which many of you would recognize. There was also a public bus public art project which was Kissing Doesn't Kill. >> Right. >> And it was a series of billboards of people kissing on buses all through New York City. But these kind of different campaigns were really about being people's attention to the issues and the trauma of that. >> Well and there's also, to end our module, I said we would end with a high note, and here's what we promised. It's become such a common statement that it's almost a cliche by now. Emma Goldman's famous statement that if there's no dancing at your revolution I'm not coming, right. >> Yeah. >> And so it's true that for many of these social movements dancing, partying has become central. >> Yeah. >> And not because they are necessarily, believe in the Beastie Boys and you gotta fight for your right to party, although that's part of youth culture too. But it's more because we gotta have fun. >> Yeah. >> It's so, when you're suffering and when you're dealing with difficult stuff, it's very tempting to become moralistic, self-righteous, etc. And keeping people together, eating, dancing, partying, has been a central way of doing that of bringing [CROSSTALK]. >> As a personal story when I was in undergrad I joined the ISO, the International Socialist Organization. And I- >> They don't party a lot. >> No [LAUGH] they were not into partying. And I sat down at a table with this guy and he was like, what's your position on Trotsky, and has some almost like biblical references but it was a Marxist kind of thing. And I was like, yeah, I just sensed no party in this human. And then I thought, and I kind of gravitated towards anarchism, and then also the arts. Because I think often the arts are much more about, at times, I don't want to over-stress it. But there's a kind of desire to live, to be the change you want to see is one of the adages. >> Yeah, and we were talking about the mourning side of the AIDS movement, but it actually had a lot of partying too. Stuff that was about celebrating the lives of those who passed and, but there's- >> And wait, can I throw something at you too? Which was, it'd be useful to hear just briefly too about 16 Biebrund. We should talk about it to some degree because that's a social space that also had a lot with not only the Alternative Globalization Movement but also Occupy. And you were very much a founder part of that. >> Yeah, I mean we did lunchtime events. We organized parties. We organized a look-a-like festival. And often we even organized parties where we would have intentional overlaps of one type of community that would come at this time and then another type of community, very different, people who would never mix. But we'd have a half hour overlap at our space. And so that would create these situations where people get together and have new types of conversations and so on. But yeah, certainly this idea, 16 Biebrund, many other collectives that we're connected to internationally the idea has been to kind of keep not only humor alive as well as the harder feelings of pain, anger, and so on but also make these parties public. So for example there's Reclaim the Streets and we could name so many, the Rights to the City. There's so many movements around the world that are so vibrantly visual. But you could even go to rural places like what's the Burning Man? >> A burning Man. >> Burning man, right, that's a party it's like- >> Increasingly, it's a party. [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] But you know and these kinds of things have been part of progressive culture and certainly of socially engaged art but of social movements. >> Yeah.
