Examples of How the Arts Has Been Used as Forms of Resistance
The concept of 'power' bears with information technology the concept 'powerless'. The powerless volition resist those who, being powerful, oppress them. What constitutes such 'resistance'? In the brilliant words of Rajat Singh"But resistance is the shape of rebellion each of us maintains in our own bodies."
I am interested in the art of resistance, fine art in all its form, in the shapes of rebellion that challenge the way the powerful manifest their power. Hence resistance means that in some manner, still modest or however revolutionary, the way a culture or society works must alter. Until that happens, endurance likewise is resistance. Here are a very few examples I have particularly noted.
Poets have ever resisted. Palestinian-Canadian Rafeef Ziadah has joined that neat company with eye-searing result.
Watch her reciting, with passion, her verse form: "We teach life, Sir" This was written during the winter of 2008-9, amid the Israeli attacks on Gaza, when she was a spokesperson for an activist coalition doing media work. A journalist asked her, "don't you think it would all be fine if you lot Palestinians just stopped teaching your children to detest?"
Who is doing the teaching of then vastly important a subject as life? The Gazans, the Palestinians. With this creative concept Gaza is transformed from being that bombed-out, soon to be unfit for human being habitation sliver of the earth, to become a life-enhancing entity for all.
In Arabic the word often used for the long-standing deep resistance of Palestinians is 'sumud' which roughly equates to 'steadfastness'. Retentiveness is role of sumud. Even the retentiveness of a presence brings its own actuality when it is expressed in a work of art.
Palestinians' desire and need is to be recognised every bit Palestinians, a nation, with a land—Palestine. So Palestine still lives in every steadfast sew together of this embroidered map of the lost land.
Sumud is shown by Tibetans, too. Their country has been subsumed into China, which is as well trying to extinguish Tibetan civilisation, so tightly aligned with the traditional Tibetan Buddhist faith.
Instead of using blackboards they carve their faith and culture into everlasting rock and stone, as seen in these painted Buddhist images, which could well lead to severe Chinese reprisals if displayed in a town or village. Hence rock painting is a notable means of affirming Tibet'south religion and civilization, and is hard for the Chinese to get rid of.
The Occupy movement has faded from public notoriety. However it too has endured in a number of ways. The capitalist, globalised organization that the rich have imposed on the world has, if annihilation, grown worse of late.
Occupy has encapsulated the point that economists, journalists and political scientists have spent millions of words trying to explicate. Merely it is simple. In that location's the organisation, for enriching a few, and there'southward the oppressed many, u.s.a..
Occupy has named us and them, in a brilliantly uncomplicated description which has entered mainstream, indeed into academic linguistic communication.
Every bit with the Palestinians, the small tents of Occupy have on the world: a long-term project indeed, but is non 'modify' the mantra now? Occupy, in its variants, has formed the starting point for new discourses and actions. One move of resistance that may stem from information technology is Blackness Lives Matter.
That bold icon needs nothing else to bolster its impact. Think about what lies behind that deceptively unproblematic argument. Centuries of oppression, racism, slaughter at worst, coincidental denigration at best. A simple argument of fact. Of values. Already the concept is being applied past other oppressed groups, whose lives also matter.
Resistance is always about life, a better life. A blithesome life. Black is beautiful. Blackness is life and joy.
The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is still, as I write, an ongoing protest past the Lakota Sioux against an oil pipeline which volition destroy their sacred sites and likely pollute their drinking water. This protest bears the seeds of resistance. As in the example of the Palestinians and Tibetans, there is an unresolved consequence of colonial dispossession and violence underlying the Native American protest.
One simple statement of resistance, as opposed to protest, is shown here. Despite everything the U.s. has thrown at them, Native Americans are enduring, they take life and a culture they value. Yes, happily they are all the same with us.
The tragedy of Yemen has lasted already for some years and is ongoing. Under the bombs, the starvation, the abuse, creative person Murad Subay has notwithstanding produced an amazing set up of images and artwork that constitute quiet however defiant and positive resistance.
I present here just ane from the many 'interventions' he has made on the streets of Yemen. He involves passers-by, local people. His first intervention encouraged Yemenis to 'Color the walls of your streets' and they did. The tree is bearing fruit, it lives. Yemen will volition endure.
Given the long agony of Syria, the massive destruction, this image stirred my heart.
Syrian artist Mahmoud Hariri is one a group of artists who had to flee the bombardment of their dwelling house of Daryaa, Aleppo, to have shelter in a refugee campsite in Jordan. Here we run across him using clay and wooden kebab skewers to build a model of the ancient Roman ruins of Palmyra, Syrian arab republic. "Hariri hopes that by seeing the pieces, residents at Za'atari will remain connected with the country and culture they have left behind."
Daesh (ISIS) finally destroyed the Arch with explosives.
A Syrian creative person has kept it alive.
That's the art of resistance.
Source: https://www.tni.org/en/article/the-art-of-resistance
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