A version of this piece was first published in La Liga Zine's Issue #1
Sin Canciones No Hay Revolucion
ON PROTEST ART: A MANIFESTO OF SORTS
The protest has to exist beyond finger finger pointing and the art must point to the poetics in the crisis.
Disqualifying direct action and public demonstrations from performance art is imperialistic.
Bigotry drives the insistence that gallery exhibitions are the ultimate destinations for art to be truly appreciated.
The line between agitators and artists is drawn up by institutionalized oppression and reactionary hate.
Resistance does not have to be explicitly or intentionally political as long as it is emancipatory.
There are implicit solutions in social critique; meaningful protest is consequential.
Expressed discontent as only a good visual is focused on aesthetic, not resistance, rendering it stale.
If provoking becomes the objective, building and deconstructing collective identities becomes an afterthought.
Medium does not matter as much as a counter-hegemonic message; fuck self-congratulatory history passing as heritage.
Militarization of law enforcement is the solidified effort to silence dissenters. In a police state, surveillance tactics include painting over street art.
Protest art ought to function as the opening and expanding dialogue, restricting speech is sin.
Homogenization is erasure at best, and practical genocide at worst.
Peaceful protest not to be confused with passivity unless there is an element of complacency.
Conspiracy theories merely as a means to an end, the end being installments of truth.
Post colonial struggle is alive in civil disobedience and art; defiance invokes the fight for freedom, which in itself calls upon the visceral.