The Art of Occupy: A Mini Blog Salon with Arlene Goldbard by / Guest Author

Welcome to The Art of Occupy, a mini blog salon taking place all this week. Each day this week, two invited Bay Area guest authors discuss aspects of the art of the Occupy Movement. These authors then begin a dialogue about their ideas, which readers can continue and develop. What compels you about the Art of Occupy?

Right now, there is a lot of talk about the Occupy Movement's varied and vibrant works of art, in all media – and how these artworks have reactivated fierce debates about the possible intersections of art and political action. Today's guest authors are graphic artist R. Black of the Shotgun Players, and Arlene Goldbard, a writer and activist. Their blog pieces jointly address posters and power, economics and tear gas. Read on:

Guest Author: ARLENE GOLDBARD

OCCUPY MEANING

Imagine yourself strolling through lower Manhattan, this time last year. As you walk, you are marinating in commercial messages. Public space is filled with advertising, enticing or commanding us to consume.

When conventional public art is given space in our communities, it generally functions as advertising too—for an ideology. The general on horseback advertises a particular view of American heritage and heroism; passers-by are exhorted to repay a debt of civic gratitude. The imposing, ambiguous piece of sculpture that occupies a corporate plaza, requiring pedestrians to circumvent it, rhymes with the economic power and social influence of those who own the real estate. Those who erect these works feel entitled by virtue of their public office or private property; using sites of public memory, they speak in a single voice that is assumed to represent us all.

Zuccotti Park, site of the Occupy Wall Street encampment, has been captured in many photos and videos. It was originally called Liberty Plaza Park, after the headquarters of U.S. Steel, which donated the park in exchange for being allowed to build beyond the height limit.

It was renamed after John Zuccotti, chairman of the corporation that currently owns the building, Brookfield Office Properties. Two sculptures are situated there, Mark di Suvero's Joie de Vivre, a 70 foot-tall X-shaped construction of orange-painted metal beams, and Double Check, by John Seward Johnson II, a life-sized, seated bronze businessman, rooting through his briefcase. In the context of OWS's focus on the park, they may as well be invisible: neither expresses the values of the people camped out there, nor carries any message relevant to OWS' outcry. They are there to embellish a real-estate transaction, and what they have to say about public space isn't coming into the conversation.

Zuccotti Park's Occupiers lack the permanence (and capital) to install work on the same scale. But the many poster images artists made freely available to embellish that site and others constitute a large, collective work that stands in marked contrast to di Suvero's and Johnson's sculptures. Consider the 100-plus images that can be downloaded from Occuprint. They encompass a remarkable diversity of image, subject, text, and style, rhyming with the assertion of a 99% that encompasses this country's vast diversity.

They appropriate the vocabulary of movie posters, public works notices, Mexican-influenced murals. They quote from games to ridicule corporations' self-assertion, and from older artworks that symbolize a mythic America. They play off aphorisms embedded in nearly every mind. They carry a long tail of otherwise-overlooked political points, elbowing an even larger view of democracy and justice into the conversation.

No single voice speaks for OWS. In contrast to conventional public art's edict from the center, these posters assert a multiplicity of meanings, identities, and citizenships. That they can be shared online and downloaded for any use underscores the point. The Zuccotti Park sculptures occupy space in the way that private property extends public largesse. But the OWS posters set up camp, occupying meaning, often with beauty: the public good is our right, they say. Amen.

To view the companion piece in this blog salon pair, click here.
 

Arlene Goldbard is a writer, speaker, consultant, and activist whose focus is the intersection of culture, politics, and spirituality. Visit arlenegoldbard.com.

The views represented in this Chatterbox Art & Opinion post are those of the individual author, and do not necessarily represent the views of Theatre Bay Area or its staff.