The author of Visual Activism is Nicholas Mirzoeff. He is a visual
culture theorist and professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York
University. His research is mainly in the general field of visual culture. In
the past few years, Nicholas have concentrated in four areas which is,
visuality, texts for general academic use, work with contemporary artists, and
contributing editor for online project. He holds a BA degree from Oxford
University and studied for his PhD at the University Warwick. He won awards in
2006, Steinhardt Challenge Grant.
He begins his text by introduce what is visual culture. He explains every
details of the visual culture including visual thinking and what involve when
doing visual thinking. He also uses reference of the famous movie in Hollywood
which is Star Trek for shorthand on understanding the issues of
concerning visual culture. He also uses Barbie Doll and Madonna as reference to
relate to his text about the visual culture.
Then, he mentions the South African photographer that is ‘black-lesbian’
and a ‘visual artist’ named Zanele Muholi as one key example. It is Muholi that
calls herself as ‘black-lesbian’ and a ‘visual artist’. Her works make striking
the tension between the freedoms offered by the South African constitution and
also the realities of LGBT people every day. Muholi wants herself to be seen as
a black lesbian and to be acceptable by her friends. In 2014, she gave the
keynote speech at the International Association of Visual Culture conference in
San Fransico, that titled ‘Visual Activism’. Thus, many question that implied
by her works international: What does it mean to be seen to be a citizen in a
global area? Who represents us at local and national level in globalized
society? these were the questions that were asked by hundreds of people that
attend the conference.
Around 2001, the slogan movement of, ‘They do not represent us’, now
appears more like a frequent theme in modern history, from the Chartist claim
to represent England to Arab Spring. Due to the financial crash of 2007 in
Ireland, it lead people to unemployment, colonization and a outspread sense of
catastrophe in government. Museums and Art have become a place of discussion on
how to respond to this catastrophe.
In Detroit, Grace Lee Boggs, the
99 years old activist and philosopher begins her every meeting with a question:
‘What time is it on the clock of the world?’. Mirzoeff begins explaining the visionary
organizing is a way of thinking about how we might use our creative energies to
better ends than cutting jobs and increasing profits. He also stated that this
is another form of visual activism. In his last paragraph, he wrote that visual
activism is the interaction of pixels and actions to make change. Pixels
(word/image/sound/video), mainly from the visible result of everything composed
by a computer, meanwhile Action (Direct/Perform/Converse/Material) are direct
from human engagement. Overall, I think this books is really great for the
people with free thinking and also for those who love Visual Activism.
0 comments:
Post a Comment