Visual Activism

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.