Art activism in the Digital Era
As has been mentioned before, art activism is one of the oldest form of civil disobedience. However, it is often mistaken as a practice typical of the digital media era. Indeed, it is true that thanks to the internet, art activism has expanded exponentially, especially in the last decade. This growth is due to many factors, first of all to the nature of the internet. In fact, it follows two main principles: freedom and openness. Anybody can access it and feel free to express their opinion, a right that we tend to take for granted, but that many do not have around the world. For these people, the internet becomes a sort of sanctuary, a safe place to state freely their ideas. The internet represents what Cohen and Schmidt (Schmidt and Cohen, 2010) define as interconnected estate, therefore a virtual place where people can connect and collaborate to create an opportunity of growth and development for their own country.
Connection and
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As Niranjan Rajan (as mentioned in Tulani, 2016) observes that if potentially anybody can be an artist, this imply “the end of art” itself. Besides, social movements concern serious matter, while art most of the time is considered solely as a form of entertainment. With this statements in mind, it comes natural to think that art activism can hardly have an impact on real-world’s issue. Moreover, according to some of the most distinguished scholars such as Adorno and Baudirillard, art and media have been used by the elite to empower their status and spread an imperative ideology, for decades now. In fact, they sustain that by reinforcing the differences among class, race and gender people become oppressed by the mainstream canon and ideals, turning into completely alienated individuals. Therefore, if it is true that art and media can cause people to follow the mass, why it also should not motivate them to act for a change in the world they live