MAAP: The Mapping Artistic Activism Project, Co-Lab Research

Catalog description

Artistic Activism, the practice of combining arts with activism is a thriving global practice. The desire for artists to increase their social impact and activists to look for more affective ways to reach people in a political world dominated by signs, symbols, and spectacle has led to this new hybrid practice called art activism. The forms this practice takes vary widely, occupying different points on the art/activism spectrum and adapting to different cultures in different geographical regions. While the practice has expanded rapidly, what does not yet exist is a way of conceptualizing and visualizing artistic activism as a diverse, yet interwoven field. Mapping this field of art activism as radical cartography is the aim of this class as it makes visible the invisible connections in this diverse field. Through hands-on, applied research over the course of the semester, students will engage in an in-depth research project to map the global practice of artistic activism. They will learn about maps as a form of counter-narratives as they begin exploring the history, theory, and contemporary case studies of the field of artistic activism. Learning and employing a variety of research methods, including archival and web-based research, survey design, in-depth interviews, and network analysis they will search for, investigate, and chronicle global practices, looking for linkages over time and across space. We will then input this data into an open-access graphic website to be shared with researchers, funders, and artistic activists.