I feel like I can go on about the historical context of act and activism forever. There is such a rich history behind using art for activism around the world that there is no way I can cover it all (even if I wish I could). I am changing how I am doing my searching for artivism and related material, by focusing on scholarship that is around the topic. While artivism is a recent term used in academics, scholars have been writing about the connection between art, activism and society for much longer. I am so excited and a bit overwhelmed with all the information I have been able to find so far just by going simple internet searches, but oh the search continues!
When searching on Google, I can across a topic guide titled “Activist +Artist=Artivist” and it is a list of books that related to artivists and artivism. This topic guide was created by the Seattle Public Library. I am so glad to have come across this list and I am currently checking to see if my university library these books in their collection or if I can get them through Interlibrary loan. Keeping in mind my concentration of looking at artivism in digital spaces, these books may not all be related to that, but I do think that they will all give me great perspectives about different types of art being used for different activism. This week, I will also be searching databases to see what scholarship I can find on artivism. I am curious to find out if scholars have said about how art and activism is being being created, produced and shared on the internet.
Here is the link to the topic guide: https://seattle.bibliocommons.com/list/share/301659320_arttalk/1049103007_activist_artist_artivists
I have also included some books covers of some of the books I can’t wait to read!
Artivism in the Digital Age 