The Art of the Square
“The first performance of Occupy Wall Street was the General Assemblies, actually,” said Jez Bold, one of the founding members of the Arts and Culture working group, about the early creativity of the movement. These GAs were technically illegal, with more in attendance than the twenty people allowed for any gathering in a public park to speak of grievances, concerns, or other such issues. “We were engaged in an act of civil disobedience; those are, by definition, performances—they’re acts.” At the second General Assembly about ten people broke off and talked about the future of art with this movement. “There was a sense of passivity,” said Jez, and these people wanted to be engaged and active in the movement. “Before social practices change, and institutions change, you need to change the conversation,” said Alexandre (Alex) Carvalho, from Rio de Janeiro, another original member of OWS’s Arts and Culture. “You need to change the esthetics, you need to change the symbols, the images people use as a backdrop to frame the conversation in the first place.”
“Let’s test the grounds,” said Alex, “let’s put our foot there, and okay, let’s see how the system reacts.” On August 9, at the movement’s second General Assembly, he met Jez Bold, who was trying to form the Arts and Culture working group in anticipation of September’s day of action. In late August, after forming Arts and Culture, these artists went to Wall Street and gave various performances of music, poetry, and street theater. Completely disconnected from them was Noah Fischer, who collaborated with the Aaron Burr Society for street performances on Wall Street all summer long in a series called “Summer of Change,” and with his penny mask on he began to notice these early activists. “We were distributing coins onto the stones of Wall Street and giving speeches.” Noah said at each action they threw $100 worth of coins onto the ground. “Hundred dollars of pennies one day, hundred dollars of nickels, then another day dimes, quarters, so we threw seven hundred dollars of coins on the ground and gave speeches during the distributions.” This was in response to the current financial crisis of widespread economic disparity, and according to the event’s website the intent was: “Standing on The Street safely within the commons of the commonwealth, we shall seize this extraordinary moment by the horns to re-distribute wealth in the form of dollars, fifty-cent pieces, quarters, dimes, nickels, and the Lincoln penny; sacrificing one denomination per event,” in protest of the bankers use of money around them. After seeing some of the occupiers scoping out Wall Street in these weeks, Noah heard of the Adbusters call and showed up on September 17 with his coin mask on. Since then, “I’ve given my life to it.” And so have many others.
Joe Therrien, who recently earned his MFA in puppetry, learned about the movement online. Once at the park, he recalled, he “very quickly found that there was this crazy spirit floating around Liberty Square, and just talking to people kinda blew my mind, what was happening, so I jumped right in and have been involved ever since.” He helped to create the Puppetry guild, one of many guilds now in the Arts and Culture group, roughly two weeks before the big event of Occupy Halloween, where OWS not only had roughly a thousand march in New York’s Halloween parade with giant puppets and banners showing the movement’s guiding principles, but also had costumed characters enacting a great fight at the foot of the NY Stock Exchange on Wall Street.
The guiding principles adopted by Arts and Culture (horizontality, collaboration, participation, inclusiveness, transparency, agency, autonomy, humanization, solidarity, emancipation, sustainability, accountability, empowerment, peacefulness) have been verbally and visually represented in several of their events. The principles were read to the public at the November 6 Union Square event where Noah, who helped to create the Occupy Museums guild, read a statement on the New Museum, whose event they co-opted. He did this, as he feels art should always be used, to continue “changing the way we think about art and all the abuses of labor and economic injustices in the art world.”
The “first mass arrest of the movement,” as Alex called it, was on September 1, when a group of twelve members of Arts and Culture decided to test their ability to physically occupy Wall Street. They went with guitars, poems, songs, and other forms of expression, along with sleeping bags and intentions to stay all night. Within twenty minutes many cops came in and began a dialogue of confusion and vagaries which resulted in nine of the twelve being arrested. Alex said he told the officers, “Of course we don’t wanna get arrested, we’re gonna leave, but just know that you’re…breaking the constitution.” Jez reported that they reached out to the public via the Internet for advice on what to do next, but mainly got the negative advice that bringing a civil suit against the NYPD would not help, as few win suits against them.
This mass arrest was nothing, though, compared to what James Rose called “the biggest mass arrest in U.S. history; 700 people got arrested.” The October 1 Brooklyn Bridge arrests were certainly historic, and this event was James’ first encounter with the OWS movement. “It was really galvanizing for me,” he recalled, “and I was in. After that, I haven’t missed a day down there.” James is a visual artist, and at one point was called by the press the People’s Artist, as most of his works are of people in public places, like subways and parks. He spent much of his early time in the movement in Liberty Square, drawing various activists and police officers. And though he’s a current organizer for Arts and Culture, he did that autonomously. Much of the art occurring in the park, and in support of OWS in general, has been autonomous.
Artistic expression arose naturally in the rich sensory stew of Liberty Square. Artistic fodder flourished as the occupation took root in the park: booths and tents went up, walkways were delineated, and the park became a labyrinth of smoke, food smells, drums, instruments, information booths, meetings, teach-ins, bemused onlookers, and of course the heavy police presence.
Occupiers from other cities showed up with instruments; Jaco from Toronto brought out an array of small instruments, from an ocarina to a small drumset, and talked about the role of jamming in bringing people together, helping to build community within the physical space of the occupation. An anonymous man, recently released from prison for stealing someone's wallet and then returning it, declared “music is healing,” while speaking with two musicians playing for the kitchen staff members serving food to a long line of people. A former monk joined the drum circle, and found ways to merge his religious faith with physical occupation by helping to stage meditation “flash mobs.” Art again served as civil disobedience; people were arrested on the sidewalk on the east side of Zuccotti Park for dancing to a bluegrass band. Clowns were arrested for dancing around the Charging Bull statue, the artistic symbol of the unchecked corporate greed that the Occupy movement is fighting against. Along with James, artists created life drawings of cops surrounding the park; autonomous choirs emerged; it seemed there were endless artistic means of building community and bridging the divide between inside and outside the park.
The drum circle provided a space for dancing and celebration, and drew in passersby. Physically, it was often situated directly opposite a long line of police, bridging the tense sidewalk space on the edges of the park. Though tensions arose as the drum circle migrated away from the east end of the park when the General Assembly started in the evenings, and though the General Assembly voted to limit drumming hours to set times during the day (raising questions about whether occupiers were bending to authority), the drum circle—and other collaborative arts—remained a vital way “in” to Zuccotti and the Occupy movement.
Within and around the park, a rich and varied community of artists emerged. A former Broadway garment worker visited the park daily to knit hats for the people sleeping there. Pizza boxes inscribed with slogans showcased the diversity of voices within the park, from calls to action directed at people walking by (“if you make less than $250,000 a year you belong on this side!”); to calls for revolution (“capitalism kills”) or reform (“reinstate Glass-Steagall!”). Art arose naturally, but also strategically; Reg Flowers, theater artist and community organizer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, put it aptly: “In the OWS movement, arts are not simply a decoration or distraction, but rather tools to engage the base, send a clear message, and engage people who would not necessary find another way in.” No expression of artistic imagination in the square was frivolous; it all served to lift up or push back. Buttons with slogans encouraged passive spreading of the message; poster art flourished as people looked for ways to spread the occupation's “99%” meme in their neighborhoods and campuses; the short-lived “People’s Stage” was an open mic for people to perform and express without judgment. Teachers brought their students to speak to people in the park, using the visual art, sounds, and literature as teaching tools.
Furthermore, art functioned as a microcosm for what the larger movement's encouragement of people to re-imagine their political lives by experiencing something totally new—an alternate society that fulfills basic needs and functions on cooperation. The public nature of the arts in the Park took art out of the privacy of the studio and drew both artist and audience into the wider community. As Nick Lemmin, a Brooklyn-based artist who was arrested on the November 17 day of action for blocking the stock exchange, put it: “I think in a sense the whole thing is a piece of art. With art, you make something that transcends pure logic…it provides people with a moment that transcends what they already assumed to be.” The physical space of Zuccotti park—and the collaborative art that emerged within the space—both transcend the “logic” of political action within the halls of government, and the “logic” of artistic rugged individualism. This both validated artists in their art and transformed their understanding of it. Nick went on to say, “for me it was a revolution; I wasn't going to be the same once I got involved with it. As artists, and people in general, we are trained to just focus on ourselves and nobody else.”
This internal revolution—one that emerged in conversations with many occupiers, not just artists—demands extension outside the square, and artists have begun to occupy space within their own communities. Though the physical space of Zuccoti is no longer occupied en mass, the autonomous art that emerged in the park now “occupies” spaces in marches, protests, and even cultural centers. Local radical bookstore and activist center Bluestockings is currently showcasing art on OWS; the music venue Southpaw is planning a night of performance for Occupy artists; the Epifaneo Collective is hosting meetings for the OWS Spokes Council on Mondays and Wednesdays; another local music venue is holding a weekly Occupy Wall Street open mic. Along with the Arts and Culture working group, an Arts and Labor working group has emerged, protesting unfair labor practices among art handlers, production workers, and other often-underpaid and exploited members of the arts workforce.
In the center of a product-driven city that attracts people from around the world to pursue art for commercial success, the art within the park took on a decidedly process-driven quality, a means of community-building and interpersonal engagement, rather than art as product. Occupiers actively distanced themselves from the influence of money from big-name artists: the General Assembly voted not to accept money from clothing/hip hop mogul Russell Simmons.
The Occupy movement has helped revive both grassroots politics and grassroots arts. Both stem from the desire to create something wonderful out of nothing, to transform experience into a new and better reality. Like great artists and political revolutionaries, OWS strove to abandon past forms and create new ones. Art served as a way to bring people together within the square, but it instantly reached outside the physical square to occupy global cyberspace as well, with virtual archives of OWS posters, contributions by famous writers and academics like Alice Walker and Judith Butler on the occupywriters website, and the many video montages put together of everything from police brutality to music in the square. Thus the “space” itself is not limited to Zuccotti, or even the other occupied parks around the country, but has taken over the Internet and social media platforms too. By continuing to “occupy” the Internet as physically as it occupied Zuccotti, the art of the OWS movement incubated in Zucotti has reached a global audience, and will continue to engage new viewers long after the eviction of the artists and their art from Zucotti Park.
Despite the eviction, it seems the Arts and Culture working group and affiliated artists have been as active as ever. Near the end of November, this group took measures to rediscover itself, looking at the eviction along with understanding the need to streamline information between the now dozens of groups and guilds associated with Arts and Culture, and brought forth the acknowledgment that this is a network of artists and activists to collaborate and share individual creations. One woman in the meeting said she felt the group should “fully support people to create art autonomously, without the need to get the group’s approval.” And this autonomy goes a long way. So far, working in association with Arts and Culture, but not necessarily controlled by the group, there are over 20 organizational teams, thematic groups, and skill-based guilds or commons. Just looking at the guilds and commons, the ever-growing list includes: Performance Art and Theater, Poetry, Graphic Arts and Design, Cinematography, Architecture and Urbanism, Videogame, Photography and Video, Music, Multi-Disciplinary Arts, Painting and Drawing, Short Stories, Puppetry, Sculpture, and Dance.
Art in this movement, as James puts it, serves two major functions. First, it is about “making things happen in the park,” but also art is about “where we are going as a movement.” Joe mirrored this sentiment, and felt his art was used “to help spread the message and create large outdoor spectacles to communicate about the occupation and its energy.” And this role, in the minds of the artists who take it on, has changed. “At the beginning it was just a bunch of artists coming together,” said Noah of the first meetings for Arts and Culture, “and it underwent a transformation because we had to confront what we previously thought art was, and move towards how our artistic practice could be beneficial and inseparable from the movement.
“Art is part of the commonwealth,” said Imani J. Brown. She first came to an OWS event called “No Comment,” and though there has been some negative reflection on this event, she felt it was a wonderful first impression of the movement. She recalls there being “such a wide variety of vision and insight that I’ve missed for so long,” continuing with her impression that, “Art in general in the last few years, this whole decade really, has been so dead and shiny…Every medium of art has an incredible potential to open minds and show people the world in a new way.” Jez saw this with those initial performances on Wall Street; “We changed the nature of that space by stepping out there and calling attention to everybody that was there, speaking to people and calling them to see themselves as people, see themselves as a group, as connected.”
This is what all of the artists of OWS strive for, a way to extend “the message of OWS and…the spirit of OWS,” as Noah put it. They feel art should be self critical. Jez promoted, “Art, as I understand it, is more than passive reflection,” and James agreed that everyone, without competition or exclusivity, should “use art to spread our message and affect, not only the art world, but the public as a whole.” He felt art is there for “opening up discussions about things that people may not be aware of.” The artists and activists do this by creating songs, chants, banners, visuals, performances, poetry, and all other mediums of art and culture to not only look at society and their movement, but themselves as well. Noah understood this. “I’m undergoing a process of deconditioning through this, deconditioning my own sense of public space, and mental space, and exchange.” Claire Lebowitz also understood this. She was one who sang on the steps of a national bank branch in New York, to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic:”
I am writing you today, in the spirit of the Occupy movement,
I am one of the 99% that is struggling in America
I live paycheck to paycheck, and I find it hard to pay rent
I am not here to condemn or attack, I simply want to share my struggles.
Next time you receive a bonus, please remember me,
I will never receive one, please keep me in mind.
Nobody is slowing. The many groups and guilds announced plans for events through the year, varied and individualized, like Occupy Broadway on Black Friday, and several Occupy the Holidays events. Beyond the organized groups of the movement, several other artists and activists are working their creative juices to bring more to marches, rallies, and events than yelling. “If there was a march with no signage, no puppets, no art,” said Imani, “it would just be a bunch of angry people stomping around and changing and waving fists.” Creativity and art is not there to soften the impact, she said, but is there to make the messages “more accessible to the people…the movement has to be accessible because it is for everyone.” This was seen in the many signs used during the massive labor union demonstration on October 5, when Stephen Boyer stood on a table and read from the massive OWS poetry anthology during the police raid of November 15, and the “bat symbol” lights showing “99%” and other statements against the Verizon building during the march over Brooklyn Bridge on the movement’s two-month anniversary. It is seen in connection to most of what the movement does.
The Joie de Vivre statue at Zuccotti Park, created in 1998, which members of the movement lovingly call “The Big Red Thing,” is another example of the movement’s connection to art. It was used as a meeting point in the park, and was captured in many of the pictures taken there. Arts and Culture sent a letter to its creator, Mark di Suvero, asking for him to come and talk about the piece of art, in the hopes that its original name and meaning, “The Joy of Life,” could once again be shared by those who see it so frequently. Imani, who helped to draft the letter to this famous artist, has been a major organizer and frequent facilitator for Arts and Culture. She was one of hundreds of artists who have been in this group, and of thousands of those who look at their art as something for everyone. “We have to keep reminding ourselves that this movement is so young, and there is so much further for us to go, and so much more impact that we can have; I’m really excited for the future, which is something I haven’t said in a few years.”
“The first performance of Occupy Wall Street was the General Assemblies, actually,” said Jez Bold, one of the founding members of the Arts and Culture working group, about the early creativity of the movement. These GAs were technically illegal, with more in attendance than the twenty people allowed for any gathering in a public park to speak of grievances, concerns, or other such issues. “We were engaged in an act of civil disobedience; those are, by definition, performances—they’re acts.” At the second General Assembly about ten people broke off and talked about the future of art with this movement. “There was a sense of passivity,” said Jez, and these people wanted to be engaged and active in the movement. “Before social practices change, and institutions change, you need to change the conversation,” said Alexandre (Alex) Carvalho, from Rio de Janeiro, another original member of OWS’s Arts and Culture. “You need to change the esthetics, you need to change the symbols, the images people use as a backdrop to frame the conversation in the first place.”
“Let’s test the grounds,” said Alex, “let’s put our foot there, and okay, let’s see how the system reacts.” On August 9, at the movement’s second General Assembly, he met Jez Bold, who was trying to form the Arts and Culture working group in anticipation of September’s day of action. In late August, after forming Arts and Culture, these artists went to Wall Street and gave various performances of music, poetry, and street theater. Completely disconnected from them was Noah Fischer, who collaborated with the Aaron Burr Society for street performances on Wall Street all summer long in a series called “Summer of Change,” and with his penny mask on he began to notice these early activists. “We were distributing coins onto the stones of Wall Street and giving speeches.” Noah said at each action they threw $100 worth of coins onto the ground. “Hundred dollars of pennies one day, hundred dollars of nickels, then another day dimes, quarters, so we threw seven hundred dollars of coins on the ground and gave speeches during the distributions.” This was in response to the current financial crisis of widespread economic disparity, and according to the event’s website the intent was: “Standing on The Street safely within the commons of the commonwealth, we shall seize this extraordinary moment by the horns to re-distribute wealth in the form of dollars, fifty-cent pieces, quarters, dimes, nickels, and the Lincoln penny; sacrificing one denomination per event,” in protest of the bankers use of money around them. After seeing some of the occupiers scoping out Wall Street in these weeks, Noah heard of the Adbusters call and showed up on September 17 with his coin mask on. Since then, “I’ve given my life to it.” And so have many others.
Joe Therrien, who recently earned his MFA in puppetry, learned about the movement online. Once at the park, he recalled, he “very quickly found that there was this crazy spirit floating around Liberty Square, and just talking to people kinda blew my mind, what was happening, so I jumped right in and have been involved ever since.” He helped to create the Puppetry guild, one of many guilds now in the Arts and Culture group, roughly two weeks before the big event of Occupy Halloween, where OWS not only had roughly a thousand march in New York’s Halloween parade with giant puppets and banners showing the movement’s guiding principles, but also had costumed characters enacting a great fight at the foot of the NY Stock Exchange on Wall Street.
The guiding principles adopted by Arts and Culture (horizontality, collaboration, participation, inclusiveness, transparency, agency, autonomy, humanization, solidarity, emancipation, sustainability, accountability, empowerment, peacefulness) have been verbally and visually represented in several of their events. The principles were read to the public at the November 6 Union Square event where Noah, who helped to create the Occupy Museums guild, read a statement on the New Museum, whose event they co-opted. He did this, as he feels art should always be used, to continue “changing the way we think about art and all the abuses of labor and economic injustices in the art world.”
The “first mass arrest of the movement,” as Alex called it, was on September 1, when a group of twelve members of Arts and Culture decided to test their ability to physically occupy Wall Street. They went with guitars, poems, songs, and other forms of expression, along with sleeping bags and intentions to stay all night. Within twenty minutes many cops came in and began a dialogue of confusion and vagaries which resulted in nine of the twelve being arrested. Alex said he told the officers, “Of course we don’t wanna get arrested, we’re gonna leave, but just know that you’re…breaking the constitution.” Jez reported that they reached out to the public via the Internet for advice on what to do next, but mainly got the negative advice that bringing a civil suit against the NYPD would not help, as few win suits against them.
This mass arrest was nothing, though, compared to what James Rose called “the biggest mass arrest in U.S. history; 700 people got arrested.” The October 1 Brooklyn Bridge arrests were certainly historic, and this event was James’ first encounter with the OWS movement. “It was really galvanizing for me,” he recalled, “and I was in. After that, I haven’t missed a day down there.” James is a visual artist, and at one point was called by the press the People’s Artist, as most of his works are of people in public places, like subways and parks. He spent much of his early time in the movement in Liberty Square, drawing various activists and police officers. And though he’s a current organizer for Arts and Culture, he did that autonomously. Much of the art occurring in the park, and in support of OWS in general, has been autonomous.
Artistic expression arose naturally in the rich sensory stew of Liberty Square. Artistic fodder flourished as the occupation took root in the park: booths and tents went up, walkways were delineated, and the park became a labyrinth of smoke, food smells, drums, instruments, information booths, meetings, teach-ins, bemused onlookers, and of course the heavy police presence.
Occupiers from other cities showed up with instruments; Jaco from Toronto brought out an array of small instruments, from an ocarina to a small drumset, and talked about the role of jamming in bringing people together, helping to build community within the physical space of the occupation. An anonymous man, recently released from prison for stealing someone's wallet and then returning it, declared “music is healing,” while speaking with two musicians playing for the kitchen staff members serving food to a long line of people. A former monk joined the drum circle, and found ways to merge his religious faith with physical occupation by helping to stage meditation “flash mobs.” Art again served as civil disobedience; people were arrested on the sidewalk on the east side of Zuccotti Park for dancing to a bluegrass band. Clowns were arrested for dancing around the Charging Bull statue, the artistic symbol of the unchecked corporate greed that the Occupy movement is fighting against. Along with James, artists created life drawings of cops surrounding the park; autonomous choirs emerged; it seemed there were endless artistic means of building community and bridging the divide between inside and outside the park.
The drum circle provided a space for dancing and celebration, and drew in passersby. Physically, it was often situated directly opposite a long line of police, bridging the tense sidewalk space on the edges of the park. Though tensions arose as the drum circle migrated away from the east end of the park when the General Assembly started in the evenings, and though the General Assembly voted to limit drumming hours to set times during the day (raising questions about whether occupiers were bending to authority), the drum circle—and other collaborative arts—remained a vital way “in” to Zuccotti and the Occupy movement.
Within and around the park, a rich and varied community of artists emerged. A former Broadway garment worker visited the park daily to knit hats for the people sleeping there. Pizza boxes inscribed with slogans showcased the diversity of voices within the park, from calls to action directed at people walking by (“if you make less than $250,000 a year you belong on this side!”); to calls for revolution (“capitalism kills”) or reform (“reinstate Glass-Steagall!”). Art arose naturally, but also strategically; Reg Flowers, theater artist and community organizer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, put it aptly: “In the OWS movement, arts are not simply a decoration or distraction, but rather tools to engage the base, send a clear message, and engage people who would not necessary find another way in.” No expression of artistic imagination in the square was frivolous; it all served to lift up or push back. Buttons with slogans encouraged passive spreading of the message; poster art flourished as people looked for ways to spread the occupation's “99%” meme in their neighborhoods and campuses; the short-lived “People’s Stage” was an open mic for people to perform and express without judgment. Teachers brought their students to speak to people in the park, using the visual art, sounds, and literature as teaching tools.
Furthermore, art functioned as a microcosm for what the larger movement's encouragement of people to re-imagine their political lives by experiencing something totally new—an alternate society that fulfills basic needs and functions on cooperation. The public nature of the arts in the Park took art out of the privacy of the studio and drew both artist and audience into the wider community. As Nick Lemmin, a Brooklyn-based artist who was arrested on the November 17 day of action for blocking the stock exchange, put it: “I think in a sense the whole thing is a piece of art. With art, you make something that transcends pure logic…it provides people with a moment that transcends what they already assumed to be.” The physical space of Zuccotti park—and the collaborative art that emerged within the space—both transcend the “logic” of political action within the halls of government, and the “logic” of artistic rugged individualism. This both validated artists in their art and transformed their understanding of it. Nick went on to say, “for me it was a revolution; I wasn't going to be the same once I got involved with it. As artists, and people in general, we are trained to just focus on ourselves and nobody else.”
This internal revolution—one that emerged in conversations with many occupiers, not just artists—demands extension outside the square, and artists have begun to occupy space within their own communities. Though the physical space of Zuccoti is no longer occupied en mass, the autonomous art that emerged in the park now “occupies” spaces in marches, protests, and even cultural centers. Local radical bookstore and activist center Bluestockings is currently showcasing art on OWS; the music venue Southpaw is planning a night of performance for Occupy artists; the Epifaneo Collective is hosting meetings for the OWS Spokes Council on Mondays and Wednesdays; another local music venue is holding a weekly Occupy Wall Street open mic. Along with the Arts and Culture working group, an Arts and Labor working group has emerged, protesting unfair labor practices among art handlers, production workers, and other often-underpaid and exploited members of the arts workforce.
In the center of a product-driven city that attracts people from around the world to pursue art for commercial success, the art within the park took on a decidedly process-driven quality, a means of community-building and interpersonal engagement, rather than art as product. Occupiers actively distanced themselves from the influence of money from big-name artists: the General Assembly voted not to accept money from clothing/hip hop mogul Russell Simmons.
The Occupy movement has helped revive both grassroots politics and grassroots arts. Both stem from the desire to create something wonderful out of nothing, to transform experience into a new and better reality. Like great artists and political revolutionaries, OWS strove to abandon past forms and create new ones. Art served as a way to bring people together within the square, but it instantly reached outside the physical square to occupy global cyberspace as well, with virtual archives of OWS posters, contributions by famous writers and academics like Alice Walker and Judith Butler on the occupywriters website, and the many video montages put together of everything from police brutality to music in the square. Thus the “space” itself is not limited to Zuccotti, or even the other occupied parks around the country, but has taken over the Internet and social media platforms too. By continuing to “occupy” the Internet as physically as it occupied Zuccotti, the art of the OWS movement incubated in Zucotti has reached a global audience, and will continue to engage new viewers long after the eviction of the artists and their art from Zucotti Park.
Despite the eviction, it seems the Arts and Culture working group and affiliated artists have been as active as ever. Near the end of November, this group took measures to rediscover itself, looking at the eviction along with understanding the need to streamline information between the now dozens of groups and guilds associated with Arts and Culture, and brought forth the acknowledgment that this is a network of artists and activists to collaborate and share individual creations. One woman in the meeting said she felt the group should “fully support people to create art autonomously, without the need to get the group’s approval.” And this autonomy goes a long way. So far, working in association with Arts and Culture, but not necessarily controlled by the group, there are over 20 organizational teams, thematic groups, and skill-based guilds or commons. Just looking at the guilds and commons, the ever-growing list includes: Performance Art and Theater, Poetry, Graphic Arts and Design, Cinematography, Architecture and Urbanism, Videogame, Photography and Video, Music, Multi-Disciplinary Arts, Painting and Drawing, Short Stories, Puppetry, Sculpture, and Dance.
Art in this movement, as James puts it, serves two major functions. First, it is about “making things happen in the park,” but also art is about “where we are going as a movement.” Joe mirrored this sentiment, and felt his art was used “to help spread the message and create large outdoor spectacles to communicate about the occupation and its energy.” And this role, in the minds of the artists who take it on, has changed. “At the beginning it was just a bunch of artists coming together,” said Noah of the first meetings for Arts and Culture, “and it underwent a transformation because we had to confront what we previously thought art was, and move towards how our artistic practice could be beneficial and inseparable from the movement.
“Art is part of the commonwealth,” said Imani J. Brown. She first came to an OWS event called “No Comment,” and though there has been some negative reflection on this event, she felt it was a wonderful first impression of the movement. She recalls there being “such a wide variety of vision and insight that I’ve missed for so long,” continuing with her impression that, “Art in general in the last few years, this whole decade really, has been so dead and shiny…Every medium of art has an incredible potential to open minds and show people the world in a new way.” Jez saw this with those initial performances on Wall Street; “We changed the nature of that space by stepping out there and calling attention to everybody that was there, speaking to people and calling them to see themselves as people, see themselves as a group, as connected.”
This is what all of the artists of OWS strive for, a way to extend “the message of OWS and…the spirit of OWS,” as Noah put it. They feel art should be self critical. Jez promoted, “Art, as I understand it, is more than passive reflection,” and James agreed that everyone, without competition or exclusivity, should “use art to spread our message and affect, not only the art world, but the public as a whole.” He felt art is there for “opening up discussions about things that people may not be aware of.” The artists and activists do this by creating songs, chants, banners, visuals, performances, poetry, and all other mediums of art and culture to not only look at society and their movement, but themselves as well. Noah understood this. “I’m undergoing a process of deconditioning through this, deconditioning my own sense of public space, and mental space, and exchange.” Claire Lebowitz also understood this. She was one who sang on the steps of a national bank branch in New York, to the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic:”
I am writing you today, in the spirit of the Occupy movement,
I am one of the 99% that is struggling in America
I live paycheck to paycheck, and I find it hard to pay rent
I am not here to condemn or attack, I simply want to share my struggles.
Next time you receive a bonus, please remember me,
I will never receive one, please keep me in mind.
Nobody is slowing. The many groups and guilds announced plans for events through the year, varied and individualized, like Occupy Broadway on Black Friday, and several Occupy the Holidays events. Beyond the organized groups of the movement, several other artists and activists are working their creative juices to bring more to marches, rallies, and events than yelling. “If there was a march with no signage, no puppets, no art,” said Imani, “it would just be a bunch of angry people stomping around and changing and waving fists.” Creativity and art is not there to soften the impact, she said, but is there to make the messages “more accessible to the people…the movement has to be accessible because it is for everyone.” This was seen in the many signs used during the massive labor union demonstration on October 5, when Stephen Boyer stood on a table and read from the massive OWS poetry anthology during the police raid of November 15, and the “bat symbol” lights showing “99%” and other statements against the Verizon building during the march over Brooklyn Bridge on the movement’s two-month anniversary. It is seen in connection to most of what the movement does.
The Joie de Vivre statue at Zuccotti Park, created in 1998, which members of the movement lovingly call “The Big Red Thing,” is another example of the movement’s connection to art. It was used as a meeting point in the park, and was captured in many of the pictures taken there. Arts and Culture sent a letter to its creator, Mark di Suvero, asking for him to come and talk about the piece of art, in the hopes that its original name and meaning, “The Joy of Life,” could once again be shared by those who see it so frequently. Imani, who helped to draft the letter to this famous artist, has been a major organizer and frequent facilitator for Arts and Culture. She was one of hundreds of artists who have been in this group, and of thousands of those who look at their art as something for everyone. “We have to keep reminding ourselves that this movement is so young, and there is so much further for us to go, and so much more impact that we can have; I’m really excited for the future, which is something I haven’t said in a few years.”