Occupy Movement Research Papers

Amerického fi losofa s českými kořeny, který od osmdesátých let rozvíjí svou radikálně ekologickou teorii anarchoprimitivismu, jsme se ptali na jeho postoj k technologiím, dobrovolnictví a kultuře protestu. Mluvili jsme také o deziluzi... more

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- by Petr Hušek
- •
- 11
  Social Movements, Political Ecology, Revolutions, Anarchism

This chapter describes framing processes of the 15M or Indignados Movement in Spain. We explore the framing processes that underlie mobilization in social media from a framing perspective. Dynamic network analysis of tweets referring to... more

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- by Camilo Cristancho
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- 6
  Social Movements, Social Media, Protest, Protest Movements

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- by Ragnhild Freng Dale
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- 3
  Social Movements, Anthropology, Occupy Movement

Sánchez-Mateos Paniagua, Rafael (2013) "El impulso milagroso que levanta = The Miraculous impulse that rise up", Nolens Volens 6, 24-32.

In January 2017, after decades of preparation, Christo announced his decision to withdraw his largest to-date project that was supposed to be set in Colorado (Jones, 2017), as a protest against the programme of the new US president,... more

In January 2017, after decades of preparation, Christo announced his decision to withdraw his largest to-date project that was supposed to be set in Colorado (Jones, 2017), as a protest against the programme of the new US president, Donald Trump, while MoMA responded to the presidential ban on immigration from Muslim nations by installing works by such artists in its permanent galleries (Halperin, 2017). It seemed that what we are witnessing is a new era of politically engaged art practice, whose motivations arise not so much from a shared and concrete political agenda, but from a common opposition to what is regarded as oppression and discrimination. More than with any other movements, this widespread protest of professionals representing the art world, cultural practitioners, and other actors alike, shares a lot with the Occupy movement from six years before, in that its emergence was ignited by the sudden alteration of political climate, rather than by a gradual progression – a sudden break in what seemed to be a continuous but otherwise balanced process of negotiation between the forces of conservatism and change. This is perhaps a trivial observation, since most protest movements (to name but the most culturally generative effort of 1968) indeed had their roots in what is perceived as a sudden (but perhaps inevitable) moment of crisis. Another feature that these movements share is their inherently urban provenance and largely metropolitan resonance, that is, very much like all their 20 th-century predecessors, they relied on the network of city-based actors, played out their contestation in the urban public space, as well as engaged spatially with what is considered the point of encounter between citizen and power, such as squares in front of offices of public authorities and the like. In this context, Christo's decision to retract his project invites questions on the political relevance and scope of Land Art. Certainly, Land Art is a type of practice that is always political as it engages with landscape that has been recognized as a space whose physical and ideological formation, as well as aesthetic reception, is largely a matter of politics.

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- by Karolina Kolenda
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- 3
  Landscape, Land Art, Occupy Movement

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- by Alfonso Montuori
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- 59
  Sociology, Cultural Studies, Future Studies, Political Sociology

This article aims to discuss how Bartleby, Herman Melville's literary character from the homonymous story, Bartleby, The Scrivener re-emerged in the Occupy Movement in Wall Street. It intends to argue that Melville's story has been... more

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- by Patricia Sequeira Bras
- •
- 5
  Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, Antonio Negri, Occupy Movement

Although networked movements have often been described as leaderless, I propose that they not only display different kinds of leadership phenomena but, when understood in their own terms, also function in a similar way to the " societies... more

A consideração de um espaço qualquer como um “espaço de liberdade” é relativa às experiências que este espaço possibilita. Entendemos, pois, que não há uma forma específica, fixa e fechada que permita compreender ou caracterizar a... more

This is an open access annotated bibliography created for Occupy Wall Street as part of the MyMETRO Researchers Pilot Project. The citations in this annotated bibliography address specific impacts of climate change on plant & animal... more

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- by Ari Ress and +1
  Darcy Gervasio
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- 4
  Climate Change, Global Warming, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Movement

Shortly before the demise of the worldwide Occupy movement, two watershed events mark its final transformation. Two collaborations with international art exhibitions in Germany, that not only changed the fate of the movment, but brought... more

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- by Sebastian Loewe
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- 12
  Performing Arts, Political Art, Conceptual Art, Visual Arts

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- by Troy A Belford
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- 4
  Civil disobedience, Social Protest, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Movement

These reviews were rejected by the Berkeley Non-Profit Radical Newspaper Slingshot. The first co-legitimized the research of Gilens and Page's work determining the US Government is an oligarchy. The second was Robert Ogman's work... more

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- by Darin Bauer
- •
- 18
  Law, Political Science, Social Activism, Activism

Celebrity politics are conceived as performative (Street, 2004; Wheeler, 2012; Brassett, 2016; Andrews; Lopes; Jackson, 2015), in the sense of being able to enact symbolic identifications with this or that cause and thus reshape social... more

Celebrity politics are conceived as performative (Street, 2004; Wheeler, 2012; Brassett, 2016; Andrews; Lopes; Jackson, 2015), in the sense of being able to enact symbolic identifications with this or that cause and thus reshape social subjectivities. Thus, in recent scholarship around the phenomenon of Russell Brand, it is argued that the “performance” in Paxman “can be regarded as an act intended to disrupt the normative repetitive depictions of the dutiful citizen” (2014: 144). Or, that Brand’s “performances” generate “a sophisticated (form of) critique of market life that reaches a large audience in a manner that is potentially democratizing” (Brassett, 2016: 3). In platforms with anarchist orientations, such as libcom.org, and comments by eponymous radical scholars we can find an echoing approach. To refer to one example among many others, for Mark Fisher and Jeremy Gilbert Brand’s performance is “already an act of seizure (‘I’m taking it’) of a mainstream media terrain which had seemed almost entirely colonised by the imperatives of communicative capitalism”.

Historically, the suspicion against members of the capitalist class who wished to practice radical egalitarian politics was revoked through the demonstration of some ‘true’ commitment to revolutionary causes. Archetypical figures of Marxism and anarchism, like Friedrich Engels or Pierre Kropotkin, were born to affluent and very privileged backgrounds. In order to legitimise themselves as revolutionaries however they had to either sacrifice these backgrounds or offer their fortunes to the cause of revolution. From the 19th century onward, in a tradition spanning from Russian and American anarchism, the Paris Commune and Latin American guerilla fighters, and figures such as Louis Blanqui, Henry David Thoreau and Che Guevara, revolutionary life came strongly to be connected with a devoted lifestyle and generally to what Foucault calls the “style of existence” (2012: 185); that is to say the “manifestation of truth” in the militancy of one’s life itself (2012: 185).

This chapter wishes to act as a corrective and complement on approaches on politics (and celebrity politics in particular), which seem to emphasise the power that certain perfomances might have in transforming political debate. It argues for the significance of preserving a version of (commodity and ideology) critique against capitalism when grappling with activist celebrity politics.

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- by Panos Kompatsiaris
- •
- 19
  Cultural Studies, Anarchism, Performativity, Celebrity Culture

Debt cancellation in its Ancient Near Eastern context is an act and prerogative of sovereign power. This raises challenges for conceptualizing debt cancellation/Jubilee today as a radical or progressive practice.

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- by Devin Singh
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- 13
  Critical Theory, Religion, Theology, Sovereignty

Cosa significa protestare per le strade, perché occupare uno spazio nella città? Veniamo da un recente risveglio, da anni che hanno riportato la politica nelle piazze e nelle strade. In tutto il mondo uomini e donne sono scesi in piazza... more

Occupy Wall Street was a movement of many faces. Its impact on the public debate was significant, sparking support and criticism from a variety of sources. The occupation of the park, a ‘privately owned public space’, awoke the interest... more

Occupy Wall Street was a movement of many faces. Its impact on the public debate was significant, sparking support and criticism from a variety of sources. The occupation of the park, a ‘privately owned public space’, awoke the interest of the media, triggering nationwide media coverage and generating significant online activity.

Behind an almost two-month occupation of a 3,100 m2 park in downtown Manhattan, an element crucial to Occupy Wall Street gaining scale and achieving significant media coverage emerges: Its discourse. Acknowledging that a discourse encompasses a set of ideas, values, identities and activities signified by the use of certain semiotic choices, this paper explores how the different bits and pieces of the Occupy Wall Street discourse play out in the social, political and communication arenas. The methodology is based on empirical and exploratory research. Interviews are conducted with professors, activists, protesters, journalists and editors, most of them based in New York City. Meanwhile a media analysis is performed based on online activity, mainstream media coverage and tag clouds generated out of hundreds of articles from three leading newspapers of various types and political inclinations.

Results reveal a social movement represented by protesters whose one common aspect was their frustration with the economic, social and political systems in the United States. This responds to an ideology named “the critique of capitalism.” Despite lacking a single, unified message, Occupy Wall Street managed to deliver strong semiotic choices behind the narrative of “We are the 99 percent,” ultimately producing a compelling, media savvy discourse.

OWS also accomplished influencing the public conversation by relying on social media networks. This was reinforced by the very occupation of Zuccotti Park, which would symbolically reenact the movement’s narrative and serve as a storefront for journalists to gather constantly changing stories. In contrast, OWS’ depiction in the news varied considerably, showing a constantly shifting and volatile narrative particularly subject to events of a violent or unsettling nature. This generated increased media coverage, but ultimately affected both public support and the movement’s morale. Still, if there is one thing that Occupy Wall Street indisputably achieved, it is bringing back the public debate on the aggravating issue of economic inequality and its repercussions on the American people.

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- by Ming Sing
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- 4
  Hong Kong, Civil disobedience, Occupy Movement, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

"Reading Geoffrey Pleyers’ account of the alter-globalization movement has a certain poignancy, as well as engendering a sense of excitement and the glimmer of new possibilities. ... Pleyers is very good on the limitations and... more

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- by Geoffrey Pleyers
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- 9
  Sociology, Political Sociology, Social Movements, Globalization

Deploying the Foucauldian concepts of 'conduct' and 'counter-conduct', this article provides an analysis of 'Occupy Sussex' – a two-month long student occupation launched in opposition to the outsourcing of service staff at the University... more

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- by Maïa Pal
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- 6
  Social Movements, Michel Foucault, University, Fordism and Post-Fordism

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- by Thomas Nail
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- 163
  Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Cultural History

It is not uncommon to conceive of the Occupy Movement as a powerful civic protest that failed to mobilize politically. The literature on #Occupy is limited to: a) academic accounts of how the movement fits existing theories about social... more

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- by Maksim Kokushkin
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- 8
  Critical Theory, Social Movements, Political Economy, Social Movement

We are the 99 per cent of the population who are subjected to the system and you are the one per cent who benefit from disproportionately high advantages. The slogan of the indignant is forceful and carries a populism which breaks with... more

Nancy Adajania, 'In What Does the " Formerness " of the West Reside? An Itinerary of the Contemporary from Societies in Transition' in Maria Hlavajova and Simon Sheikh eds., Former West: Art and the Contemporary after 1989 (Utrecht: BAK... more

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- by Nancy Adajania
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- 10
  Critical Theory, Art History, Art Theory, Contemporary Art

This paper examines the antecedent and contingent causes sparking the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Spurred by two contingent events generating pre-emptive and backlash mobilization, the movement is a spontaneous transformation of the... more

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- by Edmund Cheng
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- 4
  Social Movements, Political Participation, China studies, Occupy Movement

First proof of the book - so not the same as the published version, but close to it. For citation purposes it would be advantageous to cross-check with final published version.

In this interview, Walter Benn Michaels talks about his trajectory from being a student involved in the anti-war movement in the late 1960s to becoming an English professor, whose critique of what he calls " left neoliberalism " and his... more

""Politics is always about nomination. It is about naming a political subjectivity and organizing politically around that name.– Simon Critchley (2007, 103) This paper situates Guy Standing’s recent work on ‘the precariat’ within a... more

""Politics is always about nomination. It is about naming a political subjectivity and organizing politically around that name.– Simon Critchley (2007, 103)

This paper situates Guy Standing’s recent work on ‘the precariat’ within a broader body of literature exploring processes of ‘precarisation’, at work and across the social field. It sets out the differential distribution of ‘precarity’ (including on the basis of gender, geography, status and sector) resulting from transformations in labour and the political economy, the rollback of social democracy and of ‘industrial citizenship’ (where these existed), as well as from processes of globalisation. The paper argues that, like many other works, Standing’s book, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, de-couples its discussion of precarious, neoliberal labour and life from the explicitly utopian agenda of radical reform it ultimately proposes. Drawing on Kathi Weeks’ engagement with Ernst Bloch’s work, the paper suggest Standing’s utopianism remains abstract, detached from an analysis of the social forces, movements and struggles that might bring it into being. It makes use of Antonio Negri’s distinctive, heterodox interpretation of V.I. Lenin to provide a framework for theorising how concrete utopian projects of radical political transformation – which is to say, ‘realist’ or materialist ones – are extrapolated out of spontaneous struggles; the predominant ‘will’, ethics and structures of which are always largely determined by the social, political and economic context from which they emerge. It is shown how, on the basis of this approach, Negri (in his collaboration with Michael Hardt) has constructed the notion of ‘multitude’ as a potential model for political organisation today – apposite to the precarious reality described by Standing and others. They draw on Baruch Spinoza’s political philosophy – often counterposing it to that of Thomas Hobbes – to affirm the capacity for common political action and decision despite heterogeneity, and to ground political organisation in social conflict rather than contract. Finally, drawing on Alain Badiou’s distinction between ‘immediate’ and ‘historical uprisings’, the paper explores the degree to which a number of contemporary movements and struggles might have tentatively achieved what he calls ‘qualitative extension’ – establishing connections and a ground for common action across social spaces and strata – potentially setting in motion enduring projects of political organisation and constitution that resemble the multitude model.""

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- by Ben Trott
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- 29
  Marxism, Social Contract Theory, Hobbes, Post-Marxism

A bullshit job is a job which is so pointless that even the person doing the job secretly believes that it shouldn’t exist. And there are more now than ever. In his book, David Graeber, the best-selling author of Debt: The First 5000... more

Across the last decade we have witnessed a growing wave of resistance across the globe. In this article we argue that it is critical to utilise class analysis to understand contemporary social movements. We maintain that class analysis... more

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- by Todd Wolfson and +1
  P. Funke
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- 16
  Cultural Studies, Social Movements, Media Studies, Media and Cultural Studies

In a photograph showing a roaring crowd from above, people cover the urban landscape like so many ants occupying a square. Another image brings us downward and a little closer: we see masses confronting security forces as a water cannon... more

In a photograph showing a roaring crowd from above, people cover the urban landscape like so many ants occupying a square. Another image brings us downward and a little closer: we see masses confronting security forces as a water cannon approaches. Another one captures the crowd as it disperses. Some protesters throw gas canisters back toward the police line, arms stretched, legs hanging in the air, in the thick of the gas cloud. An image of a naked man standing still in front of the police line, as if to say, "this is how fragile we are." A photograph of a protester wearing a superhero costume walking down the street seems to be challenging the police by declaring: "We have secret powers." Other images show hundreds of people talking to each other in the middle of a street. Gestures of a long-lasting discussion, hands swing in the air, heads nod, attentive eyes directed to each other. The raised fist, the V for victory sign held high, someone throwing a rock toward an unseen target, a body stretched out like an arch. A line of people holding flags on top of a mountain of ruins, street signs, and bricks. An image shows people eating together or sleeping out in the street in front of makeshift tents. Where are we? Is it Syntagma in Athens, Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Tahrir in Egypt, Taksim in Istanbul? One cannot tell. The iconography and framing of each occupation is patterned consistently, suggesting an iconographic composition of political resistance and human resilience. The final days of 2010 shook the world with an unexpected revolt erupting in Tunisia, quickly followed by another in Egypt in the early days of 2011. 1 In the years that followed , uprisings sprouted up in different corners of the world, one after the other. Even though each of them occurred in its specific historical, social, and political context, this was a global movement against the socioeconomic consequences of neoliberal globalization. There were striking similarities between the uprisings in terms of movement organization and action repertoire: the occupation of public spaces was the main form of action; there were neither leaders, nor visible formal movement organizations such as political parties or unions involved; they were spontaneous and horizontally organized, ad hoc structures and initiatives organizing the everyday in the occupation. 2 Even though this cycle of contention, mostly referred to as the "movement of the squares," was global-from Yemen to Hong Kong, from Brazil to Armenia, from Israel to Turkey, and then the USA, Spain, Bahrain, Greece, Bulgaria, Syria, and Ukraine, to name just a few-it was also specifically Mediterranean. It erupted in Tunisia and resonated in Egypt,

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- by begüm özden fırat
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- 4
  Social Movements, Photography, Collective Action, Occupy Movement

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- by Nick J. Sciullo
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- 7
  Social Movements, Law, Marxism, Capitalism

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- by Florian Malzacher and +1
  Perjovschi S Dan
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- 8
  Social Activism, Political Art, Activism, Art and Politics

Dünyanın üzerinde bir hayalet geziniyor… sosyal medyanın hayaleti. Bu hayalet yeni bir dünyanın dilini konuşuyor ve sanaldan gerçeğe tüm sokaklarda artık bu dil konuşuluyor.

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- by barış çoban
- •
- 77
  Sociology, Media Sociology, Social Movements, Communication

"The ‘Arab spring’, the Spanish ‘Indignados’, the Greek ‘Aganaktismenoi’ and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement all share a number of distinctive traits. They made extensive use of social networking and were committed to the direct... more

"The ‘Arab spring’, the Spanish ‘Indignados’, the Greek ‘Aganaktismenoi’ and the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement all share a number of distinctive traits. They made extensive use of social networking and were committed to the direct democratic participation of all as they co-ordinated and conducted their actions. Leaderless and self-organised, they were socially and ideologically heterogeneous, dismissing fixed agendas or ideologies. Still, the assembled multitudes that animated these mobilisations often claimed to speak in the name of ‘the people’, and they aspired to empowered forms of egalitarian self-government in common.

Similar features have marked collective resistances from the Zapatistas and the Seattle protests onwards, giving rise to theoretical and practical debates over the importance of these ideological and political forms. By engaging with the controversy between the autonomous, biopolitical ‘multitude’ of Hardt and Negri and the arguments in favour of the hegemony of ‘the people’ advanced by J. Rancière, E. Laclau, C. Mouffe and S. Žižek the central aim of this book is to discuss these instances of collective mobilisation, to probe the innovative practices and ideas they have developed and to debate their potential to reinvigorate democracy whilst seeking something better than ‘disaster capitalism’.

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Contents: Introduction: radical democracy and collective movements today: responding to the challenges of kairos, Alexandros Kioupkiolis and Giorgos Katsambekis; Post-hegemony: politics outside the usual post-Marxist paradigm, Benjamin Arditi; Letter to a Greek anarchist: on multitudes, peoples, and new empires, Richard J.F. Day and Nick Montgomery; Sovereignty of the people, Jodi Dean; Occupy and autonomous political life, Saul Newman; Hegemony or post-hegemony? Discourse, representation and the revenge(s) of the real, Yannis Stavrakakis; Generalised antagonism and political ontology in the debate between Laclau and Negri, Paul Rekret; A hegemony of the multitude: muddling the lines, Alexandros Kioupkiolis; The multitudinous moment(s) of the people: democratic agency disrupting established binarisms, Giorgos Katsambekis; Representation and political space in Laclau and Hardt and Negri, Andy Knott; Autonomy and hegemony in the squares: the 2011 protests in Greece and Spain, Marina Prentoulis and Lasse Thomassen; Index.

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Reviews:

‘People or Multitude, Hegemony or Autonomy, Laclau or Negri? This is the crucial dilemma the “age of resistance” we have entered poses to theory and politics. This sophisticated volume brings together some of the most interesting younger scholars to examine the many aspects of the dilemma. The alternatives are mapped in their full complexity and are backed with detailed empirical evidence from the movements in Spain, Greece and Occupy. This collection will become a classic in radical political philosophy.’
--Costas Douzinas, Birkbeck, University of London, UK

‘At a time when we have to make sense of the worldwide protests unfolding since 2011 this book comes at exactly the right moment. Intervening into the heated debates around the question of political representation and the necessity of constructing a new left wing hegemony, this book is a must-read for everyone interested in the topic of collective protest.’
--Oliver Marchart, Düsseldorf Art Academy, Germany"

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- by Giorgos Katsambekis and +1
  Alexandros Kioupkiolis
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- 22
  Social Movements, Post-Marxism, Slavoj Žižek, Antonio Negri

En este artículo se reseñan un puñado de incidentes recientes de carácter "despreciable," acontecidos dentro del marco de movimientos de oposición política en Puerto Rico, pres-tando particular atención a la manera en que dichos... more

Recent years have seen near constant reports on the failures of governance and the crisis of democracy. The critical nexus between the ever-increasing array of crises that modern representative democracies face and the widening reliance... more

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- by Benjamin Isakhan and +1
  Steven Slaughter
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- 105
  Political Sociology, Comparative Politics, Political Economy, Political Philosophy

Tecnologia e politica intessono la trama della realtà sociale. L’elaborato esamina il rapporto tra social media e movimenti globali, analizzando l’azione collettiva di protesta sia online che offline. Gli interrogativi sulle... more

Tecnologia e politica intessono la trama della realtà sociale. L’elaborato esamina il rapporto tra social media e movimenti globali, analizzando l’azione collettiva di protesta sia online che offline. Gli interrogativi sulle interconnessioni tra le due dimensioni, la questione della leadership e la contraddizione di trarre beneficio dall’utilizzo delle piattaforme digitali aziendali hanno trovato risposta mediante una ricerca empirica. Il Capitolo 1 richiama i presupposti teorici del “Movimento dei movimenti” emerso negli anni Novanta, dalle tesi di Jean Baudrillard ai dati forniti da Naomi Klein. Il passaggio dall’azione collettiva all’azione connettiva, oggetto degli studi di Lance Bennett e Alexandra Segerberg, incontra l’interesse per l’approfondimento degli aspetti concernenti l’identità, come esplicitato dalle osservazioni di Paolo Gerbaudo ed Emiliano Trerè. L’antenato dei social network era Indymedia: a vent’anni di distanza, nel Capitolo 2 si approfondiscono le trasformazioni generate dal capitalismo delle piattaforme, di cui Mariana Mazzucato fornisce il contesto economico, e le sfide poste dagli algoritmi nell'estrazione e nella valorizzazione dei dati. Le analisi di Zeynep Tufekci e Evgeny Morozov affrontano il problema dell’omologazione e del contagio emotivo. Il Capitolo 3 presenta i risultati di una ricerca qualitativa che ha coinvolto venti attivisti provenienti da movimenti sociali contro il consumo per la giustizia sociale, ambientale e di genere, quali: School Strike 4 Climate, Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, Ni Una Menos, 15M e Occupy. Il punto di vista degli intervistati dialoga con la letteratura esistente per rispondere alle domande teoriche dei capitoli precedenti. Le conclusioni offrono uno sguardo d’insieme sui risultati rilevanti e qualche spunto per le ricerche future, in particolare in materia di etica applicata all’intelligenza artificiale. L’Appendice Fotografica fornisce un’ulteriore fonte visiva al contenuto testuale. [L'Appendice II presenta un'intervista a Moez Chakchouk, Assistant Director-General dell'UNESCO per il Settore Comunicazione e Informazione]

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- by Sara C. Santoriello
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- 19
  Social Movements, Algorithms, Glocalization, Social Media

An anthology of 50 articles from the Platypus Review, the monthly broadsheet newspaper of the Platypus Affiliated Society, including authored articles, interviews and public forum transcripts, 17 written by Chris Cutrone.

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- by Chris Cutrone
- •
- 9
  Marxism, Communism, New Left, Lenin

The past few years have seen an unexpected resurgence of street-level protest movements around the world, from the rise of anti-austerity protests in Spain, Greece, and Israel to the global spread of the Occupy movement. This collection... more

“Art + Squat = X” by Alan W. Moore Unpublished; submitted How and why are artists involved with squats and occupied social centers? The artworld is flexible, but squatting is subcultural. Counterculture and exodus are two ways to think... more

“Art + Squat = X” by Alan W. Moore
Unpublished; submitted
How and why are artists involved with squats and occupied social centers? The artworld is flexible, but squatting is subcultural. Counterculture and exodus are two ways to think about the art/squat relation. Artists' economy does not fully accord with capitalism, nor with conditions of ordinary labor. Artists have lost their low-rent homes in the traditional working class districts of the city. They are therefore inclined towards the radical solutions offered by squatting. The 1970s “free cities” of Christiania and Ruigoord offer positive examples of squatting for artists. The history of the broader movements of the '70s, though, are little known. Artists were closely involved in squatting in New York City in the 1980s and '90s. Who is an artist, and why might they choose to squat? Artists in squats are those who participate in social movement culture. These can be committed activists or not. Punk, hip hop, and experimental cultures all co-exist in squats. Cultural activities sustain squatting, both through personnel and financially. Several famous artists have been involved with squatting. (Discussion of these cases.) Mostly it is lesser known artists who fully identify as squatters. Musicians also have been closely involved with squats. Performing artists are the most closely involved, and some theater groups have come from squats. Squatters also continuously perform their activity for photographs, and in demonstrations. Films document the life and performance of squatters. Sometimes this is spun into fiction, and in one case, a situation comedy. Formally, a squat resembles an art exhibition – much work for a short time open. They also both serve a social function for the participants. One group of artists has used squatting as an element in their work, that is, as a form. Occupied social centers have been called “monster institutions,” in that they are in the process of forming from popular initiative. Considered as a form, then, they can be compared to the vein of art work called institutional critique. They relate as well to the emergent art form of social practice. The bureaucratic negotiations that may lead a squatted social center to legal status are boring. Institutions and private owners imitate squatting strategies. There are better ways for institutions to relate to the “monster institutions,” and they are being explored.
This talk was given to the Faculty of Politics and Sociology at Universidad Complutense, Madrid in 2012. The text has been revised and corrected for an anticipated publication in Brazil, in Estado da Arte, revista de artes visuals of the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia.
– Madrid, October 2021

Occupy Movement

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