Activism / edited by Afonso Dios Ramos and Tom Snow.

Artists include: Ai Weiwei, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla, Tania Bruguera, Black Audio Film Collective, Andrea Fraser, Coco Fusco, Theaster Gates, Nan Goldin, Gulf Labor Coalition, Liberate Tate, Sethembile Msezane, Hito Steyerl, Temporary Services.

Writers include: Ute Meta Bauer, Dave Beech, Judith Butler, Amílcar Cabral, Elias Canetti, Jodi Dean, T.J. Demos, Macarena Gomez-Barris, Gavin Grindon, Félix Guattari, Brian Holmes, Amar Kanwar, Jacques Rancière, Lucy Lippard, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Yates McKee, Achille Mbembe, Gerald Raunig, Aruna D'Souza, Françoise Vergès.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

PRELUDE. The aesthetics of resistance, 1975 / Peter Weiss -- National liberation and culture, 1970 / Amílcar Cabral -- IDEOLOGY AND DISSENT. Trojan horse: Activist art and power, 1984 / Lucy Lippard -- Artistic activism and agonistic spaces, 2007 / Chantal Mouffe -- Feminist artists: Developing a media strategy for the movement, 1981 / Suzanne Lacy with Leslie Labowitz -- Exchange on Black Audio Film Collective's Handsworth Songs, 1987 / Salman Rushdie, Stuart Hall and Darcus Howe -- AIDS activist graphics: A demonstration, 1990 / Douglas Crimp with Adam Rolston -- Dark matter: Activist art and the counter-public sphere, 2003 / Gregory Sholette -- From reaching Heiligendamm: In conversation with Marc James Léger, 2008 / Oliver Ressler -- Eventwork: The fourfold matrix of contemporary social movements, 2012 / Brian Holmes -- Women's House: In conversation with Katarzyna Pabijanek, 2009 / Sanja Iveković -- Twelve miles: Boundaries of the new art/activism, 2008 / Carrie Lambert-Beatty -- Faces and phases: In conversation with Deborah Willis / Zanele Muholi -- Migrant manifesto, 2011 / Tania Bruguera and Immigrant Movement International -- INSTITUTIONS AND DISRUPTION. Guerrilla Girls and bear/bare all, 1995 / Guerrilla Girls -- Group material: An artwork is a person, 2010 / Doug Ashford -- Out of the vox: Art's activist potential, 2004 / Martha Rosler -- A declaration on politics, knowledge and art on the fifth anniversary of the Chto Delat Work Group, 2008 / Chto Delat -- In conversation with Antonio Negri, 1990 / Gilles Deleuze -- Another art world, Part 1: Art communism and artificial scarcity & Part 3: Policing and symbolic order, 2019, 2020 / Nika Dubrovsky and David Graeber -- Institutional liberation, 2016 / Not An Alternative -- Petition, 2011 / Gulf Labor -- Disobedience as performance, 2012 / Liberate Tate -- Crip curation as care: A manifesto, 2022 / Jessica A. Cooley and Ann M. Fox -- I survived the opioid crisis, 2018 / Nan Goldin -- From institutional critique to institutional liberation? A decolonial perspective on the crises of contemporary art, 2018 / MTL Collective -- Let's decolonise the arts! A long, difficult and passionate struggle, 2020 / Françoise Vergès -- African contemporary art: Negotiating the terms of recognition, in conversation with Vivian Paulissen, 2009 / Achille Mbembe -- In conversation with Aude Launay, 2018 / Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nicolai Nelles --

OCCUPY AESTHETICS. Image politics in the Middle East, 2013 / Lina Khatib -- Bodies in alliance and the politics of the street, 2012 / Judith Butler -- The archival multitude: In conversation with Tom Holert, 2013 / Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme -- Rebel cities: From the right to the city to the urban revolution, 2012 / David Harvey -- Getting ready for May Day, 2012 / Tidal Magazine -- There's no place like home, 2012 / Andrea Fraser -- Gezi resistance in Istanbul, 2013 / Süreyyya Evren -- To boycott or not to boycott, 2014 / Dave Beech -- On direct action: An address to cultural workers, 2015 / Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.) -- Strike art: Contemporary art and the post-occupy condition, 2016 / Yates McKee -- ECOLOGY AND THE COMMONS. The three ecologies, 1989 / Félix Guattari -- Post-media activism, social ecology and eco-art, 2013 / Christoph Brunner, Roberto Nigro and Gerald Raunig -- In conversation: Give me shelter, 2003 / Mark Fisher and Franco 'Bifo' Berardi -- The open and closed crowed, 1960 / Elias Canetti -- Crowds and party, 2016 / Jodi Dean -- Investigative aesthetics: Conflicts and commons in the politics of truth, 2021 / Eyal Weizman and Matthew Fuller -- Decolonising nature: Contemporary art and the politics of ecology, 2016 / T.J. Demos -- Disobedient objects, 2014 / Catherine Flood and Gavin Grindon -- Whose monument where?: Public art in a many-cultured society, 1996 / Judith Baca -- It's coming down today, 2015 / Sethembile Msezane -- In conversation with Stephanie Smith, 2005 / Allora & Calzadilla -- On the Sovereign Forest: In conversation with Ute Meta Bauer and Anca Rujoiu, 2020 / Amar Kanwar -- CODA. Letter to an encyclopedic museum curator, 2022 / Michael Rakowitz.

Activism is a critical point of contention for institutions and genealogies of contemporary art around the world. Yet artists have consistently engaged in activist discourse, lending their skills to social movements, and regularly participating in civil and social rights campaigns while also boycotting cultural institutions and exerting significant pressure on them. This timely volume, edited by Tom Snow and Afonso Ramos, addresses an extraordinary moment in debates over the institutional frameworks and networks of art including large-scale direct actions, as well as a radical rethinking of art venues and urban spaces according to racial, class, or gender-based disparities, including demonstrations against the extractive and exploitative practices of neoliberal accumulation and climate catastrophe. From ACT UP and its affiliate groups since the dawn of the AIDS crisis to the counter-spectacle and street theatrics of the so-called Arab Spring and Occupy, to ongoing protest movements such as Black Lives Matter, Rhodes Must Fall, and Decolonize This Place, activist aesthetics has proven increasingly difficult to define under traditional classifications. Resurgent campaigns for decolonial reckoning, ecological justice, gender equality, indigenous rights and antiracist pedagogies indicate that the role of activism in contemporary art practice urges a critical reassessment. One pressing question is whether contemporary art's most radical politics now takes place outside, against, or in spite of, conventional sites of display such as museums, biennials, and galleries.