Moving from humor,
we only have two more of these forms of action that we're going to cover.
>> Yeah.
>> And to end on a high note, we will go first through a bit of a low note.
And that's the idea of mourning and pain, right.
For people who have struggled, and social movements struggled a lot, it's important
to not hype things that you're experiencing, right, epecially emotions.
And so women like the [FOREIGN] in Argentina but also the women in black.
There's different groups that have actually put the idea of public mourning
at the forefront.
It's also the same actually with the [FOREIGN] and
[FOREIGN] movement Mexico, people are putting literally plaques on
municipal palaces of the names of those who've died in their families.
So the entire walls of this municipal palaces are covered with names, right.
>> And in terms of social movements, they call this conscious raising,
consciousness raising and just to think about that in prospective.
If you are part of a group that's gone through a lot of trauma but
you feel like the dominant group does not understand that.
It is important for
those that have suffered that to, a, share those experiences so
you're not alone, but then to also get the dominant culture to understand that
it is a valuable experience and one that needs to be addressed.
>> And both awareness raising and consciousness raising were central
concerns of the feminist movement and other movements.
And there were actually planned ways of becoming aware, becoming conscious.
And it turns to highlight their slight differences, but important differences.
For many activist or artist who use consciousness raising or
awareness raising, becoming aware makes you kind of,
you realize something that was not in your field of vision.
It brings it to your attention.
But consciousness raising is transformative, right.
So while they're related,
there's different types of activities for each one.
>> It's true.
Yeah. >> So the act of
this public mourning often for people, let's say the AIDS quilt, right.
>> Yeah. >> Imagine you're in DC and
the Mall gets covered with this quilt of all the people who have died from AIDS.
>> Yeah.
>> That was a powerful, for
many people it was consciousness raising because it transformed their view on life.
For others it was an act of awareness, right,
they became aware of something that they didn't realize was such a huge problem.
>> I mean the AIDS awareness movement in general is such a great example.
A because there were so many artists involved in it.
But also too because, A, people were dying literally.
And because there was such a vast disconnect between the dialog you would
hear on TV and the direct experience people were having.
So consciousness raising out of that movement produced a group called
Act Up and their art group called Grand Fury
really invested in kind of raising the issue into the public light.
So they produced that campaign that said SILENCE = DEATH
which many of you would recognize.
There was also a public bus public art project which was Kissing Doesn't Kill.
>> Right.
>> And it was a series of billboards of people kissing on buses all through
New York City.
But these kind of different campaigns were really about being people's attention to
the issues and the trauma of that.
>> Well and there's also, to end our module,
I said we would end with a high note, and here's what we promised.
It's become such a common statement that it's almost a cliche by now.
Emma Goldman's famous statement that if there's no dancing at your revolution I'm
not coming, right.
>> Yeah.
>> And so it's true that for
many of these social movements dancing, partying has become central.
>> Yeah.
>> And not because they are necessarily, believe in the Beastie Boys and
you gotta fight for your right to party, although that's part of youth culture too.
But it's more because we gotta have fun.
>> Yeah.
>> It's so, when you're suffering and when you're dealing with difficult stuff,
it's very tempting to become moralistic, self-righteous, etc.
And keeping people together, eating, dancing, partying,
has been a central way of doing that of bringing [CROSSTALK].
>> As a personal story when I was in undergrad I joined the ISO,
the International Socialist Organization.
And I- >> They don't party a lot.
>> No [LAUGH] they were not into partying.
And I sat down at a table with this guy and he was like,
what's your position on Trotsky, and has some almost like biblical references but
it was a Marxist kind of thing.
And I was like, yeah, I just sensed no party in this human.
And then I thought, and I kind of gravitated towards anarchism, and
then also the arts.
Because I think often the arts are much more about, at times,
I don't want to over-stress it.
But there's a kind of desire to live,
to be the change you want to see is one of the adages.
>> Yeah, and we were talking about the mourning side of the AIDS movement, but
it actually had a lot of partying too.
Stuff that was about celebrating the lives of those who passed and, but
there's- >> And wait,
can I throw something at you too?
Which was, it'd be useful to hear just briefly too about 16 Biebrund.
We should talk about it to some degree because that's a social space that also
had a lot with not only the Alternative Globalization Movement but also Occupy.
And you were very much a founder part of that.
>> Yeah, I mean we did lunchtime events.
We organized parties.
We organized a look-a-like festival.
And often we even organized parties where we would have intentional overlaps of
one type of community that would come at this time and
then another type of community, very different, people who would never mix.
But we'd have a half hour overlap at our space.
And so that would create these situations where people get together and
have new types of conversations and so on.
But yeah, certainly this idea, 16 Biebrund,
many other collectives that we're connected to internationally the idea has
been to kind of keep not only humor alive as well as the harder feelings of pain,
anger, and so on but also make these parties public.
So for example there's Reclaim the Streets and we could name so
many, the Rights to the City.
There's so many movements around the world that are so vibrantly visual.
But you could even go to rural places like what's the Burning Man?
>> A burning Man.
>> Burning man, right, that's a party it's like-
>> Increasingly, it's a party.
[LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] But you know and
these kinds of things have been part of progressive culture and
certainly of socially engaged art but of social movements.
>> Yeah.