ART WORKS Projects: Claiming Public Space for Human Rights

2019

This article asks the initial question of what the arts in general and literature in particular have contributed to social justice and human rights, and it addresses the question in a Latin American context. The humanities and social sciences have become an engaging dialogic encounter between political, historical, legal, and ethical discourses on human rights and cultural texts including literature (poetry, memoir, testimony, and its particular Latin American form – testimonio – as well as narrative), the visual and performing arts, film, and popular culture. The article presents the Chilean-American poet and human rights activist Marjorie Agosín and her negation of forgetfulness and oblivion in this context.

Public Art Dialogue

e-International Relations, 2011

Since the middle of the 20th century the rights manifest in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have provided protection for people against the abuses of power by states and relatively clear answers to complex moral and political issues. This article will explore how and why the modern law-based approach to human rights has nevertheless largely failed in delivering people from suffering and trauma. It will explore how bureaucracy and conventionalism have lead to a growing gap between the implementational mechanisms of human rights advocacy and its original goals. The article will assess how an alternative, arts-based approach to human rights advocacy can reach those for whom the written and spoken word is inaccessible or incomprehensible and thus provide a more universal, yet specific, basis for the advancement of peace, security and dignity across the world.

The Activist (Human Rights Initiative, CEU), 2013

While images remain a powerful tool for mobilizing social change, the massive increase in the use of images, the shorter attention spans of intended audiences and the increasingly repressive environments that journalists and activists face require a rethinking of not only the vocabulary that one uses, but also the modes of engagement. Shahidul Alam has been challenging successive authoritarian governments in Bangladesh through his work as an artist and a journalist for over thirty years. He will be discussing the strategies for interventions that he has been using, both as an individual and through the organizations and networks he has created. This will include both his photography and writing, but also the legal and public actions through which he and his colleagues continue to try and expand the space for freedom of expression and dissent. Bio

Pagrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies, 2020

This chapter looks at street art and its relationship to peace efforts. Specifically, it examines how street art is used as a medium to express the concerns, needs and wants of societal groups whose everyday lives are affected by decisions made at (and by) higher political levels, but whose voices remain marginalised and/or silenced. The fact that this type of artistic intervention takes place in the street means that its message is by definition accessible by a large audience. Depending on the circumstances of each case and the severity of the situation faced by everyday actors, street art interventions may not only manifest instances of injustice or mistreatment, but may also lead to the transformation of the situation through collective action (mobilisation, protest, manifestation). The chapter looks at a few examples where street art has had this type of effect.

This two-day conference brings together academics, human rights practitioners, journalists, filmmakers and policy makers to examine the interplay between visuals and human rights. It seeks to address how, under which circumstances, and to what ends visual technologies and platforms shape the recognition and restitution of human rights claims. The conference also features a hands-on verification workshop for eyewitness media. A curated presentation of OSF's Moving Walls photographs is showcased during the coffee and lunch breaks.

With social justice becoming an increasingly common concern in cultural discourse, this talk at London's Austrian Cultural Forum considered what exactly is meant by "social justice" in this context and the ways in which the arts relate - in both positive and negative ways - to the term. Given art's various historical relationships and allegiances to individualism, authority, money and power, any commitment to social justice requires layers of self-awareness and self-criticality that cannot be taken for granted. Alongside these caveats, several positive examples of the potential of culture to influence positive change at both individual and institutional levels were outlined. A parallel contribution was made by Vienna-based writer and cultural management specialist Leonie Hodkevitch and the issues were then debated passionately by members of the audience.

Genocide Studies and Prevention, 2021

Although largely overlooked in genocide and atrocity prevention scholarship, the arts have a critical role to play in mitigating risk factors associated with genocide and atrocity. Grounded in analysis of "Artivism: The Atrocity Prevention Pavilion,” the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities’ 2019 Venice Biennale exhibition and drawing from fieldwork, interviews, and secondary research, this article explores why one of the leading NGOs working to prevent future violent conflict would choose to curate an art exhibit at the Venice Biennale and what might be accomplished through such an exhibit. Ultimately, the Artivism exhibit, in its collection and range, provides a canvasing of multiple and directed creative interventions that allow for deeper understanding of how the arts can be used as a tool for mitigating risk factors associated with the prevention of genocide and atrocity in such a manner that has important ramifications for future preventi...