"Constructive Vandalism"

A deep dive into art as resistance

Lately I’ve been exploring new techniques — like playing with transparencies by using tape to lift text from magazines ↑ — but mostly busy exploring what (de)conceptualise is at its core and what it could be in the future. Part of doing this involves deep diving into other artists’ work and themes that are relevant to give shape to new directions for (de)’s work.

I’m particularly interested in the idea of ‘art as resistance’ with all its associated terms like ‘protest art’, ‘subvertising’, ‘culture jamming’, ‘artivism’… or as the activist art collective Indecline likes to label their work: “constructive vandalism”.

This deep dive as lead me to the culture jamming pranks of The Yes Men and Joey Skaggs, the subvertising work of collectives like Brandalism or Indecline, the imagery of broader cultural and political movements like the punk collages of Winston Smith or Emory Douglas’ work for The Black Panthers Party, and many more…

Without trying to reduce the complexity and plurality of all these approaches and ideas place them in the same box, I’ll leave here two documentaries that I think capture the ‘constructive vandalism’:

Cola na Veia by MaicknucleaR
A documentary about the plurality of techniques, motivations and discourses of wheatpasting artists in São Paulo, Brazil.

‘The Art of Protest ‘ by Indecline
“What was once set up to be a deep dive into the history of resistance art, soon became a ‘call to action.’”

Btw, if you have any other references, images, films, artists, ideas, etc… feel free to send them over!