Politics as Public Art

Politics as Public Art presents a keystone collection that pursues new frameworks for a critical understanding of the relationship between public art and protest movements through the utilization of socially engaged and choreopolitical approaches. This anthology draws from a unique combination of interdisciplinary scholarship and activism where it integrates geographically rich perspectives from political and grassroots community contexts spanning the United States, Europe, Australia, and Southeastern Africa. The volume questions, and reimagines, not only how public art practice can be integral to politics, including forms of surveillance and control of bodily movement. It also probes into how political participation itself can be construed as a form of public artmaking for radical social change and just worlds. This collection advocates for scholar-activist inquiry into how socially engaged public art practices can pave the way for thinking through-and working toward-championing more inclusive futures and, as such, choreographing greater intersectional justice. This book provides a wide appeal to audiences across humanities and social science scholarship, arts practice, and activism seeking conceptual and empirically informed tools for moving from public art and choreopolitical theory into modes of praxis: critical reflection and action.

Martin Zebracki is Associate Professor of Critical Human Geography, University of Leeds, UK, and has published widely across public art, sexuality, digital culture, and social inclusivity. Zebracki is editor of the Routledge anthologies Public Art Encounters (with Joni M. Palmer; 2017) and The Everyday Practice of Public Art (with Cameron Cartiere; 2016) and editorial board member of Public Art Dialogue. Z. Zane McNeill is an independent scholar-activist who has written on queer and trans feminisms in contemporary performance, queer of color critique, and quare studies and politichoreography. They are currently an advisory board member for the University Press of Kentucky Book Series Appalachian Futures: Black, Native & Queer Voices.

Acknowledgments List of Contributors Preamble Chapter 1. Politics as Public Art: Bodies, Power, Inclusive Change Martin Zebracki and Z. Zane McNeill Part I: The Art of Political Movements: A Theoretical Genealogy Chapter 2. Introduction: Emotions, Materiality, and World-Building Joanna Krakowska Chapter 3. A Beautiful Disruption: Extinction Rebellion's Red [Rebel] Brigade and a Theory of Emotional Representation in Protest Janet O'Shea Chapter 4. Reflections on Umunthu as the Life Politics of Ozhopé Massa Lemu Chapter 5. Art-Making and World-Building: Arendt and the Political Potential of Socially Engaged Practices Ashley Biser and Erin Fletcher Part II: Bodies in Space: The Aesthetic Politics of Protest Chapter 6. Introduction: Political Praxis, Ideology, and the Deliberately Aesthetic Body Gregory J. Langner Chapter 7. Bloodied Beaches, Copper Flowers: A Choreopolitical Analysis of Extinction Rebellion's Red Rebel Brigade Fen Kennedy Chapter 8. "Racism Lives Here": Queering the Neoliberal University Campus through Choreopolitical Antiracist Activism A.F. Lewis and Kelcea Barnes Chapter 9. Exploring the Role of the Disabled Body as a Vehicle and Art Form within Anti-Austerity Protest Angharad Butler-Rees and Bree Hadley EPILOGUE Chapter 10. Entanglement and Choreopolitical Thought Thomas F. DeFrantz Index