Transformations - 2003 Conference Session 4

Session 4: Art and (Non)Violence
Chair: Linda Venter

The Art(s) of Nonviolence
Marty Branagan
School of Professional Development and Leadership, University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia

This paper explores from an emic perspective the role of the arts in protest movements, and how this relates to nonviolence praxis. It focuses particularly on arts that are used in nonviolent direct actions (NVDAs) like blockades, occupations and protest marches. These include street theatre, symbolic actions, music, banners, puppetry, circus acts and poetry. The paper examines some of the difficulties faced in creating these actions, such as repression, harsh conditions and/or lack of resources, and it looks at the impact of new technologies in globalising dissent.
The paper also looks at art forms that are involved in recording and reporting actions. These include writing (journalism, poetry and fiction), film-making, photography, and cartooning. Using several examples, I show how these documentations can be invaluable in nonviolence training workshops, showing novices what to expect so that they can remain nonviolent even under extreme circumstances. They can also be useful for activists engaged in court-cases. The paper also considers uses of the arts in wider campaigns, such as where NVDAs are supported by art exhibitions, concerts, tours and radio plays, or by the work of graffitists and other art workers. The paper notes new research intended to ascertain the impact of artistic actions on social change, and discusses how this change might occur.
The history of artists as social change activists is briefly mentioned, to situate a more detailed examination of the relationship between artistic activism and nonviolence. This area is one rarely covered by theorists, despite the importance of both nonviolence and the arts in social change. I note how art forms can inspire activists and create group cohesion, and prevent violence at NVDAs. They can also create multiple foci of protest, impact on audiences at a variety of intellectual, emotional and physical levels, and accord with nonviolence tenets like inclusivity, openness, and creation of parallel institutions and radically-democratic organisational forms.

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America was born in the Streets: Gangs of New York
Ruth Helyer
University of Teesside, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom

This paper explores the transformation of American society within the formation of New York , towards the end of the 19th century. It does this via Gangs of New York , both the novel and the Scorsese film adaptation and encompasses:

The clashes between cultural difference and otherness (within the framework of political agendas)
Resistance to what is seen as the invasion of immigrants
Gang warfare with its violent retributions, initiation ceremonies and amassing of trophies, scars and territories
Representations of gender, ethnicity, sexuality and religiosity
The importance of land, and claims for origins attached to said land

Much of the narrative's action is reported in flashback through the memories of a child; raising questions about narratorial authority and so called historical fact. The child's life revolves around memories of the violent killing of his father.
This very recent film presents an excellent source document in which to pursue ideas of: origins; belonging; the past and loyalties (both familial and tribal).
The idea of transforming by crossing genre and period is examined via a text written in 1928, dealing with the 1860's and finally adapted into a film in 2001. Such fluid movement between different mediums and timescales further raises awareness of the performative nature of identity.

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A Rhetorician Reads Violence: Baudrillard, the Twin Towers, and Bowling for Columbine
Sarah White
University of Rhode Island, USA

In his most recent work, The Spirit of Terrorism , rhetorician Jean Baudrillard has continued his examination of symbolocity and hyperreality. In his essay, he says that unlike previous events presented by the mass media, the attack on the World Trade Center was very real because of its strong symbolic meaning.
I would like to use Baudrillard's latest piece as a starting point for examining violence, putting this in dialogue with Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine . Baudrillard (along with film theorist Bill Nichols) can help in our understanding of how, not only is the documentary actually a work of rhetoric, but also of how recent media events perpetuate the idea that the image no longer reflects reality, but creates it.
As a point of investigation, I am working with Bowling for Columbine because of the film's interpretations of media violence and also because the film itself acts as an example of a rhetorically-constructed film. The film employs al of the artistic proofs outlined by Nichols in his examination of rhetoric and the documentary, while demonstrating many of the clichés that Baudrillard critiques in his writing.