Strike Art ─ Contemporary Art and the Post-Occupy Condition

The collision of activism and contemporary art, from the Seattle protests to Occupy and beyond

Activist art experienced a new beginning in the Seattle anti-globalization protests of 1999, reaching a zenith over a decade later with Occupy Wall Street, a movement initiated in part by artist-activists, and structured around creative direct actions and iconic imagery for the social media age. In parts of the mainstream art world, radical ideas were gaining traction over the same period, but remained confined within its institutional apparatus.

Art critic Yates McKee recounts these parallel histories and their collisions, highlighting the limitations and complicities of the art world, and reviving the notion of art as an emancipatory practice woven into political struggle, whether around issues of debt, climate justice or police violence. Strike Art!’s claim is that Occupy fundamentally changed the horizon of contemporary art, whether or not the art world knows it yet.

Yates Mckee is a PhD candidate in Art History at CUNY Graduate Center, and has worked with various post-Occupy groups including Strike Debt and Global Ultra Luxury Faction. His writing has appeared inOctober, Grey Room, South Atlantic Quarterly, The Nation andArtforum. He is co-editor of the movement magazine Tidal, and the anthologySensible Politics: The Visual Cultures of Nongovernmental Activism. He lives in New York City.