New paper on how artistic activism engages with transformative environmental politics
New paper on how artistic activism engages with transformative environmental politics
“Artivism” or artistic activism, has become an essential means of creativity, especially after the isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. For JHU-UPF Public Policy Center reseracher Rodriguez-Labajos, artivism, based on art’s ability to drive cognitive processes, generates behavioral changes towards sustainability. However, as the researcher claims in her recent article “Artistic activism promotes three major forms of sustainability transformation,” despite academic research interest in creative environmentalism, artivism has been left out of the literature on environmental sustainability.
Therefore, this article aims to fill this gap in the literature by exploring the foci, purposes, and repertoire of artivists pursuing environmental sustainability. To this end, a review of peer-reviewed publications on environmental art activism was conducted using specific search terms in an academic research database.
As a result, the article describes three foci in the literature. First, educating audiences through embodied expressions of today’s global environmental crises; second, promoting the emancipatory practice in environmental struggles through ecocriticism; third, improving the everyday environment through collaborative creative practices. Results indicate that artivism is part of transdisciplinary knowledge coproduction with an impact on sustainability transformations.
Read the full (Open Access) article here.