Artistic Protest and (Political) Critique

The article discusses artistic protests and forms of opposition in the democratic society. Taking into account different theoretical approaches, the attempt is made to clarify the notions of artistic protests and (artistic) political critique in the field of Lithuanian art research. The attention is paid to the neoliberal political consensus and its opposition. The categories such as strike, protest and disobedience are related not to more or less abstract „critical discourse“, but to concrete artistic practices. Little evidence exists of sharp protests in post-soviet Lithuania, which deliberately chose democratic path of development, in opposition to some other post-soviet states (i.e. there have been no obvious tendencies of authoritarianism in the Baltic States and this fact could have caused feckless state of political or social disobedience). In the contemporary art, the phenomenon of protest was non-existent until the second half of the first decade of the XXI century (one could notice only one consistent oppositionist and radical activist of contemporary art – the scandalous artist from Alytus Redas Diržys, who consciously distanced himself from the “art of capital”). The most memorable artistic actions of urban protest so far took place in 2005 next to foreclosed ”Lietuva” movie theatre in Vilnius, where the protest laboratory was established and activists protested against (illegal) privatization of public space. In this article, the chosen examples of protests during the first decade of the XXI century reflect some creative artistic trajectories (such as Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas – the couple quite famous and well established in art world). First, the artistic critique against neoliberal agendas is defined along with the description of activist group Bavo, later on, the cases of artistic protest next to “Lietuva” movie theatre and the fluxist Vilnius urban policy (and the opposition against it) are analyzed

Art history · Economic history · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · History · Law