Aktiv modstand

Banankollektivets æstetiske hverdagsaktivisme

Resumé

In this article, we examine the notion of ‘active resistance’ as a distinct activist and artistic practice. With the so-called Banana Collective, an art collective comprised of a wide variety of people, as our point of departure we investigate a new mode of political art in which critical, caring, loud-mouthed, uncompromising and loving resistance toward a violent political system are practised simultaneously. This resistance takes place at the edges of democracy, it concerns people our society has displaced at these edges (e.g., refugees and immigrants), but the resistance also finds its way to museums and concert halls: venues where more advantaged eyes are looking. The article discusses whether functioning in this spectrum is what makes The Banana Collective’s work stand out within an increasingly conscious and political art scene. It investigates the collective’s specific take on socially engaged art and points to its potential for influencing current neoliberal and anti-immigrant politics. The article aims to shed light on the specific type of avant-gardism practiced by the group: an avant-gardism that seeks a more radical amalgamation of life and art by building new spaces of appearance and a new language of resistance. And it attempts to answer if this type of direct avant-gardism has the potency of political or/and social change.