GP: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you knew that ACTS OF RESISTANCE was the next book you needed to put out into the world?
AMB: I’m a theatre producer. My bread-and-butter day job is making all kinds of experimental and politically engaged work with quite an international focus. I’ve written one book before which was called 20 Theatres to See Before You Die, which is about interesting and unusual theatre buildings all over the UK, and I guess that I’ve always had this sense with my writing of wanting to launch into a project that’s going to enrich me personally as well as being interesting for my readers. I always feel that if I find a subject matter that I’m going to be really enriched by – even if nobody ever reads the book – it will have been a worthwhile project. That hopefully makes it interesting for the readers too.
So [when] this book came about, it was 2018, and I was working at Camden People’s Theatre, which is a studio theatre in central London which has a very very experimental left-wing and left-field programme. People always say about Camden People’s Theatre that it’s more unusual to see someone on the stage with their clothes on than their clothes off. [I was] making this very political work, but often to very small audiences, you know – we'd have forty or fifty people turn up of an evening. And I’d always had this sense that art is an incredibly powerful political force, and that what I was doing with my life really mattered.
That summer it was relatively soon after Trump had been elected, it was the wake of the Brexit referendum, and there was alot of talk of Britain crashing out of the EU and people were stockpiling food. I just suddenly felt all these ideas I’d had about the political importance of what I was doing really coming into question, and so I wanted to start looking back into history, and looking at artists who used art as a means of political resistance, as a way of answering a question for myself about whether what I and my creative community were doing with our lives really mattered, or should we be going out there and [be] on the front line on the big political conflicts of the day? So that was where it started.
Sadly the book has only become more and more pertinent as time has gone on. It’s been quite a rocky road, there was a baby, the pandemic, and that sort of completely shifted gears in terms of how I was researching and writing the book, but actually those things made the themes of the book seem even more urgent. People were reaching for art during the pandemic – they felt lost in their lives and uncertain about what to do - and what they did was form outdoor choirs or took up writing poetry.
GP: Resistance has been a hot topic recently, [especially] with groups like Just Stop Oil getting so much media attention. You talk about resistance as a ‘means to build resilience and create networks’ - which isn’t necessarily the language that I might employ. I’m interested in the way you describe resistance as being super communal, these small interactions that happen between us, as opposed to these grand actions that we see played out on the news. Could you talk a little about that?
AMB: It’s reflective of the journey I went on whilst writing the book. I wanted to find stories of artwork that had made big political change, and that you could see the impact of very tangibly and very directly. I realised as I went on that [that approach] was missing such a big part of the political power of art. And actually, activism as well. So often, the story of activism and political resistance is couched in terms of what gets changed as a consequence and strips out all of the beautiful things that exist within resistance and that resistance can do.
I was very interested in the stories of the artists who created art during the Siege of Sarajevo and the huge upsurge of art that happened during that period. Interviewing so many of those artists, a lot of what they were talking about wasn’t about making art because they wanted to change the outcome of the occupation or the siege, but actually, they were doing it because they needed to maintain a sense of normality. They needed to connect with each other, and art was a brilliant way of doing that. It helps us to be stronger in surviving what we were living through.
There’s a sense in which to be part of an act of creative resistance was a way of asserting humanity, and that was the very thing that was under attack. So the term resistance to me is a more expansive term. It contains a lot. There’s an academic called Howard Caygill who’s a key thinker on political resistance, and he has this thing about the uncertainty of outcome [as being] key to what resistance is.
Resistance can end in two possible outcomes, it can end in revolution or it can end in resolution, and the power for communities is being able to sit in that ambiguity for a period of time. Because if you can sit with uncertainty, and you don’t need a definitive outcome guaranteed, then you have a real strength in holding your position for longer.
GP: Fossil Free Books have had a huge amount of backlash for their protests relating to the funding of Baillie Gifford, as you say – people expect super clear outcomes when we’re talking about protest, as opposed to it being ‘actually, this is just something I have to say and express’. Several authors, particularly from minority backgrounds, feel particularly that ‘I cannot not say something about this, because if I do it will crush my humanity.’
To some people that sounds like a pretentious indulgence, but what you do so beautifully in the book is turn it back to the communities that are affected, like Palestine at the moment. It’s about asserting that humanity and saying ‘no, if I just comply with this, and let myself be subjugated by this political act of horror that’s taking place, my own humanity will be diminished’. That's actually a subtle point that gets totally lost when the media just latch on to what the ‘takeaways’ of an action are.
AMB: It’s rooted in our very capitalist mindset. This very utilitarian [idea] that it’s only worth getting involved in resistance if it’s going to produce a deliverable outcome. And actually we lose a whole conversation about ethics, and what’s right. It’s almost framed as a bit embarrassing or naïve to say ‘I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do’. There’s that amazing quote about that activist called A J Muste who, during the US war in Vietnam, went every night and stood outside the White House with a candle on his own. A journalist said ‘why are you doing this? How do you think you can possibly change US policy?’ and he replied, ‘I’m not doing it to change US policy, I’m doing it so that US policy doesn’t change me.’ I find that a really beautiful anecdote.
One of the big stories in the book is about Susan Sontag, directing waiting for Godot during the Siege of Sarajevo. It’s such an interesting story to write about because she’s someone who thought so deeply about the purpose of art and the circumstances in which we make art. And she faced that very same criticism, both from the international media and the international literary/philosophical community. But her answer was, ‘when I knew what was happening in Sarajevo I couldn’t not do this’ and it’s as simple as that for me really. You don’t need to overthink it, Society would be much better off if people were guided by their ethics than by utilitarianism, basically.
GP: We’ve seen a real uptick in public demonstrations, and people who probably haven’t been involved in protest before, protesting the genocide that’s unfolding in Gaza at the moment. Is protest itself a form of art? Even if it’s unintentional? Do all acts of demonstration have artistic purpose?
AMB: I think so. And that’s where the book starts, with saying that there is this really strong parallel between both art and activism, because they’re both very much rooted in this idea that articulating and expressing human experience clearly is a really effective way of making change. As a theatre producer I’m always struck by the parallels between the collective experience of a protest and the collective experience of a theatre. But artistic expression is always so present at marches, you know, some of the most inventive, witty artworks of our time are surely some of the brilliant placards that you see on the Palestine marches.
There’s an amazing sound collective called ‘Pulse for Palestine’ and if you ever catch up with them on the marches you’re bound to have a great time, in spite of the weight of what you’re participating in. I don’t know if it’s necessarily that protest is always art, but I think it’s almost inevitably a form of art, because when people are driven to express their deepest political fears and desires, they’re naturally drawn to express them creatively and with invention. I write in the book about Extinction Rebellion and the incredible creativity that is woven into that protest movement, and how powerful that has been in it’s success.
GP: Can you talk a little bit about the ‘Liberate Tate’ campaign? A) It’s quite a funny story, and B) it’s an example of when there was a tangible outcome.
AMB: This was spearheaded by one of my great art activist heroes, Jay Jordan, who’s involved in the ZAD in France. [Liberate Tate] began with the Lab of Insurrectory Imagination which they lead with their partner Isa Fremeaux. Which is an artist-activist collective who are very interested in this meeting point of art and activism. They were invited by the Tate Modern to run a couple of weekend workshops exploring the idea of whether art can make real political change, and just before they were going to start the workshops they received an email from the Tate Modern saying ‘we’re really looking forward to the weekend workshop, we’re just making it clear that whatever you do, you mustn’t attack any of the sponsors of the Tate.’
And so the weekend came and the workshops started. As Jay Jordan puts it, it was kind of the best educational material they could possibly be given for a weekend workshop about art and activism, so they kicked off that workshop by projecting that email onto the wall and asking [workshop participants] ‘do you want to obey or disobey this email?’ And they left it up to the group to decide. And it became a very political issue and they decided they did want to create a piece of art that was challenging the fact that one of their sponsors at the time was BP.
The workshops were over two weekends, and in the week in-between the Tate got wind of it and invited Jay and Isa in, to sort of defend themselves. The second weekend the participants made a very simple artwork that they put up in the windows of the Tate Modern that said ‘art not oil’, but that was the founding of the Liberate Tate movement. And then over the following few years they created what are for me some of the most inventive, beautiful works of protest art, many of them staged within the walls of the Tate.
They had one where [the Tate] was having a sculptural exhibition about the human form, and so he lay down in the gallery and was covered in molasses, and there’s this incredibly striking image which has now appeared on so many front pages of newspapers which is synonymous about questions of art and oil.
The board of the Tate is obligated to consider and debate any gifts which they are given, and so they carried a vast propellor of a wind turbine into the Turbine Hall and left it there saying ‘this is a gift for the Tate Modern’ and of course, then the board had to debate it and discuss it as a work of art. It just had this inventiveness and wit and engagement with the context they were in that was just so powerful. Ultimately, after seven years of protest, Tate did decide that they would no longer continue their sponsorship relationship with BP, saying that it had nothing to do with these protests. But when that story appeared in the newspapers the photos were these incredibly inventive, beautiful artworks that Liberate Tate had created. So it’s just a brilliant story of making real change, and art can make change; a small collective being very directed and pointed can make that change. That kind of victory in a space that feels close and where you can have influence is really powerful.
The Baillie Gifford story is similar, in that when we start to affect change, and see the change we’re making in our own environments, it can be hugely inspiring for bigger change. All of the people involved in Liberate Tate have been involved in other projects, and so I find it one of the most beautiful stories about art and activism.
GP: So often we think about artistic protest as being very serious and a bit of a bore, but actually it can be really funny and warm and witty. And at its best, art can draw the public into that conversation.
AMB: Yeah! And you’re allowed to have a good time with it. That’s such a big part of art’s presence in activism – that it’s allowed to feel joyous. That’s also where the book ends up, talking about utopias and the role that art can play in terms of crafting a sense of the alternative realities that we might want to inhabit now. That’s such an important idea for me and I think it gets lost so easily.
GP: What, after having written this book, did you feel that you might want to say to artists who perhaps feel like they are wasting their time?
AMB: I was really changed by writing this book. That’s the beautiful thing for me, is that I did go on this journey from feeling like you have to take on all the troubles of the world and you have to come up with the perfect solution for them. And I think that’s so connected to the Eurocentric, capitalist societies and the stories we’ve been raised on about individualism and so on. But actually the way that change comes and the way we’re going to move towards a different kind of society, which I really, really believe we will and we are already, is many, many people finding their own route into making that change. And that being imperfect and small, but collective and widespread, and for me, in terms of creativity in activism, you don’t have to be the most incredible artist, you find what you’re passionate about and you lean into that.
I write at the end of the book about the concept of Ikigai, that the work that we should all be doing is at the intersection of the work that needs doing in the world, our strengths as individuals, but also our passions, and if you can find that meeting point then you will work effectively. So that’s the way into art for me, it’s not to say that everyone has to participate in resistance as an artist, some people might not feel like they have an artistic bone in their body, and that’s ok, if your way in is collecting clothes to take to artists on the frontline then that’s great. But don’t feel like you have to wait for the perfect gesture or the perfect moment to get started, just get started.
GP: That’s a perfect note for us to end on. Thank you Amber.
“May the lightning bolt of imagination strike, move through you. Heed this cacophonous world, and let its poetry astonish you. What you end up with is rarely what you expected, but if you’ve allowed yourself to be transformed in its making, it’s possible that what you hold is something beautiful and true. Let’s start now. Let’s begin with a hope.”
ACTS OF RESISTANCE: The Power of Art to Create a Better World is available from all good bookshops now. Order your copy from Bookshop.org here. And don’t forget to subscribe to Amber’s Substack here.
ACTS OF RESISTANCE with Amber Massie-Blomfield