The future of protests
IMPAKT's weekly news digest
The Netherlands has entered into a new phase of the lockdown – setting up a curfew. Protests were the immediate public responses to the new measures. People have been going out on the street and gathering via online platforms to express their dissatisfaction with this decision.
However, since Corona started, protests have been more monitored than ever, and they have been taking newer forms. Because of newer and more intrusive surveillance systems online, the risk for protests to become subjected to state supervision and increased police monitoring, gets higher and higher. Which means that some protests have to go „underground” and have to take place in the shadows as there might be a possibility for them to be cut off before they even happen.
What is then the future of protests and what form can we expect it to take? A recent Tegenlicht broadcast has tackled this issue and is trying to critically assess what can we expect in a 1,5m distanced world. At the same time, this issue is being explored by Artur van Balen in Tools for Action, which was a part of the IMPAKT Crowded Sky exhibition. Within this platform, artists are looking for new public assembly lines of flight in the face of oppression, exploitation and surveillance. Artur van Balen has also developed a 2-channel video installation „Multiplying Resistance”, in which he compares his research on inflatable spectacles in the USSR and the US from the 1930’s to Tools for Action interventions from 2010-2019.
Find out more about the exhibition A Crowded Sky and Artur van Balen’s work, here