Title: The Art of Protest: From Vietnam to AIDS
Headings: 
The Art of Protest: From Vietnam to AIDS
Dada, Fluxus, and Situationist International
Towards a Third Art
Feminist Equations
Silence = Death
Links

Content: War becomes both a motivating factor for activist art, and provides a metaphor for the more general exercise of power--usually associated with men--over women, people of colour, and the socially disadvantaged. The Guerilla Girls performance group carries on this theme, beginning with campaigns against the exclusion of women in art collections, then moving towards Hollywood's neglect of women directors and actors (the Anatomically-Correct Oscar campaign). Dada, Fluxus, and Situationist International
Activist conceptual and performance art often owes a debt of influence to Dada, a form of anti-art which used satire and non-rational discourse to critique the First World War and its capitalist agenda. From its origins, Dada often had the feel of festival and agitation-propaganda, and challenged the elevation of art to elite status and high price tags in galleries. Their example inspired the group of artists associated with Fluxus, whose performances, installations, and conceptual art often expressed overt political intentions. For example, Wolf Vostell's Phänomene (1965) "involved the spontaneous contributions of poets, artists, and onlookers amidst the crumbling piles of broken cars (i.e., the detritus of capitalist production and destruction)" (136). Other Fluxus artists of note include Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono, and Nam June Paik. Contemporary protests against the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and other agents of globalized capital often seem inspired by the anti-war protests of the 1960s, especially those associated with Paris in 1968. In an illustration of Che Guevara's "catalyst theory" of "how a revolution could be sparked by a minority insurgence" (137), street theatre, dada-inspired art, and varieties of civil disobedience by students and war protestors prompted factory workers to call a general strike that eventually involved nine million people. Cheap posters and graffiti covered the walls like urban wallpaper.