Arts and Activism in the Americas - Incite at Columbia University

Creative Resistances: Arts and Activisms in the Americas convenes a group of scholars, activists and artists from Latin America, the Caribbean, the United States, and Canada interested in studying, practicing and rehearsing modes of creative resistance.

This working group looks at the entanglement of arts and activisms from a hemispheric perspective that considers regions of the Americas in their diversity and specificity but also in relation to one another. More specifically, it engages with artistic interventions employed as means to experiment with alternative modes of conviviality that serve to the collective reimagination of otherwise futures.

Through its work, this group examines how the entanglement of arts and activisms serves as a response to the ascent of far-right, ultra-conservative governments in the Americas, as well as to the repressive political realities of leftist states such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Focused in recent cases and experiences, this group is interested in thinking and experimenting with the continuities and ruptures with previous uses of creative tools in political resistance in the Americas, asking in what ways the current use of artistic tactics is similar and different from the historical deployment of aesthetic gestures to mobilize political action?

The group's methodology resists the distinction of practice-based research, arts practice and scholarship by facilitating diverse modes of engagement such as discussions, gatherings and workshops. The group also challenges disciplinary geopolitics by embracing a fluid interdisciplinary approach that puts in conversation the fields of Caribbean Studies, Latin American Studies, Decolonial Theory, U.S. Latinx Studies, Indigenous studies, performance studies, visual culture studies, among others.