Posters, murals, songs and street performances made as statements of dissent form the subject of The Art Of Protest, a 45-minute American documentary from 2020 directed by Colin Day. The film gathers artists and musicians who talk about work created in response to political and social conditions in different countries.
What is The Art Of Protest about?
Structured as a guided tour, the documentary moves between cities and studios to look at art produced as a form of resistance. Its route runs from Moscow to Los Angeles, stopping to examine finished pieces and to hear the people who made them explain their intentions and methods. Interviews form the backbone of the programme: contributors describe how visual art, graphic design and music have been used to comment on public events and to reach audiences outside galleries and concert halls. The catalogue description also lists Moby among those interviewed. Rather than following a single story, the film assembles a series of portraits and conversations, each tied to a particular body of work.
About the cast
The credited participants, in the order the catalogue lists them, are Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Shepard Fairey, Emory Douglas, Tom Morello, Dave Navarro, Ron English, Buck Angel and Chris Barker. Each appears as themselves rather than in a scripted role, and the documentary relies on their first-hand accounts of the work under discussion.
Context & significance
Art connected to protest has a long history, and documentaries on the subject usually take one of two approaches: a close study of a single movement or a wide survey across places and forms. The Art Of Protest takes the second route, placing work from Russia alongside work from the United States and treating posters, street art and music as related practices. At 45 minutes it is a compact piece, closer in length to a television documentary than to a feature, which makes it a manageable introduction for viewers interested in the relationship between creative work and public life. Politics appears here as the setting the artists are responding to; the programme presents their accounts and their work, and viewers are left to draw their own conclusions about the events and causes discussed.
Watching The Art Of Protest on Ktime
The Art Of Protest is available to stream on K-Time, the Persian-focused platform for the Iranian diaspora. Reading this page is free; watching requires signing in with a K-Time account. The title is offered with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles.