A local artist and myself started a nonprofit peace art museum/gallery that specializes in the art of peace. We started in 2009 and are still going strong. Our humble institution is a member of the International Network of Museums for Peace.
It has been a very interesting learning experience, and artists have been very forthcoming in presenting works for exhibitions. So much so that we have been able to put together in house exhibitions for loan to schools and institutions so that we can get better exposure of their message.

At our website, www.missingpeaceart.org, there is a page that has examples of past exhibitions so you can get an idea of the artwork that we have had.
We have also worked with local schools to get student involvement in art for peace projects.

We provide an artistic forum for exploring issues of peace and violence in a tolerant, non-commercial environment.
In the world's current polarized atmosphere it is important to recognize that the concepts of "truth" and "being right" can be ideas that drive us apart.
Often a "truth" may be only as true as the moment or place that it is experienced in. 
Art is an excellent medium for allowing us to experience that moment and see the world through the eyes of other people.

Our group, Puppet Underground, is based out of Washington, DC and supports community organizing with puppet-building, show-making, creative strategy consulting, among other things.

Last November we worked closely with organizers who were planning an illegal occupation of the abandoned Franklin School, a building that had housed a homeless shelter until the mayor shut it down a few years ago. They wanted to call attention to the practice of the city gov't to sell public buildings like the Franklin School to private developers, while demanding that the redistribution of public property should meet community needs.

We organized Occupy Kabaret Street, a roving cabaret that served as a cover action for the occupation. We led an audience to different sites near the Franklin School that had social movement history relating to other past occupations. The final location was in front of the Franklin School and hosted a show about the history of the building. At a dramatically timed moment toward the end of the show, a forty foot banner reading “Public Property Under Community Control” dropped from Franklin’s roof and the show ended with the announcement that Franklin was now occupied. A statement from the occupiers was read and an after-party commenced with pie-eating (OccuPie!) and music to support the activists inside the building.

The cabaret's goals were layered: to engage our audiences in a performance that served a larger purpose to local social justice work, to creatively provide the story (and local significance) of the Franklin School building so the revelation of the occupation held more meaning, and to provide witnesses and support to the occupation. It was really successful in that it met all of its goals and people loved the experience. The process of it was effective, too: we organized the cabaret separately from the main organizing of the occupation, but checked in regularly with the organizers to make sure we were meeting their needs while honoring the responsibility we had to our audience and performers (none of whom knew about the finale ahead of time). It worked really well.

Thanks, everyone, for sharing such great examples of CuR in practice! Keep the stories coming!

I wanted to share an example of the use of finger puppets by Masasit Mati, a group of young artists from Syria.  They call their finger puppet series "Top Goon - Diaries of a Little Dictator".  Here's an excerpt from their website explaining their work:

Top Goon – Diaries of a Little Dictator is a web-based series that uses comedy and satire to lampoon President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian regime’s response to the popular uprising in the country. Using finger puppets to avoid being identified by the regime, the artists behind Syria’s most daring revolutionary theatre use political satire to expose the regime’s violent strategy of oppressing the protests.

“Artist Ali Ferzat had his fingers broken for drawing cartoons of the president. People are shot on the street almost every day simply for asking for freedom. So for us to mock the dictatorship we thought the best way was hidden behind a box using finger puppets,” said Masasit Mati.

“In this context puppets are ideal as they can shrink the regime’s over-inflated personalities and allow you to play with them. The idea was to break down the wall of fear. When you see the shabih, the regime thug, or the president as puppets, you can’t take them seriously anymore.”

To me, this speaks to Noam's point of "the power of cultural expression to visualize and critique the absurdity of oppression and offer an alternative vision to existing political reality."  This also reminds me of the powerful use of humor in CuR tactics - take a look at Tactical Tech's video on the use of humor.

What do you think? What is powerful about this tactic? What is transferable to other context? Do you know of other tactics similar to this?

In Nicaragua, Puntos de Encuentro www.puntos.org.ni oganizes a youth camp every year, this camp is to help young people from all the Central American countries to engage in transformative dialogue accross differences of gender, sex, race, disabilities, sexuality, age and others and to also build alliances against all forms of discrimination and violence. For several years the camp included organizing a parade on the streets of one of our main cities, the objective of the parade was for young people to have a public voice against dicrimination and to celebrate diversity, all done in a playful and artisitic manner. Previous to the parade, the participants worked with an artist/facilitator in the production of a piece suc as theater, dance, murals and others. This piece was later performed or displayed at the parade. Now, noticed that I have said that we used to include this parade in the camp, this is because this year the mayor of the city didn´t allow us to do the parade because they percived our work to be in political opposition and the poltical party in the government pretend to own the streets.  So, here in Nicaragua, we are dealing with a new dictatorship and I think that this dialogue is giving some good ideas about cultural resistance. Thanks to everyone for sharing. Ruben

Human Rights abuses and violations are often invisible-- hidden from sight intentionally ( buried, done in secret), hidden from sight because of cultural lenses and ideology, hidden from sight simply because of geographic distance or physics/chemistry. The first piece of work then is to make the HR issues visible.

I have thought about this alot in environmental and social contexts... Poisons from nuclear weapons or power are physically invisible; devastation from mountain top removal often immensely far from those who use the power generated from the mountain's coal, and injustice of segregated or class divided school systems or restaurants blocked out by the dominant cultures racism. 

here is a short piece about this from Beautiful Trouble, http://beautifultrouble.org/principle/make-the-invisible-visible/

Many injustices are invisible to the mainstream. When you bring these wrongs into full view, you change the game, making the need to take action palpable.

check out this beautiful Amnesty International video-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgJPPEK3Vrg

i think one idea of the Bones project is essentially that of making the costs of war, HR abuses, visible and tangible-- to open up dialogue and room for action.

Since we are in the midst of this dialogue, it seems appropriate to mention some examples of cultural resistance that I've been working on just this week.  I'll start with my day job(s).  freeDimensional is a nonprofit organization that provides safe haven for human rights defenders using artist residency vacancies around the world.  While still very active with freeDimensional, (an organization that I founded), I'm currently employed by the Global Arts Corps, an organization that creates theatre to advance reconciliation in societies emerging from deadly conflict.

This week is a busy one in NYC, in part b/c it is the anniversary of the Occupy movement.  Based on my experience with freeDimensional, I joined with the collective Wooloo to plan out a system for hosting activists who wish to be in NYC as a part of OWS.  The Host an Occupier (HaO) initiative is currently matching hosts with occupiers in the city for the #S17 activities.

Another project that is close to my heart is 596 Acres, which was started by artist/lawyer Paula Z. Segal and friends.   596 Acres reminds us all that we deserve green space!  If you happen to be in NYC, please do come to our October event.

Lastly, I want to tell you about a writing project (and opportunity) for cultural resisters who tie their work to policy change.  Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus is a blog series by the World Policy Institute on how artists have led policy change and how policymakers can use creative strategies.  Please feel free to submit a piece to the series ... there are so many good examples here in this dialogue that should be shared with broader and broader audiences.  Just tell me if you're interested and we can connect offline.

Some of my current favorite examples of creative cultural resistance come from history, and in particular from the movement fighting Pinochet in Chile.  In an incredibly repressive regime, in a relatively sexist society, the women, by default and by planning, took on critical roles in the resistance. Women were not alone in their resistance , of course ( there is, for example, the unforgettable time where there was a call for a strike at Chile's Copper mines, and when the mines were surrounded by the Military and it was clear the bloodshed would be too great a cost to bear, the miner's strike was called off, replaced by a creative call for mass, dispersed, low level action-- at 8 pm at nite, those supportive of the resistance would bang pots and pans in their homes!  very low bar to participate, very hard to stop, very low risk for wide participation.... today's Casseroles in Quebec can be traced back to this protest, i believe...)

But about the women--- as many men were disappeared, tortured, imprisoned, and as the economy worsoned, the women fell back on a traditional craft, a kind of quilted tapestry called arpilleras. These were stitched of rags and scraps, often in church basements. Disregarded as inconsequential women’s work, it was possible to smuggle and sell these beautiful quilts both into and out of jails, and outside of Chile — moving information to sons and husbands, and spreading news beyond the borders even when a suppressed press corps could not. This galvanized anti-Pinochet sympathizers globally and resulted in both financial and political support for the resistance.

The time spent together also built cultures of resistance and support where there hadn't been before, and encouraged both work against the regime and work against the sexist parts of the society that impacted these women. This is just one example of their using a craft, as well as a cultural prejudice, as well as a desire to provide for their families and make income, in a way to support change... If we can find a piece of our collective culture that can fill a needed strategic function, everything is so much better off!

In line with Allan Sekula, an artist and theorist working in photography and film, I'm interested in different ways to make socially-engaged art practices. At the beginning of his article 'Dismantling Modernism; Reinventing Documentary (on the Politics of Representation)' (1976), Sekula writes: “Suppose we regard art as a mode of human communication, as a discourse anchored in concrete social relations, rather than as a mystified, vaporous, and ahistorical realm of purely affective expression and experience. Art, like speech, is both symbolic exchange and material practice, involving the production of both meaning and physical presence. Meaning, as an understanding of that presence, emerges from an interpretive act. Interpretation is ideologically constrained. Our readings of past culture are subject to the covert demands of the historical present. Mystified interpretation universalizes the act of reading, lifting it above history.” 

I'm interested in your thoughts on different ways we can make socially-engaged art, that goes beyond the bourgeois elitist art-world, that is actually relevant for communities/individuals connected to the work, or to the issue/s. And what is it's function in this context? 

How do individuals create a practice that gives agency to their subject/s & issue/s as well as make it interesting/effective to the wider populus & is this necessary?

Sekula's most recent work "The Forgotten Space" is a film essay which uses the Marxist analysis of going underneath the surface; in this case the idea of the shipping container, the global trade, to show the reality that the sea is the most forgotten space of all.  The film explores the working systems that hold up the trade and idea of the loss of the romantic working relationship with the ocean. - In this film he is truly looking toward making an overtly Marxist film, "to show that the crisis tendencies of capitalism are on the table" and to show the unseen 'Labor' - something that is always functioning but always invisible. 

Hi all, 

I wanted to raise your awareness - perhaps you know it already - on the Israel Loves Iran website/ campaign: http://www.israelovesiran.com/

I find it an interesting campaign to open up lines of communication and for people to share stories, images, and their faces. 

Through the page conversations between Israelis and Iranians and people from the whole middle east have started talking about culture, sport, politics, discovering each other and making new friendships. 

The website explains how it was started: 

"My name is Ronny Edry (41). I’m a graphic designer, a teacher and I live in Tel Aviv Israel. When nations talk constantly about war, it’s our duty, as people, as citizens, to rise up, to raise our voices and to make sure that we have done everything in our power to prevent the worst. And we have great power. With today’s technology and tools we no longer have to wait to make peace.

On March 14 I put a poster up on the net with a picture of me and my daughter holding the Israeli flag.

The poster said: “Iranians, we will never bomb your country. We love you”.

To the poster I attached a letter addressed to the Iranian people sharing my wish to stop the  war coming  with Iran, to get to know the other side and start a conversation."