Ken Grossinger’s book “Art Works: How Organizers and Artists Are Creating a Better World Together” begins with a chronicle of what has become the quintessential example of activism in America: the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1970s. This time period is basically canon in American culture for success through protest. Visual art and music from these decades are zeitgeist representations of artists and activists fusing to create and disseminate a message to change hearts and minds.
Grossinger uses this space to support the backbone thesis of his work: When artists, activists and organizers work together purposefully, not just in an ad hoc fashion, results like policy changes, legislation approval or cultural attention can come quickly and enduringly.
However, Grossinger also acknowledges that hard-won battles can be reversed through corporate and government whims. Many rights gained in this “classic” era — abortion rights, for instance — are disappearing or being considered for the chopping block. In some ways, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision seems to be a catalyst for this book. Though his research and interviews pre-date the decision, a sense of urgency clearly presented itself in 2022. Groups opposing the rights and reforms of the classic era have focused themselves and worked slowly and tirelessly to undo those gains. So, in order to win them back, and to prevent the loss of others, Grossinger says activists must establish and follow a successful template.
What sets this work apart from other activist and organizer primers is the call to involve artists as part of a strategy. Grossinger points out that much of what has stayed in the popular conception of protest art happened accidentally. An artist agreed with a movement, wanted to bring attention to it and happened to be incredibly popular and influential, such as Bob Dylan, Harry Belafonte or Billie Holliday. Grossinger wants artists and activists to become artist/activists.
The trouble with this approach to organizing is presented very succinctly as an endnote from an interview with Liz Havstad of the Hip Hop Caucus:
“[There are] five distinct but interrelated issues that surface: (1) some artists and organizers never learned how to strategically couple art and politics,
(2) [artistic] institutions […] and the organizing community don’t inherently support collaborative practices between artists and organizers, (3) siloed funding streams offer grants for advocacy or art but usually not for their integration,
(4) racial and cultural gaps exist between […] organizations and those who are most affected by […] issues, and (5) merging the different interests of movement leaders, who are focused on advocacy and organizing, and [artists, who do] not prioritize political impact.”
The afterword presents portions of a roundtable where artists, activists and organizers demonstrated how in the past they ran into these issues in collaborative works. In part, artists don’t want to just be creative consultants on a campaign, and they don’t want to create art to check boxes off a platform list. Creativity and authenticity hang in the balance.
By including this roundtable and other examples of misfires in campaigns, Grossinger is transparent about the shortcomings of his proposed approach. He is also clear that one successful outcome does not aways create future successes. Many of the collaborations and causes are not replicable. Environmental strategies don’t translate in the labor field. Local political causes are hard to enlarge to statewide or national attention.
To help solidify this point, I was simply unaware of many campaigns and artists featured. I only learned of some of these political issues and artists as a result of “Art Works,” which could be a positive by-product, but it could also be considered a shortcoming of the campaigns being discussed. This is not to say that I am an encyclopedic reference for activism — far from it — but it does demonstrate that it is hard to plan on creating a classic piece of art.
As much as Grossinger wants to create this strategic notion, none of the collaborative campaigns he catalogs go deep enough into the planning and implementation to really show how they became success stories. Each overview is effective in demonstrating that collaboration happened and was effective, but not the exact points on which collaboration created the right answer to the right question. There weren’t situations where an organizer championed something one way and then an artist in another, with both of those approaches detailed and considered for the reader, and then the collaborative outcome that followed and worked. The strategy is presented, but not the tactics.
This is why I chose to call “Art Works” a primer earlier. It almost feels like a documentary of a single effort needs to be created to really show this approach in action. Instead, what Grossinger has created is perhaps a writing prompt for stalled activists or organizers. Maybe the book will inspire activists to find some artist who has an interest or entry point into their issue arena and approach them for engagement.
Part of what made the art of the “classic protest era” so enduring is that many of the protest songs don’t register now as protest songs — they’re just good songs. This art being not only high quality but having an intent and purpose made the protests themselves successful, in part removing the protest from view and leaving the art to shine on its own. For art to work like that for today’s movements, passion and skill need to combine, and that’s hard to force, even if you believe “Art Works.”
Read more of the Jan. 24-30, 2024 issue.