ILLUS5050 Protest Pack - performative activism: research and development

4/20/2021

For this project, we were asked to make a series of protest art based off a topic of our choice, I decided to go for something a bit contradictory because I'm just edgy like that. The topic I decided to do my project on Performative Activism.

What is performative activism???

Performative activism is a pejorative term referring to activism done to increase one's social capital rather than because of one's devotion to a cause. It is often associated with surface-level activism, referred to as slacktivism.
- From Wikipedia

Performative activism actually started as a term to signify when a protest was performative in nature, but later it was twisted to be about how social media in particular affects activism in a negative way.

Firstly I looked at what others had produced, seeing as it has been a recent hot topic especially with the George Floyd protests last year, it was something I was interested in looking into as someone who's fairly active on the hellsite twitter dot com where all performative activism festers and boils. I witnessed firsthand the results of the infamous #blackouttuesday that happened after the death of George Floyd.

At this point in my research I had come to the idea that this project really can be a big one and I needed to focus it down a little to what I was really feeling passionate about. Performative activism can both be physical and in social media. My other risk is making it very hypocritical, using something I don't really care about to gain clout on twitter, that kind of vibe.

So I broke it down what I am actually passionate about :

LGBT community (im part of that, somehow)
Black Lives Matter (an ally for that, i still go around donating money sometimes and signing petitions whenever i have the spare cash and time)
Feminist movements (such as the #metoo movement)
social media as a platform for activism (i do genuinely believe it can be used for good i swear)
youtubers and online influencers (most are garbage, some are good)
fuck corporations by the way

So after that I pinned down who exactly I wanted to go for with my protest pack and decided on a main group focusing on social media and corporations, two things that end up stirring the mix for activism.

So from there I decided to go on a bit of a ramble with drawings, trying to figure out a direction in which to go with the pieces themselves.

I was happy with some of these designs and wanted to use them in some way, but I had yet to decide exactly how I was going to be doing the protest itself. I decided to do a not quite conventional protest instead? By using the idea of trendiness and social media as a basis I wanted to create a brand of sorts whereby purchasing any of the items would go to any charities associated with the causes I was protesting about. I had a variety of ideas on what to create, which I compiled in a pinterest board.

www.pinterest.co.uk/Pibis__/protest-time/

From looking at this I knew what kind of vibe I was going for, something a little witty or sarcastic while also being buyable, I came up with a brand idea. "Do you really care?" It's not insanely smart but it does it's job in questioning an audience's moral obligation to care about these matters. If they're so focused on looking good to their friends with their little black squares in their instagram posts then they can buy a neat tshirt to wear around town :)