Art rooted in struggle: weaving creative urban methods

Keywords: art, urban, social movements
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

What is the role of performance, the visual, the sonic, in urban social movements? And, relatedly, what can these sensory practices tell us about urban space and the long histories and geographies that form the spatial contours of the city itself? I pose these questions after many years thinking about the role of art in social organizing in Oakland, California. Engaging with moments of performance, muralism and sound in Oakland, I argue that art practices rooted in struggle are a form of worldmaking that should be considered a mode of critical urban theory, and I consider what a creative urban method might resemble.