Reflecting on Protest Art in Occupy

Social movements become iconic through their protest art. The Black Power movement adopted the image of a fist clenched in rage; the Cuban Revolution popularized a Che Guevara insignia. As the Occupy Wall Street movement takes root in public spaces across the nation, observers and protestors on the Harvard campus this weekend share their thoughts about the development of a unifying emblem for this most recent social movement.

Liane Speroni, an Occupy supporter affiliated with the Harvard Extension School, said, “I came from Worchester [Massachusetts], where they have a city seal with a fist growing out of it. Maybe Occupy Harvard will try some variation of the Veritas emblem.”

Already, the official “Occupy Harvard” Tumblr page has adopted a crimson and white color scheme and is using a font similar to the one found on official university documents.

A poster created and distributed by “Occupy Wall Street” in September that depicted a ballerina dancing atop a statue of a bull has inspired the “Occupy Harvard” protestors, who created their own version involving a ballerina dancing on the John Harvard statue.

“[The ballerina poster was] inspired to some extent by what’s happening on Wall Street, but different cities use different symbols,” said Caroline Pearce, a Kennedy School graduate involved in coordinating Occupy Harvard.

Alex H. Auriema, a student at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, views the Occupy Harvard movement “as a performance piece—an artful gesture in itself.” He added that “a lot of formations of the Occupy movement both in New York and Los Angeles had origins with art performance groups.”

According to Auriema, the Occupy protestors view activism and art as one and the same. However, he thought that the Occupy movement has not given rise to any iconic musicians: “A lot of major musicians have come out and supported the movement, but none have become Bob Dylan figures,” he said.

Like Auriema, Pearce does not see any clear musical leaders. “It’s reflective of how Occupy works,” she said. “It’s not a very centralized movement, but there is a lot of room for people to be creative.”

Malcolm S. Brown, a retired professor from Brooklyn College and supporter of Occupy Harvard, added that the movement’s creativity is due at least in part to its populist flavor: the protests have developed without a figurehead. “[Occupy protestors] don’t think of themselves as subject to the same command and control structures that govern most protests,” he said.

Aureima said that the populist, democratic quality that characterizes “Occupy” is also reflected in the current art world. “A lot of artists are playing with non-hierarchical structures and horizontality,” he said. “Artist groups have started free school universities and places for critical thought that don’t have any sort of traditional pedagogical structure.”

As Occupy protestors seek a place for dialogue, Auriema said artists are “reclaiming a creative common.” He sees a connection between the online music sampling culture, which values sharing and open-source content, and the collectivist organization of the Occupy movement.

Though the Occupy movements lack a unified artistic foundation at this time, Harvard Kennedy School Lecturer Marshall L. Ganz ’64-’92 —who joined the revolutionary movement of César Chávez and the United Farm Workers in the 1960s—says this is not necessarily a problem. “Successful movements don’t ‘require’ cultural icons—they produce them,” wrote Ganz in an email. “So far ‘We’re the 99%’ has become a very powerful symbol of this movement, as has the idea of ‘occupy[ing]’.”

Yet, the very idea of occupying risks becoming a pop-culture catch phrase rather than a politically salient slogan. Musical artist Jay-Z, for example, is planning to sell shirts under his clothing label Rocawear that read “Occupy All Streets.”

“I’m very concerned,” Auriema said of Jay-Z’s design. “In today’s society, anything can be commodified … Levi’s ‘Go Forth’ campaign has commodified [a similar] revolutionary and anarchist aesthetic and put it into a whole new multimillion-dollar campaign that uses Beatnik poetry.

“[Commercialization is] a huge danger for the movement as it goes forward—it is obviously a contradiction to the principles of [Occupy],” Auriema continued. Only time will tell what lasting cultural mark will be left behind by the Occupy movement.