Top 10 Tactics for Social Art Intervention

10. Exert stress on unyielding conventions.

Ask questions that shouldn't be asked. Disrupt fixed discourse. Practice ideological disruption.   Question dogma. Complicate discourse packaged as black or white or red or blue. Introduce "other" frameworks.

9. Reveal the hidden face of power relations assumed to be "natural" and unchanging .

Make the connections of power evident. Power relations are built and sustained by a potent blend of consent, miseducation and brute force. Articulate these connections.

8. Hold off amnesia.

The logic of late capitalism is informed by amnesia. Amnesia, planned obsolescence, the strategic disposal of indigenous knowledge are all embedded into the mythologies of progress, digital culture, the contemporary urban design, and most forms of dominant culture. Push against these tendencies. Re-member. Decolonize.

7. Perform democratic counter-surveillance.

Watch the watchers. Hold them to their laws and practice democracy.

6. Speak to that which is silent. Reveal that which is hidden.

Identify unsolicited "silences". Speak from silent spaces. Change the music! Speak clearly and complexly within the chaos.

5. ¡PELIGRO! Engage in sites and arenas of danger. ¡Hay Riesgo!

Relational art practice is not safe art practice. There's risk involved. Identify these risks and strategize around them.

4. Dance with the Coyote. Perform the Trickster.

Play, play, play, laugh, laugh, laugh. Performing social art practice is privileged and unique. Humor, the burlesque, the absurd function as tactics to deal with some serious business. But ¡cuidado! those who dance with the coyote run the risk of being fooled, spun around, policed and dazed.

3. Use magical powers to inspire alternative forms of engagement in everyday life.

Wow! Magic!

2. Occupy Media Space.

Global media powers and the billion dollar advertising industry are predominant occupiers of mental space, media space, public space, private space, everyday space--most of the primary real estate of the symbolic and cultural arenas. Buy land or make room for your message. Culture jam. Create your own media.  

1. Make calls for art-action, Jackson!

Not a reference to Michael, but a reminder that it takes a village to change a village.