International Journal of Language & Literature

Rewriting History: Media Art Activism in the Fight against Racism
Ricardo Oliveira de Freitas

Abstract
I analyze media art activist initiatives created by black artists and collectives in the face of the importance of performance and subtitling as devices for translating (black) art marked by erasure and silencing. I understand media art activism as a practice made by the use of expressions in art and media resources to make a cause public. I'm interested in works that draw attention to the condition of being black in Brazil. The pedagogical purposes of this type of art are also of interest, in the sense that the performances and subtitles promote learning by sharing knowledge in non-formal educational spaces. I reflect on works that find perenniality in the media record (video or photography with subtitles or audio narrations) and translate the meaning of the work for the viewer (in a kind of second-order reading). The research is exploratory in nature, based on content analysis (of registered works) and on-site observation (of ongoing exhibitions of works).

Full Text: PDF      DOI: 10.15640/ijll.v12n1a2