The involvement and the role of art in the #rezist civic actions in Romania
Rezumat
The involvement and the role of art in the #rezist civic actions in Romania
The present paper analyses the presence of art and artists during the largest protests from post-communist Romania, known as the #rezist protests. The research is applied to the protests from two perspectives: the first refers to the way in which, especially well-known, artists become influencers of protest movements, by joining the protesters in the streets, by intensively using social media or by creating artistic products that support the protests; the second perspective refers to the identification of various forms of action that entail a significant artistic component, employed by protesters in order to accomplish the desired results: mobilisation of participants, generating solidarity or gaining the media‘s attention. In this research we have combined quantitative and qualitative analysis of data in order to explore the presence of the artistic dimension during the protests from the beginning of 2017. The active involvement of notorious Romanian artists from different fields was unprecedented in Romania, as they had an important contribution in promoting the dominant way of thinking and, consequently, in creating a sense of solidarity and mobilising people. Activism was visible online and offline, as protesters showed their creativity in slogans, banners with humorous, ironic or uncompromising images and messages, in spectacular choreographies and laser projections but also in releasing manifesto-songs.
Keywords: social movements, culture, democracy, civil society, journalism.
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