You do need disruption - Guerrilla Art pt 2

In the last part of this writing we focused on how and why the collective known as “Guerrilla girls” formed, and the importance of not asking permission to take art to where it was needed. Today will continue focusing on them as the decades passed and they adapted to a changing media landscape. In particular the importance of disruption in the conveying of a message that challenges the status quo (I’m surely well also be further ensuring my refusal from authoritarian borders if they ever link this account to me)

Now we touched on this in the last part, the fact the girls chose to wear masks was a partial example, it disrupted the traditional notions of public facing activism and artist statements, and as I mentioned last time it in turn disrupted the traditional attack vectors of the mainstream media. They were unable to pick apart these women’s appearance, unable to cast aspersions based on their past careers. It can be incredibly difficult to beat multi million dollar empires at their own game, so forcing a rule change is often the better option than going head to head with tyrants.

To disrupt something of course you need to understand it to some degree, this is something the Group displayed from inception. They saw the pickets weren’t causing the disruption they once had in decades past, the media landscape had changed, truth was becoming only that which was reported and publicised, if a protest happened in the streets and no press was their to tell the story, does it make a sound? What was once disruptive was increasingly loosing its effectiveness

So if protests and the press wouldn’t let you address those with the power to enact change, what could you do? Meekly follow the rules? Wait for your chance when maybe you’d be one of the women in a gallery that was 90% men, then “change it from the inside”? Or could you just act? Could you confront those in the positions of power and those that enabled them?

Why wait on niceties, why let them hide behind propriety, paper work, and the press that they control. You know their names, the addresses of their galleries, confront them with that blindingly brilliant mirror known as art, make facts your medium.

Make posters and portfolios containing evidence, statistics, names and shame. That’s what the Guerrilla girls did, they were unapologetic, they sent posters and pieces en masse to a multitude of galleries, to collectors, curators, and even other creatives.

All the while they kept pushing and creating, just as you should. They made such an impact that in 1989 the New York Public art fund would even commission them for a billboard. In response the group would deliver one of its most iconic works yet, accompanied with the phrase “do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum” The text (alongside by relevant statistics the group gathered) would sit around a collaged version of the famous nude painting “grande odalisque” in which the women’s head was also replaced with a gorilla mask.

The NY art fund would reject this artwork and insist upon a change. Anyone would expect an artist to bow before the demands of such a large client, especially one giving such public visibility to their work, that was the expected order of things; you could be rebellious so long as it was a marketable nicely packaged rebellion. Yet the Gurrillas had been given an inch and they would take a mile. The Group would once again disrupt the given order of things, refusing to make changes they instead bought advertising space from the MTA and ran their poster on busses throughout lower Manhattan.

There is a selflessness required for this kind of art, a willingness to torch your whole career because the light given of by the flames would illuminate a much needed truth. It is a selflessness we need as badly today as we ever have. A willingness to disrupt, to say no, to say this is the truth if you don’t like I will make it so you can’t hide from it.