Case Study # 23 The art of protest is squaring the circle.



Like the out-of-the-home billboard advertising, the art of protest in public space has made an unexpected comeback in the Age of Social Media and New Social Movements (post-COVID quarantine). Any discussion of this phenomenon must address the inherent violence and destruction of ANTIFA's arson the Burning Pink hammers and Smashing Statue Movement. They all inherited their discontent when Occupy's 15 minutes of fame were up and the 99% they arrogantly assumed to represent defiantly continued with Life as normal. Then, the 3.5% ambition of the Extinction - DAD's (Direct Action Democracy) Army- Rebellion by absolute minority got up onto Andy Warhol's Brillo
Soapbox.
Art is Life and Life is the Art of Protest in the current premodern-postmodern Transition as the Spectacle. It takes Time to see what makes History, not historical moments made up of consecutive nanoseconds of free association posing as freedom of speech. We'll look back on the current collective hysteria of a minority of art activists, making images, words, and then thoughts without thinking, in the least violent period of human history, for what it is - detritus.
Unless... the Curators of the Cultural Industry keep putting carrots in the cart they are putting wheels on while pushing it down the road to nowhere. This edge, on the Superflat Earth horizon, keeps us walking towards the end of the world that we imagine before the end of Capitalism. The pack of Blue Riderless horses, rushing towards this end, with sticks in their mouths as a bit means without bridle or reins, don't need blinkers, they don't look back and can't look sideways, feeling they are demanding the impossible with the expressionism of a Dray.

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