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Puppet Power: Arts Group Looks to Liven Up NYC Protests -Global Policy Forum- NGOs Puppet Power:
Arts Group Looks to Liven Up NYC Protestsby John Tarleton
Indymedia
March 10, 2002
Colorful paper mache puppets have been a centerpiece of various anti-corporate globalization protests over the past couple of years, including the recent mobilization against the World Economic Forum. Now, local group of artists and activists hope to make puppetry a regular feature on New York’s protest landscape.
"We want to encourage more beauty. And, we want to encourage people to create things for themselves," said Neala Byrne of Arts in Action, which formed a month before the WEF protests.
Byrne and about a half-dozen other Arts in Action members have been holding Sunday afternoon workshops at their cavernous warehouse headquarters at 830 12th Ave. (btwn. 57 and 58). On March 9, their puppets and props will liven up an International Womens Day protest in the East Village. They are also currently working with the More Gardens Coalition on providing artistic support for that group’s March 29 bike ride through the city. They have also been contacted by a Harlem community organization and human rights groups who are protesting the mass detention of Arab and Muslim immigrants.
"People are finally learning how to use color and sense of humor to point out how ridiculous things are," said Kori Goldberg, first grade teacher who volunteers with Arts in Action.
Puppetmaking has its origins in the efflorescent of street festivals of late 14th Century Europe, according to Yale anthropology professor David Graeber. As capitalism gained strength in the following centuries, these festivals of collective consumption were suppressed by routinized work schedules and then replaced by new forms of consumption based on the individual and the nuclear family. Large-scale puppetry re-emerged during the anti-war movement of the 1960s. It was nurtured in subsequent decades by groups like Wise Fool Puppet Intervention and the Vermont-based Bread and Puppet Theatre. In 1997, Bay Area activists founded the Art and Revolution Collective to liven up and provide support for local demonstrations. It flourished and two years later provided the artistic infrastructure for mass protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization.
Art and Revolution has since gone on to train and inspire puppetmaking troupes (including Arts in Action) around the country. "Puppetistas" have been repeatedly surveilled and harassed by police and their warehouse spaces in Washington, D. C and Philadelphia have been raided during large protests. Byrne, who works as legal assistant at a Manhattan law firm, spent 11 days in a Philadelphia jail after being arrested with 75 other puppetistas during the August 2000 Republican National Convention.
"The puppets represent the opposite of what the police are," Graeber said. "…The puppets represent the spirit of sheer creativity."
Nea Mason, lead organizer for Action for Community Empowerment (ACE), recently met Byrne at a popular education workshop that explored the ideas of Brazilian educator Paolo Friere. She looks forward to working with Arts in Action to enliven her group’s organizing work with youth and tenants in Harlem.
"Art is going to allow us to be more bold," Mason said. "Through the use of art, I think we’re going to find points of entry to create dialogue with people that we couldn’t reach before."
Mason also echoes the sentiment that activists need to take a more joyful approach to their work. "Social change has to be fun," she said. "We’ve been doing this fight for social justice for centuries. We have to awaken other elements in this movement besides anger and frustration."
To contact Arts in Action, email artsinaction-subscribe@topica.com
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