My online journalism course is devoting this fall semester to reporting on public art in Los Angeles. I recently filed this short blog report for the class…
Political art and colorful signage with catchy slogans of all kinds were everywhere among the vast number of camping tents that surrounded downtown City Hall on the last Friday of October.
Hundreds of Occupy L.A. demonstrators, like so many others across the nation who have been inspired by the anti-corporate Occupy Wall Street protests in New York, have continued to use art and messages as powerful tools of expression to engage the public in their cause. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History has even collected some of the street art from Occupy Wall Street and Occupy D.C. for preservation.
The street art and signs condemning corporate greed and the camping tents the demonstrators occupy have become the icons of this movement. These signs, tents and demonstrators have become part of the downtown L.A. landscape in the last couple of weeks. This same scene has been playing out in all the different cities across the country, like a grand choreographed performance. If that’s the case, aside from the art that’s being generated by the protestors, is the entire Occupy movement, itself, a kind of public art?