Artistic Activism!

Art, architecture and activism have historically intersected through their use of mediums, agendas, creativity and dialogues. However, the roles of the activist, artist and architect have traditionally been considered three distinct things. In a time of political uncertainty, economic recession, and the ever-decreasing accessibility of the arts, this project blurs the boundaries of art, architecture and activism to advocate for Aotearoa’s arts. Today, Aotearoa’s arts are being perceived as either ‘nice to have’ or ‘need to have’. Artistic Activism considers Aotearoa’s arts as a need to have for their ability to define who we are, share our stories, and create community. This project establishes itself through a non-linear, iterative, design-led method and is developed through three speculative design responses: an installation, a pop-up intervention, and an arts centre. Each project increases in scale and acts as an activist for the arts. Artistic Activism begins with an installation that reimagines the traditional gallery space, challenging accessibility to artist spaces through a documentation of two Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington) creative communities. Next, Pop-up Arts! —A temporary performance and gallery space designed to ‘pop-up’ and inhabit a vacant space near you, an architecture that transports the arts from Te Papa-i-Oea (Palmerston North) to Māruawai (Gore), and the rest of Aotearoa as a direct response to the issues of distance to accessing the arts. Lastly, an Arts Corridor is imagined inhabiting the now-abandoned Reading Cinema, imagining an alternative to likely commercial development. Concluding, this project is loud, exuberant and unapologetic through a blurred design approach of art, architecture and activism. In doing so, the resultant conceptual design process advocates for the accessibility of Aotearoa’s arts as essential, politically important and joyful.