ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a small number of artists and collectives that people understand to be consciously working with, or alongside, social movements. Artists have appealed to the truth-power of the archive, mobilizing both the representational and pragmatic uses of data in the service of movements and demands for social justice. Platform is an art, activist, and education collective based in London. Since 1983 the group has worked in coalition with labor unions and environmental activists to produce walking tours, workshops, parades, and performances. For the last two decades, platform has focused on the oil industry and its impact on global warming, war, labor, and transnational trade. Posters, buttons, pamphlets, and other printed ephemera are part of a visual culture produced by, for, and with urban social movements. Using everything from bold graphics to timelines and maps, artists create another language to articulate power and oppression as well as visions of resistance.
