About.

Within the scope of the current human rights challenges our world is facing, arts have been striving to be recognized as a fundamental place for debate and critical thinking, as well as a catalyst for collective awareness and empathy. Exploring topics that range from climate change to the refugee crisis, from discrimination to authoritarian regimes affirmation, several events are prompting artists, both individually and collectively, to rethink the role of art as an agent for social change. In the last decade, several projects were created in countries that continually suffered human rights violations, such as Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, and others, which enrich our current knowledge and challenge our perspectives on artistic practices and ways of working around freedom of expression. In the face of current circumstances and having in mind the increase of information shared globally, the relevance of artistic productions as a tool for debate and political intervention becomes more evident. Indeed, we can currently find numerous civic movements, collectives, activists and organizations collaborating with artists to enrich their projects and amplify their values and messages. Succeeding some influential manuals created by different collectives at the end of the 1980’s and during the 1990’s in the USA, new reflections have been emerging to systemize operating modes within the designated “guerrilla art” such as, per example, Beautiful Trouble – Toolbox for Revolution (2012) or Truth is Concrete – A Handbook for Artistic Strategies in Realpolitics (2014). These artistic practices became known through different terms, such as “socially engaged art”, “participatory art”, “community art”, “relational art”, “political art”, “artistic activism” or “artivism”. While we can identify the singularities of each of these designations, they share and converge within a common space  focusing on the call for human rights and, more widely, on human dignity. From a theoretical and academic perspective, these practices have been object of study by different authors – such as Nina Felshin (1995), Nicholas Bourriaud (1998), Miwon Kwon (2002), Grant Kester (2004, 2011), Claire Bishop (2006, 2012), Jacques Rancière (2009), Gregory Shoelette (2011), Shannon Jackson (2011) or Tom Finkelpearl (2013) – who have contributed to their study and discussion through different approaches. With the drive to contribute and advance on the reflection of theories and practices on the field, this conference opens up as a meeting for researchers, artists, activists and other agents that are working on the intersections of art and human rights around the globe.

Conference Goals
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- Share academic research with the civil society and, in a participatory manner, contribute to the understanding of the impact of artistic processes on social change, both at a local and global scale, to raise awareness and inspire action for the protection of human rights;

- Reflect on the different concepts associated with the arts and activism, along with  their effectiveness in the scope of artistic practices for human rights;

- Identify artists at risk for their artistic practices and understand their creative contexts, identifying limits to freedom of expression, as well as strategies used to overcome its limitation;
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- Reflect on how art is expanding into other disciplinary fields and how the processes of interaction between them are contributing to open new avenues for the protection of human rights.

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Conference topics:
-       art and social change;
-       socially engaged art, participatory art and community art for human rights;
-       art and censorship;
-       art and freedom of expression;
-       art projects about human rights;
-       art and activism strategies;
-       artistic freedom in challenging contexts;
-       art and conflict resolution;
-       arts and culture as a human right.

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Scientific Committee | Comissão Científica
Bruno Marques, IHA, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa 
Beatriz Wey, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro - UFRRJ
Cátia Rijo,  Escola Superior de Educação, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa
Cláudia Madeira, ICNOVA, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Cristina Pratas Cruzeiro, IHA, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Elsa Lechner, Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra
Helena Elias, Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Universidade de Lisboa
Hugo Cruz, Universidade do Porto – CIIE - UP e CHAIA -UE
Inês Vieira, Universidade Lusófona, CeiED
Juan Albarran, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Kátia Sá, Escola Superior de Educação, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa
Margarida Brito Alves, IHA, DHA, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Miguel Falcão,  Escola Superior de Educação, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa e Centro de Estudos de Teatro - FL.UL
Paulo Fontes, UPorto Media Inovation Labs & Amnistia Internacional Portugal
Sérgio Vicente, Faculdade de Belas-Artes, Universidade de Lisboa
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Organization Committee | Comissão Organizadora
Alexandra do Carmo, IHA, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Catarina Pires, IHA, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Cristina Pratas Cruzeiro, IHA, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Margarida Brito Alves, IHA, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Paulo Fontes, UPorto Media Inovation Labs & Amnistia Internacional Portugal
Susana C. Gaspar, IHA, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa; ESELx/IPL
 
Organizers | Organização
​Institute of Art History, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
Amnistia Internacional Portugal
Chão de Oliva – Centro de Difusão Cultural
 
Institutional Support | Apoio Institucional
Amnistia Internacional Portugal
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian

Venue Location
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian
Av. de Berna, 45A, 1067-001 Lisboa
Portugal
https://gulbenkian.pt/en/the-foundation/informations/

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