Marketing, art and voices of dissent

Abstract

Limited research exists around the interrelationships between protest camps and marketing practices. In this article, we focus on the 2014 Hong Kong protest camps as a context where artistic work was innovatively developed and imaginatively promoted to draw global attention. Collecting and analysing empirical data from the Umbrella Movement, our findings explore the interrelationships between arts marketing technologies and the creativity and artistic expression of the protest camps so as to inform, update and rethink arts marketing theory itself. We discuss how protesters used public space to employ inventive methods of audience engagement, participation and co-creation of artwork, together with media art projects which aimed not only to promote their collective aims but also to educate and inform citizens. While some studies have already examined the function of arts marketing beyond traditional and established artistic institutions, our findings offer novel insights into the promotional techniques of protest art within the occupied space of a social movement. Finally, we suggest avenues for future research around the artwork of social movements that could highlight creative and political aspects of (arts) marketing theory.

Subjetividad política y expresión pública digital entre actores de la sociedad civil en Guanajuato

“…En estos, se da cuenta de reconfiguraciones en el espacio público, con la incorporación de lo digital y las posibilidades de interacción (Ferrari, 2018;Flores-Márquez, 2017;Jackson, Bailey & Foucault, 2017;Martini, 2017;Matheson, 2018;Neumayer & Rossi, 2018;Roslyng & Blaagard, 2018;Siapera, Boudourides, Lenis y Suiter, 2018;Wang & Chu, 2017). Esto da lugar a transformaciones en los imaginarios y las prácticas que las y los activistas despliegan en internet (Barnard, 2018;Patsiaouras, Veneti, Green, 2018;Treré, Candón-Mena, Sola-Morales, 2021;Weij & Berkers, 2017;Wong & Liu, 2018). Sin embargo, emergen también los riesgos, como el de la vigilancia corporativa y gubernamental (Uldam, 2018).…”

The importance of space in photojournalists' accounts of the anti-austerity protests in Greece

“…The public squares across Spain occupied by the Los Indignados social movement would also serve as a global icon that embodied the universal values of democracy (Rovisco, 2017). These protests would strongly influence the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong (September-December 2014), where protesters used public space to engage with bystanders through the co-creation of artwork (Patsiaouras et al, 2017). These protests were staged at key symbolic sites that not only allowed the protesters to communicate specific messages to members of the public and the press, but also allowed photojournalists to attribute symbolic meanings to the images they captured.…”

No longer aspirational: A case study of young creative workers in Hong Kong who quit

“…Some galleries hosted shows by artists working on protest themes. Amid such ‘promotional’ or even ‘marketing’ success (Patsiaouras et al, 2018), a certain sense of futility was also detected, especially when the protests dragged on and were perceived of not yielding results. The informants told us their losing faith in wenyi , or creative work, saying wenyi was pointless and had no place in ‘real’ protests in the streets.…”