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Unfortunately, terrorism is making the headlines again. This time in Sri Lanka, a country that in the past decades has already been battered by a 25-years long civil war between the governmental forces and the Tamil Tigers, a rioters' group of the Tamil ethnic minority. The conflict ended only in May 2009, after the government launched a final offensive against the Tamil Tigers, during which the Tigers were defeated and their leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, killed. It is estimated that the conflict costed the life of almost 70,000 people, a figure that the government acknowledged for the first time only in 2016. (Source: BBC - Sri Lanka country profile)
While on the path to reconciliation, Sri Lanka was hurt one more time. On Sunday April 21st, 2019, on Easter day, the country witnessed a wave of bombing. Terrorist attacked Cristian churches and hotels, killing more than 300 people and injuring hundreds more. Although the police have arrested more than 40 people so far, there is still little clarity on who is responsible for the attacks, the attack has been revendicated by ISIS in response to the New Zeeland attack to a mosque. (Sources: CNN )
While our hearts are still crying, rationality also tells us to move forward learning from the mistakes and the lessons of the past. With this in mind, we decided to investigate how art can be both a response to terrorism and a tool to create a better environment for future generations. Our reflection started from a paper written by Ioannis Tellidis, professor of International Relations at Kyung Hee University (Korea), with Anna Glomm, entitled 'Street art as everyday counterterrorism? The Norwegian art community’s reaction to the 22 July 2011 attacks' (2018). In the paper, the two academics explore the reaction of the international art community to another terrorist attack that in 2011 sparked terror in Oslo, Norway. In that occasion, a far-right political extremist, Andres Behring Breivik, planned and executed two terrorist attacks around the city, killing more than 70 people. The attack had such a big resonance in Norway and around the world, that in 2018 Netflix released '22 July', a movie that narrates the attack and its aftermath from the perspective of a young survivor.
Although to some the events in Norway and in Sri Lanka, might seem unrelated, we believe that any form of terrorism is rooted in the (real or perceived) inability of a state to address social challenges that arise from a increasingly diverse and multicultural society. Accordingly, we decided to report here a short overview of the paper, from which we can gain some useful insights to understand how art could provide a strong response to both religious and/or political terrorism, fostering mutual understand rather than extreme violence.
Additionally, we also hope that this short contribution could support the diffusion and accessibility of academic writings to a larger public, which often is cut out from these works.
A Short Summary of 'Street art as everyday counterterrorism? The Norwegian art community’s reaction to the 22 July 2011 attacks'
After the 22 July 2011 terrorist attack in Oslo, Norway decided to take a bold and counter current decision: rather than addressing the event increasing surveillance and control, as often happened after the 9/11, it decided that the right answer was more democracy, openness and dialogue. The decision, initially took by the prime minister, was soon embraced even by members of the civil society. One of the main contributions came from the world of street art and several artworks started to appear around the country, both from known and unknown artists: for example, the writing of Oslo as ♥SL♥ became popular across the city, symbolizing the idea that the victims were still in the hearts, but the city was fighting against terrorism sharing love.
Art was blooming around the city, in particular thanks to T&J Art Walk, a charity project supported by the Human Rights Watch.
T&J Art Walk: The Project
The T&J Art Walk project born from a university project by Katinka Traaseth and Johanna Beer, two students of the Sotheby's Institute of Art in London. The project aimed at using street art to remind people the importance of democratic values, such as tolerance, the acceptance of difference and the defence of peace.
Indeed, positivity and peace were at the heart of every artwork and, even though they evoked painful memories, they also strength the inclusive attitude of the city.
One of the most prominent artworks that appeared that day was the flowery weapons by Shepard Fairey. The murals depicts two weapons with two flowers, a white lily and a red rose, protruding out of the riffles. Both these flowers have a symbolic meaning: the lily stands for peace, while the rose is both a symbol of resistance to the terror and solidarity with the victims that was used across the country in the weeks that followed the attack and the flower that in Norwegian politics is commonly known as the symbol for the Norwegian Labour Party (‘Arbeiderpartiet’). The second wall of the tower was also decorated and it depicts a dove, symbol of peace, encircled by Asian-inspired ornamentation.
The Outcomes
The artworks around the city mostly generated positive reaction and supported debate on issues that were considered taboo or were difficult to put into words. In those days, the streets of Oslo became the place where a new message was shared not with a selected audience, as it would happen in an art gallery, but with every person who make use of the public space. In fact, the aim of street art is for people to stop and contemplate the artwork together with the idea behind it, but in this case, the audience of these artworks was not only made by ordinary citizens exposed to the artwork in their everyday environment, but it was also made up of ‘digital viewers’. In fact, all these artworks were shared online through social media and kept on circulating even after their removal, allowing their message of peace to circulate beyond the everyday audience in Oslo.
The authors recognize three main outcomes from this experience:
1. T&J Art Walk made visible marginalized voices in society:
After the 9/11 attack in New York, all over the world counterterrorism measures became more uniform and aimed at increasing surveillance and cutting down civil liberties. On the contrary, Norway decided to avoid any of these measures and instead recurred to art to reinforce democratic values such as tolerance and inclusivity.
The Norwegian people, rather than accepting top-down policies, used art as a mean to ‘make visible’ voices that otherwise would have been left unheard and street art became a mean to foster debate and to promote peace. In this context, street art became a form of ‘artivism’, a term that connects the words art and social activism, and the artists have to be seen as artivists, artists who become change makers through their practice.
2. Street Art promoted an alternative, more accessible approach to international relation:
Although scientific research remains crucial in the field of international relations, the T&J Art Walk project made the subject more accessible to the general public. Not only because the project was making concept like peace building and tolerance ‘visible’ to a wide public, but also because it actively engaged people in debating how to achieve peace, not only at national level, but thanks to social shares, even within an international context. Indeed, the most powerful aspects of street art is its ability to reach everyone.
3. Street art showed new ways of doing/thinking security, community and peace:
Norwegian street art initiative challenged long-standing assumptions about counterterrorism, reframing the debate and showing new perspectives. Street art and ‘artivism’ became new, alternative ways to achieve peace. Although art often portrayed political events and characters, it is only recently that it became a tool to inform policies.
Street art showed alternative ways of doing and thinking peace, security and community: relying on a community-based approach, it developed new dynamics to achieve peace and became a tool to empower communities and make their voices being heard.
The experience of Norway, does not want to claim that art itself can provide a satisfying answer in the process to peace building, rather it shows the power of art in exposing the weaknesses of political beliefs and practices deeply embedded in our systems.
Surely, to achieved peace, art needs to work together with other disciplines and practices, but in Norway street art uncovered a more sophisticated truth about peace. It made clear that peace is not a static objective to reach through linear process, but rather an intricate and sustained struggle in which a community play a major role in interpreting and setting the horizon toward which it aims.
D.S.
Bibliography:
Tellidis, I., & Glomm, A. (2018). Street art as everyday counterterrorism? The Norwegian art community’s reaction to the 22 July 2011 attacks. Cooperation and Conflict. https://doi.org/10.1177/0010836718807502