Direct Action as Conceptual Art?

“Direct Action as Conceptual Art?: An Examination of the Role of the Communiqué for Ecodefense provides a unique and original contribution to our understanding of the communications of environmental protest. Comparing the communiqué of Conceptual artists with that of direct action or ecodefense, Brisman adds a somewhat unexpected analytical sophistication to our understanding of direct action environmental protest. Can environmental protest be reconceptualised as Conceptual art? Maybe not exactly, but exploring the parallels certainly open up interesting and perhaps hitherto undiscussed similarities.” —Murray Lee, Professor in Criminology, University of Sydney Law School, Australia "As the immiseration of the world through capitalist exploitation and climate catastrophe accelerates, we'll need to test every strategy if we want to salvage planetary life. This provocative analysis of the communiqué demonstrates the value of attending to how saboteurs and ecodefense activists make visible larger, world-destroying structures of violence. Avi Brisman's reading of art against green activism enriches our understanding of direct action as a shocking, urgent interruption of the status quo; it is a timely contribution to the conversation about how to change the seemingly unchangeable." —Luke Fidler, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Southern California, USA “This book distinctively advances green and cultural criminological understandings of environmental movements’ radical actions and imaginaries in exciting new and creative directions. By comparing the communiqués accompanying activists’ direct actions to written texts in Conceptual art, Brisman foregrounds the importance of meaning as articulated and conveyed by activists themselves. A truly artful piece.” —Anna Di Ronco, Associate Professor, Department of Legal Studies, University of Bologna, Italy; Honorary Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Essex, UK Direct Action as Conceptual Art?: An Examination of the Role of the Communiqué for Ecodefense offers an avenue for understanding the parameters and scope of environmental protest, the meanings of such acts of resistance, and their impacts. Focusing on ecodefense—which includes direct action in defense of or on behalf of the environment and nonhuman animals (e.g., economic sabotage, property destruction, lab raids, “live liberations”)—this short book explores the significance of the communiqué (the written explanation of the reasons for an act of ecodefense), by comparing the communiqué to written texts in Conceptual art. To do so, it sets forth and then seeks to evaluate the following analogy: act of ecodefense: communiqué: work of conceptual art: written declaration/statement. In considering the communiqué in this light, this book helps us better understand the rationales for “radical environmentalism” undertaken for the purposes of reducing environmental harms, natural resource exploitation, and animal abuse. The extent to which ecodefense could and/or should serve to educate and generate support for environmental causes is also addressed. This book speaks to criminologists, sociologists, social movement theorists, and sociolegal scholars, as well as to art historians and art critics specializing in art since the 1960s. Avi Brisman is a Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, USA.