This issue of Nolens Volens was prepared in collaboration with Marco Scotini. Returning to one of the publication’s habitual interests, its theme is the intersection of art and politics, in this case, taking the 15-M movement and its international Occupy replicas as a reference. In a way, this issue’s case study focuses on the aesthetic of 15-M. At the same time, the intention is also to encourage a broader reflection on this new form of understanding political action.
If there is anything that has defined the spirit of action of 15-M, it has been collective, horizontal and anonymous action. Seeking to respect this characteristic, it was decided that the artistic projects that are usually included in Nolens Volens should on this occasion be archive materials ordered or produced by invited artists, or directly images that, without authorship, show us that which we have come to call the 15-M aesthetic (the different popular expressions and practices that accompanied the movement).
There have been many discussions about the relationship between art and 15-M, from the one brought on by the statements of Manuel Borja-Villel, who listed 15-M as one of the great cultural events of the year 2011 in Artforum, to the inclusion of these experiences in the 7th Berlin Biennale, which opted for offering the infrastructure of the biennial for an international encounter under the title of Toma la Plaza / Take the Square. However, many activists received these gestures of support on the part of the institutional culture with reticence, fearing an instrumentalization of the movement by the art system (owing to the obvious danger that these experiences would be understood solely and exclusively as a cultural expression rather than as a political movement).
As it is characteristic of the editorial line of Nolens Volens, the intention is to collect different, even divergent, points of view on the issues we present here.