KRISTIN RHEINS

No Comment: An Anarchist Commentary on Occupy Wall Street



Almost a decade has passed since citizens took to the streets of New York City’s Financial District, organized by Adbusters, a Canadian anti-consumerist publication, to protest the increasing role corporations were taking in democratic practices combined with their lack of legal boundaries. What began as a peaceful occupation quickly turned into a larger conversation about American economic immobility as the magnitude of media coverage increased and Occupy Wall Street became a pulsing physical and temporal arena for airing individual grievances and sharing alternative economic thoughts. Art played no small role in articulating revolutionary ideas and kick-starting conversations on leftist economic philosophy, its nuances, and its narrative effects on people’s lives. The most legitimate form of artistic exhibition lies in No Comment, a five-day-long, nonstop display of visual and performance art, with a global audience. Held in a building that formerly housed J.P. Morgan’s headquarters, the exhibition was organized in a matter of days by relatively unknown curators, calling for work from any and all artists. Unlike formal exhibitions of well-known museums, No Comment attempted to start literal conversation amongst its viewers with no boundaries between them and the works, an aggressive and loud atmosphere, and encouraged interaction between viewers, artists, and the art itself. Both Occupy Wall Street as a whole and the No Comment exhibition exist as turning points in the history of leftist protest art as it operates within the system it protests. This project explores how different pieces in the exhibition comport with and disrupt capitalist thought, and ultimately asks whether protest art can achieve its goals while working within the system it struggles against.