Intervention Two

 Before starting my second intervention, I sat down and asked myself, “how can I make this intervention feel authentic and like true activism?” I didn't want to just display my jacket on a dress form in public, I wanted to really have a "performance" aspect. I researched everything I could about war activism and saw pictures of thousands of people gathering in protests to speak out against wars like the Vietnam war or World War 2. This sparked a fire in me, and I knew right away that I wanted to go out and protest just like the people that came before me. I had one problem though; there were no antiwar protests going on near where I live, and Im kind of shy so protesting by myself was a scary thought. But before I let myself get consumed by my thoughts, I realized that the young men who were drafted to war were also scared but they didn’t have a choice. They were sent out to war, leaving their families behind to witness death and suffering.

After visualizing this, I mustered up the confidence to go out and protest for the men and women who are no longer with us that lost their lives fighting for our country. I have to admit I only stayed up on those steps holding up the sign for no longer than 15 minutes, but the park was full of people as it was a nice day and I got some pretty funny reactions. I was also inspired by a quote from The Art of Activism that read, “We often think of performance as something that manifests a fiction... However, performance is useful for dramatizing what already exists. Sometimes reality needs help.” This quote really resonated with me because I know there are people out there who are anxious about the ongoing conflicts that our country is burdened with today, and people who don’t care about what's going on and don’t think it’s a big deal. Whichever side you may stand on, this intervention is for you.

Me In Hamilton park with the denim jacket and the poster.

The physical aspects of this intervention are a denim jacket that I reworked and a poster that I made with the help of a friend. The denim jacket is symbolic of the hardships and suffering that soldiers and families have to deal with because of war. The distressing of the garment represents the destruction of families and cities due to war and the mending represents the healing that people go through after a war. This jacket took me about 12 hours of sewing, going back and forth at my machine until my arms caught cramps( It was totally worth it.) I found this poetic and representative of not only the hard and laborious task that war itself is, but also the long healing process that countries go through after a war. 

At first, I wanted the poster to be intricate and state facts to inform people about the Russia and Ukraine conflict and war in general, but I realized that I could communicate my point better by keeping It simple and playful. In The Art of Activism it states, “When we think of communication we often think of written words: reports, fact sheets, emails etc... But there are other forms of communication we can utilize that are sometimes more effective. Important political messages can be communicated though performance, song, images, and symbols appealing to different senses.” (Pg 116) After reading this, I came up with the slogan, “Make Love Not War” (not my original slogan I heard it somewhere before) and I added a symbol everyone knows culturally; a peace sign. This made the poster playful and made it so it had a symbol everyone can recognize and relate to. I am very proud of the symbolism and thought I put into this intervention, and I am excited to use parts of this intervention in my real-life work.  

These are a series of photographs taken while I was standing in the park protesting. I was reciting the slogan on my poster.

Duncombe, Stephen, and Steve Lambert. The Art of Activism: Your All-Purpose Guide to Making The Impossible Possible. O/R, 2021.