Abstract

This essay considers the effect, over time, of art on political protest and vice versa. It analyses artists' roles in the formation of Occupy and the occupations of May '68 - arguing that in both cases artists were instrumental and integral parts of the occupations. Etymological links between the Enragés of 1968 and the Indignados of 2011 in order to gain a deeper understanding of the psychology of the movements. This is framed within Peter Sloterdijk's concept of the "rage bank". The invested rage, it is argued, matured into what Badiou calls an "evental site" where it was "withdrawn".
The article then analyses art criticism of dOCUMENTA 13 and the 7th Berlin Biennale - two high profile examples of the so-called “Occupy effect on contemporary art”. The article concludes that these biennials were more troubled, rather than enhanced, by their association with occupation camps. The protest camp was removed from its symbolically occupied site, de-clawed and recuperated into the biennial circuit where it remained focused on external matters and divorced from institutional critique. By recuperating protest, institutions also made artworks timeless. In other words, the effect was to remove the political from both its (symbolic) space and time.