Protest has many faces—and today, as in the past, we encounter it in the most varied ways, be it as traffic interventions intended to call attention to climate change or through those frequent news reports that tell of the courageous demonstrators in Iran and highlight the life-threatening consequences that their acts of protest entail. But what role can the arts play, here? Are the arts always political? How can or should artists lend their support to protests, and under what conditions can things like protest songs go mainstream? On the following pages, we highlight numerous aspects of artistic protest in its widely varied forms—and we show how the expression of protest using artistic means absolutely does have a tradition.
Zwölftöniger Protest – Gedanken zu Gegen den Krieg von Hanns Eisler