Street art as everyday counterterrorism? The Norwegian art community’s reaction to the 22 July 2011 attacks
| Author | Ioannis Tellidis,Anna Glomm |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0010836718807502 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
807502CAC0010.1177/0010836718807502Cooperation and ConflictTellidis and Glomm
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Article
Cooperation and Conflict
2019, Vol. 54(2) 191 –210
Street art as everyday
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Norwegian art community’s
reaction to the 22 July 2011
attacks
Ioannis Tellidis, with Anna Glomm
Abstract
This article looks at a project involving nine internationally acclaimed street artists who agreed
to make murals in Oslo, following the 22 July 2011 attacks. Resting on the art project’s aims (‘to
promote universal human rights and to counter the intolerance and xenophobia that can give rise
to violence and justify terrorism’) and the art community’s reaction, the article argues that street
art’s visibility and agency offer alternative ways of thinking about, and approaching, international
relations (IR). The article examines the streets as the space where artists express and engage
the ‘everyday’; and as the medium that allows artists to bring art to the public (as opposed to
galleries or exhibitions the public chooses to visit). We argue that the incorporation of street
art’s spatiality and aesthetics into ‘everyday IR’ supports more critical frameworks that (a) expose
the exceptional logic(s) of illiberal governance; (b) enable the visibility of marginalised and/or
dissenting voices in society; and (c) explore experimental, eclectic and creative approaches of
doing/thinking everyday security, community and peace.
Keywords
Aesthetics, counterterrorism, critical peace research, Norway, space, street art
Introduction
On 22 July 2011, Anders Breivik detonated a van bomb in Oslo’s Government Quarter,
before driving to the island of Utøya and shooting dead 69 adolescents of the Workers’
Youth League summer camp. The attack was unlike anything experienced by Norway in
the past and, in the overall climate of the war on terror, many assumed the perpetrators
to be Islamist extremists. This premature assumption resulted in immigrants and Muslims
Corresponding author:
Ioannis Tellidis, College of International Studies, Kyung Hee University, Yongin-si 17104, South Korea.
Email: i.tellidis@khu.ac.kr
192
Cooperation and Conflict 54(2)
being verbally insulted and, in some cases, even assaulted (Bech Gjørv, 2012), and led
many to expect the strengthening of the operational capabilities of the security services
to be the state’s main reaction. However, these intolerant and xenophobic reactions led
the then Prime Minister to state that the solution lay in ‘more democracy, more openness
and greater political participation’ (Pidd and Meikle, 2011). In the post-9/11 world, the
Norwegian reaction runs contrary to mainstream reflexes of increased surveillance and
curtailment of civil liberties in the name of collective security. The Norwegian public
rallied behind the PM’s refusal to let vengeance dictate policy (Orange, 2012) and many
artists contributed with works that reflected the spirit of the PM’s statement. In Oslo, one
such contribution came from T&J Art Walk, whose exhibits aimed at reminding the
Norwegian public of the significance of tolerance, of acceptance of difference and their
role for peace.
Spurred by this ‘unconventional’ attitude towards terrorist violence, this article sets
out to investigate the role that street art’s aesthetics, agency and spatiality can play, when
contrasted with the exclusionary logic(s) of illiberal governance (a) in making visible
marginalised voices in society; (b) in promoting alternative, more quotidian approaches
towards international relations (IR), as well as (c) more critical ways of doing/thinking
security, community and peace. While of course we accept the fact that conflicts are
marked by difference in issues, dynamics, actors and development, the characteristics of
the Norwegian case – with its inclusionary and genuinely democratic response – make it
stand out in terms of counterterrorism, agonistic politics and critical research on peace.
This is significant because said characteristics manifest in practice that ‘peace’ is neither
linear nor static, but, rather, a continuous struggle of engagement and resistance – ago-
nist1 concepts that are antithetical to the war on terror’s prevailing and virtually ubiqui-
tous exclusionary politics and legislation on the one hand, and exceptional, urgent and
illiberal policies on the other hand, deployed in the name of a security that, seemingly,
can never be attained. The aesthetic expression of the works exhibited in Oslo (but also
similar initiatives in other cities) and the coincidence of the message they sought to con-
vey with that expressed by initial political reactions are imbued with agonistic refer-
ences. As the calls increase to engage more critically with the study and practice of peace
(Jutila et al., 2008; Mac Ginty and Richmond, 2013; Patomaki, 2001; Richmond, 2007),
the article aims to unmask the insights that street art may have for critical peace research.
More concretely, it sets to investigate the agency that is produced by art (as object), art-
ists and their audiences (as agents) in the street – that is, a specific space (an immaterial
dimension) and place (a material dimension) (Björkdahl and Kappler, 2017: 3).
One of critical theory’s main preoccupations is, of course, emancipation. While it has
been varyingly defined (Booth, 2007; Habermas, 1984; Horkheimer, 2002 [1972];
Linklater, 2007), a general acceptance of emancipation’s main drive is the improvement
of the lives of individuals and communities through the provision and safeguarding of
social justice and human rights. To do that, however, means that instances where social
justice is not attributed and/or human rights are violated must be resisted.2 This is evident
in Fossen’s definition of ‘emancipation’ (which this article borrows) as the ‘permanent
attempt to lay bare and redress the harms, injustices or inequities caused by exclusions
and restrictions of pluralism’ (2008: 377). This raises two important implications, the
first one being the extent to which (if at all) street art and aesthetics in general may be
Tellidis and Glomm
193
considered acts of resistance (or ‘counter-power’, according to Foucault (1995: 219))
that can have an emancipatory potential. As Murphy and Omar have put it, ‘[a]esthetic
agency as a practice of freedom seeks to transform and transcend established oppressive
situations that, even when critiqued, tend to designate “the other-victim” as inferior,
deficient, and less-than’ (2013: 352). There exist, of course, examples where art – and
street art, in particular – is used to foment violence: the murals in Belfast that serve as a
call to arms and the pro-violence graffiti in the streets of East Timor (Parkinson, 2010)
are two such examples.
Notwithstanding, the Norwegian response in the aftermath of the 22 July attacks was
formulated in a way that resisted the dictation of the current liberal order of islamophobia
and curtailment of civil liberties in the name of security. As will be further explained
below, this was also the aim of the artistic initiatives in Oslo and elsewhere in the coun-
try. But, perhaps, the resisting agency (and emancipatory potential) of aesthetics is best
viewed in regions that are not so democratic, and particularly the reaction of their politi-
cal elites to aesthetic expressions. The arrest and severe beating of Ali Ferzat, one of
Syria’s most famous political cartoonists, by Assad’s security agencies in the beginning
of the Syrian uprising (Ali, 2011) or the case of the even more recognisable Ai Wei Wei
in China are indicative of the establishment’s perception that political artistic expressions
are a threat to the(ir) status quo. As Foucault has argued (1978: 95), resistance eludes the
docility that power aims for, which is why the latter targets the former as an adversary.
The second implication, which is more related to the agenda of critical peace research,
is that the space and the place where this artistic message is expressed (the street) are not
behind closed doors and/or materialised exclusively by ‘experts’ in security, whose deci-
sions often affect people beyond a specific territory. Viewed in this light, the messages of
the art exhibited in Oslo were an expression of the everyday that was – and still is, pre-
dominantly – marginalised from security decisions, policies and strategies that are for-
mulated and implemented in its name and for its protection. As several scholars have
argued to date (Guillaume, 2011; Jarvis and Lister, 2013b; Richmond, 2009; Sylvester,
2013), the ‘everyday’ is not (and should not be) an abstraction in IR analyses of power
management, power relationships and violence, for its agency (although often times
penalised and marginalised) is a clear response to and resistance against the established
and dominant international agenda(s) (Solomon and Steele, 2017).
Understanding the everyday’s agency implies that one must first clarify what the eve-
ryday is. To begin with, it is a site of knowledge, even if said knowledge is unconscious
(de Certeau, 1984: 71). Our study (and many others in the field of peace and conflict
studies that preceded and informed ours) demonstrates that, when it becomes conscious,
it also becomes political. This, in turn, renders it a practice3 and a...
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