Online Journal
Helsinki Pride 2025
This year, Helsinki Pride showed up for Palestine once more. In the parade there were two Palestinian blocs: one at the front of the parade, led by Sumud, and another one at the very end, carrying a massive Palestinian flag with banners that read “Queers for Palestine“ and “No Pride in Genocide”, directly calling out pinkwashing within Pride and the hypocrisy of celebrating Pride while remaining silent about, complicit in, or actively supporting systems and entites that enable and normalize the genocide.
None of this was shared by the official @helsinkipride account nor has it been covered by mainstream media so far, making it clear that visibility remains conditional, shaped by branding, and that solidarity is still selective.
Pride did not begin as a celebration. It began as resistance, a collective uprising against police violence and systemic oppression. It was never meant to be a corporate parade or a stage for state-approved narratives. At its core, Pride is about radical solidarity and liberation.
Let’s not fall into the trap of feeling “seen” when Pride becomes a commercial product and when crucial struggles like Palestinian liberation are ignored or erased. This is a contribution to make that erasure visible, and to call out the silence of Finnish mainstream media.
Image: @rajatonvimma
“The Art World Is Oversaturated. Here Are 5 Ways to Rethink What Matters”
— @cem_____a , posted with permission.
I’m not sure when the art world collectively decided that a “promising” artist must remain tethered to the system, never straying into other routes—financially or creatively. The only path left seems to be total alignment with market, cultural, and political trends, while quietly absorbing the costs: burnout, compromised artistic processes, and narrowing room for experimentation.
If we’re going to insist that artists operate strictly within the art ecosystem, then we also need to bring that same professional logic to bear on the contradictions it produces. What’s needed is not just a rethink of art-making, but of art world-making—a way to redraw the terms between creative ideals and economic realities, between visibility and integrity.”
—
Full article:
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/strategies-art-world-2667436
Oil companies have a long history sponsoring arts and cultural institutions for two main reasons. “Firstly, sponsorship deals help them to maintain what’s known as a ‘social licence to operate’. This is essentially a form of consent from wider society which relies upon a belief that they are responsible corporate citizens, and that what they are doing is ethically acceptable. By attaching their logos and brands to cultural institutions, they associate themselves with the progressive values of the arts, so when people think of BP, for example, they don’t associate it with climate impacts, polluting oil spills or toxic gas flaring in places like Iraq, but rather with culture, philanthropy and positive social contributions. It’s a form of cheap advertising and a way to clean up a toxic image.
Relationships with cultural institutions also give fossil fuel companies a strategic platform for lobbying. For instance, our research found that BP sponsored a Day of the Dead event at the British Museum just before the Mexican government auctioned off new drilling licences in the Gulf of Mexico – several of which were awarded to BP. So while the public enjoyed the cultural event downstairs in the British Museum’s Great Court, BP executives were meeting with Mexican government officials upstairs, using the event as the backdrop for their corporate agenda.
Now, in response to the growing opposition to oil sponsorship of the arts, fossil fuel companies are increasingly shifting their focus to sport and music sponsorships, and often using their subsidiaries or ‘green energy’ brands for these partnerships. This combination of greenwashing and artwashing is a new strategy of fossil fuel companies, and we’re determined to oppose it." (Chris Garrard, co-founder and co-director of @culture_unstained )
—
Image: @perjovschidan at Kraft Bergen - reposted with permission.
Text source: https://civicus.org/index.php/media-resources/news/interviews/7235-uk-many-in-the-climate-justice-movement-are-finding-creative-and-imaginative-ways-to-protest
“Art activists do want to be useful, to change the world, to make the world a better place—but at the same time, they do not want to cease being artists. And this is the point where theoretical, political, and even purely practical problems arise. Art activism’s attempts to combine art and social action come under attack from both of these opposite perspectives—traditionally artistic and traditionally activist ones.
1. Traditional artistic criticism operates according to the notion of artistic quality. From this point of view, art activism seems to be artistically not good enough: many critics say that the morally good intentions of art activism substitute for artistic quality. This kind of criticism is, actually, easy to reject. In the twentieth century, all criteria of quality and taste were abolished by different artistic avant-gardes—so, today, it makes no sense to appeal to them again.
2. Traditional activist criticism is much more serious and demands an elaborate critical answer. This criticism mainly operates according to notions of “aestheticization” and “spectacularity.” This means that art cannot be used as a medium of a genuine political protest—because the use of art for political action necessarily aestheticizes this action, turns this action into a spectacle and, thus, neutralizes the practical effect of this action.
In other words, the art component of art activism is often seen as the main reason why this activism fails on the pragmatic, practical level—on the level of its immediate social and political impact. In our society, art is traditionally seen as useless. So it seems that this quasi-ontological uselessness infects art activism and dooms it to failure. At the same time, art is seen as ultimately celebrating and aestheticizing the status quo—and thus undermining our will to change it. So the way out of this situation is seen mostly in the abandoning of art altogether—as if social and political activism never fails as long as it is not infected by art viruses.”
—
Image source: @freeze_magazine
Text source: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/56/60343/on-art-activism
Has Activist Art Become a Product?
The concept of activist art has become fashionable and widely accepted within mainstream art institutions. The term now covers everything from politically critical gallery works to community projects, street art, and tactical media within social movements. But while this broad acceptance might seem like “progress,” it raises an uncomfortable question: what happens when activist art becomes a product?
Many works that appear radical or politically engaged are, in reality, safely contained within institutional limits. Inside galleries, artists can question power structures freely—and even be celebrated for doing so—as long as their critique stays within acceptable boundaries. Subversion has become an aesthetic, one that earns funding and praise rather than resistance or consequence. Much of what is now labelled activist art ends up being activism in appearance only: art that performs critique rather than enacts it.
There’s a contradiction here: while museums and biennales eagerly embrace “activism” and “socially engaged” art as cultural capital, real protest and dissent are increasingly criminalised. Institutions adopt the language of resistance while society grows less tolerant of actual resistance.
In parallel, digital media has intensified this transformation. Platforms like Instagram have turned activism and art into content, where visibility becomes currency. Artists and activists must constantly promote themselves, turning their causes into a product. Online platforms have changed not only how art and activism are shared but how they’re understood, shifting collective practice toward individual performance, context toward content, cooperation toward competition.
The challenge now is to imagine alternatives beyond institutional control and digital commodification. Can we build spaces (URL and IRL) for real collective mobilisation? Can we reclaim art and activism as shared, collective experiences rather than products? Can we use digital tools not for self-promotion, but as a resource hub for artists, social, and cultural movements? Can we move beyond the individual toward a third collective way?