From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Artivist is a portmanteau word combining "art" and "activist". Artivism developed in recent years while the anti-globalization and antiwar protests emerged and proliferated. In most of the cases artivists attempt to push political agendas by the means of art. Yet this is not political art as it was known before, in the sense of artworks being political. The artivist is often involved in Streetart or Urban Art, Adbusting or Subvertising.

In some cases, Paris in 2003 for instance, artivists were arrested for acts of political art that verged on property destruction. A typical short term goal of artivists is to reclaim public space, especially by subvertising or destroying ads in urban areas or city transportation systems. Nevertheless artivists engage in different media like the internet not only for actions which could be described as hacktivism.

Often the acts of artivists can be refererred to as part of the larger concept of Culture jamming.