Aesthetic Justice Manifesto
Andre StrongBearHeart, cultural steward of the Nipmuc tribe, tends to the fire while burning a traditional mishoon, or canoe, at the Charlestown Little Mystic Boat Slip. It is the first time in many years a mishoon has been made in the city of Boston. Photo by Jesse Costa/WBUR.
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY AESTHETIC JUSTICE?
At DS4SI, we think about aesthetics as the ways in which different people and cultures experience beauty, vitality, and meaning. In much of the U.S., for example, the accepted public aesthetic centers white norms of quiet and calm. When BIPOC and queer communities desire to bring our own sounds, smells, visuals, and other sensorial desires into the public realm, we are often condemned and policed. We consider this aesthetic injustice.
We believe that aesthetic justice is essential to the project of life. Even as we fight for our rights to affordable housing, quality education, livable wages, etc., we want to center our right to experience being moved–the shift in affective and emotional registers which bring exhilaration, joy, tears, and connection. We believe the fight for aesthetic justice is a fight for our lives and a fight for a life worth living.
FIGHTING FOR THE RIGHT TO EXPERIENCE LIFE ACROSS ALL OF OUR SENSES IS A FIGHT FOR A LIFE WORTH LIVING.
An army of Black men standing and protecting their queen. She is regal in red—standing at the center with a sword drawn—always ready to battle on their behalf. They stand together. Photographer: D.iRvin Photography. Creative Direction: Joëlle Fontaine. ‘Say Her Name’ Gown created for Dominga Martin and the Poor People’s Campaign, and used in Russell Taylor’s MV “Wake Up”.
Aesthetic Justice Manifesto
1. WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE MOVED.
Being moved to exhilaration, rage, joy, or tears calls us into life. From the private yearning spurred by a transcendent song to the collective energy of an enormous concert, being moved connects us to our bodies. We will fight for our right to experience life across all of our senses, because it is a fight for a life worth living.
2. WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE MOVED IN COMMUNITY WITH OTHERS.
We have the right to spaces that weave our lives together. We have the right to experiences that transform our relationships with friends and strangers. A reverberating drum beat, a dance of spices, a collective burst of laughter, breath, or applause: these are the joys of collective experience.
3. WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE MOVED IN PUBLIC.
Our experiences of exhilaration and desire want to be encountered. Being moved in public can welcome others into what might be a new (or ancient) world. We have the right to create a public life that is as sensorially diverse–as juicy, aromatic, complex, quirky, fierce–as we are.
4. OUR RIGHT TO BE MOVED SHALL NOT BE ENCLOSED.
Our right to be moved shall not be over-policed and ever-policed, nor wedged into 3-hour time slots, nor cordoned off into small “permitable” spaces. Like rivers that have been freed from concrete banks and allowed to once again flood seasonally, we claim the right to be moved in ways that spill and follow their own course.
5. WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE MOVED BY WHAT MOVES US.
We have the right to the familiar and the strange. To be moved by that song/dance/dish that transports us back to our childhood, but also to experience the wonder and awe of something we’ve never imagined. We assert our range of motion; we flex our right to queer the limits of what moves us and to reach way back in time to the oldest of familiars.
6. OUR SENSES SHALL NOT BE COLONIZED.
Our senses are political. The corporate world steals our senses and flattens them, tells us a mango is nothing compared to artificial mango flavor with Yellow #5, sells the sensual back to us for profit and distraction. We must maintain sovereignty over our senses as a basis for sovereignty in our lives.
7. WE MUST PRODUCE OUR OWN MOVING EXPERIENCES.
Our lives are drowning in hyper-produced Hollywood movies, addictively engineered fast food, algorithmical Top Ten hits. We must produce the sense experiences we desire, including the physical, the loud, the erotic, the messy, the silent, the piquant. We believe the production of social experience should be as sensorially diverse as the public itself.
8. WE BELIEVE BEING MOVED IS ESSENTIAL TO A LIFE WORTH LIVING.
Being moved–and expressing our exhilaration, rage, love, pain, giddiness, gratitude, fierceness–inspires and rejuvenates our lives. Being moved re-arranges us; it changes our relationship to a space or person or idea. Being moved brings us together in ways that amplify our collective fight for lives worth living.
Feel free to download the PDF version of the Aesthetic Justice Manifesto.