Vision
Art Forces works in the intersection of trauma, memory, creativity, resilience, and resistance, making visible the connections between struggles for social justice globally and histories that have been obliterated or forgotten. The project aims to engage the public on multiple levels to create potential spaces for critical thinking and action that advances progressive social change.
Art Forces works across movements- using culture to create alliances as well as perceptual ‘ruptures’ or ‘disturbances’ wherein people have the opportunity to see connections that they had not seen before, and to imagine new possibilities. Art Forces works in partnership with a wide range of organizations, from mental health programs in Gaza, to environmental organizations, to organizations providing material aid, to those organizing non-violent resistance. Our ultimate goal is to use culture as an organizing tool to bring people together across movements. Our cultural products are then used by activists and organizers in their work to touch and move people.
Much of our work focuses on the occupation of Palestine by Israel, investigating intersections of international public art, surveillance, militarism, solidarity, and colonialism.
Brief History
Art Forces was founded in 2001 by Susan Greene. Greene’s involvement with this issue of occupied Palestine dates back to 1989, when during the first Intifada she was a founding member of “Break the Silence Mural Project,” directed by Miranda Bergman. Goals of Break the Silence Mural Project included bringing Palestinian narratives about daily life under military occupation back to the USA to raise awareness. Break the Silence Mural Project, consisted of four American Jewish women artists, Marlene Tobias, Dina Redman, Susan Greene, and Miranda Bergman. The group lived and worked in Qadura Refugee Camp, in Ramallah for three months. This experience contributed to Greene’s life-long exploration of relationships between trauma, art, and resilience; with the occupation of Palestine and its connections to other oppressions as a fulcrum.