Lecture (5/13) - Anger is often seen as annoying and not constructive. But doesn’t real change often start with anger? The protesters of the seventies are the elite of 2019. Are the internet trolls nowadays really different from the Dolle Mina’s of the past? Can anger lead to something positive? What are you angry about? And would you risk your life for your ideals? European history has many examples of people who did that. Constantin Jinga, for example, was shot during the Romanian revolution and calls that day the happiest of his life. Get to know Jinga and many others in the I’m So Angry Pop-up Museum, a traveling exhibition about revolution and protest, which also confronts you with your own ideals.
Adinda Akkermans (Den Haag,1983) is a writer, radio maker and researcher for media as NRC Handelsblad, Human and VPRO. She is one of the journalists of the Iron Curtain Project, a multi media project that made a travelling popup museum about anger. She studied sociology and wrote two books: Bibeb, biechtmoeder van Nederland en Ministerraad op vrijdag, about the most progressive cabinet of the Netherlands.
Photo by Anneke Hymmen
Poster by Dayna Casey
Adinda Akkermans
Installation by Natalia Nikoniuk
I am So Angry - I Made a Sign by Adinda Akkermans
What does RED make you think about?
Estimated 200,000 people occupied the streets of Washington DC in March 2017 in a direct response to the inauguration of President Donald Trump; worldwide protests of 1968 count in countries that participated rather than in numbers of people; last Sunday tens of thousands of people gathered on the streets of Amsterdam to join the Climate Change March.
Anger, in social context, is usually related to violence, or at least an attack on someone else. It is however rarely admitted that anger is often the driving force for social change. What connects the events listed above?
People who decided to devote a part of their time and join with other bodies to form a living organism of change did so because, to some extent, they were angry; they felt like not enough is being done in a matter that affected their lives; or a decision has been made that doesn’t agree with what they stand for. Looking back at the pages of history it is anger that drives people to unite and call for action, however in an organised society it is also anger that is being discouraged.
So, what does RED make you think about?