2019 Visible Award

Blank Noise began in 2003, in response to street harassment, at a time when the issue was invisible. Over the fifteen years, it mobilized thousands of citizens to become ‘Action Heroes’; take agency tackling street harassment. Blank Noise has worked to affect public consciousness. It builds testimonials of sexual assault. It is built through community

Blank Noise is working on attitudes that connect spaces and geographies of violence; and victim blame. Most women, girls, in India and beyond, have been raised in an environment that warns them to, ‘be careful’, to ‘protect yourself ’, to not draw attention to yourself. This translates to: ‘If you’ve experienced sexual violence, you weren’t careful enough and you deserve it.’ As a result, most experiences of sexual violence are silenced, due to the fear of being blamed. An environment of victim blame justifies and perpetuates sexual violence.

The first edition of the CLIMAVORE Assembly, a project initiated in 2015 by CLIMAVORE, a research platform working to imagine regenerative diets and new food infrastructures by connecting artistic, cultural and agricultural spaces and developing research, pedagogical programs, curatorial operations and cooking apprenticeships that make possible a transformation of the food industry's impact on climate and the environment.

The jury session took place in the Grand Council Chamber of Liverpool Town Hall, and brought together artists, experts, and users of socially engaged artistic practices in a one-day conversation that will try to merge the procedures and criteria of an evaluation process with the discursive elements that characterise panel discussions on the relationship between arts and society.

The Queens Museum has a long-standing commitment to socially engaged art, and its New York City Building was the location of early meetings of the United Nations from 1946 to 1950, making it ideally suited to host Visible’s Temporary Parliament.