Led By Donkeys: Exposing thermonuclear hypocrisy
I have supported and followed Led By Donkeys work since
their inception, The group is comprised of four men, all of whom have activist
pasts and met through their work at Greenpeace: Ben Stewart, James Sadri,
William Rose and Oliver Knowles. Ben, Greenpeace’s deputy programme director, said
“We come from a political culture that is comfortable with civil disobedience
and thinks that civil disobedience has got us a lot of the freedoms we’ve got,
and, speaking personally, isn’t that bothered by getting a conviction.”
They came up with a name for their group, a riff on “lions
led by the donkeys”, the phrase used in the first world war to describe the
tragedy of the British foot soldiers led to slaughter by incompetent or stupid
generals.
I feel a deep harmony with their political stance and am in
admiration of their efforts to expose our leader’s corruption, incompetence and
the harm it causes.
Their efforts begun digitally, as they captured and
re-quoted the gross incompetence's, contradictions and indifferences of UK
politicians, particularly around Brexit, across various social media platforms,
The public reaction to this activity motivated them to go bigger with their
political messaging and they started to plant their artwork in public spaces
illegally, intentionally, anonymously. They were approached by Crowdfunder and
within a day of launching their campaign they had raised more than 50K.
Listening to and reading interviews about their process and these activist
stunts is heartening, because it speaks of the voice of the people, being
honoured.
What's fascinating to me is that they are not artists,
either by discipline or claim. Yet their work is undeniably visual activism.
It's an intersection of activism and art. And it's loud to me that "not
artists" are holding that space. They watched media not hold politicians
to account, and they responded boldly, visually. Led By Donkeys are clear that
they don’t believe they can single-handedly bring down the government. They
started the project for catharsis, stating that they could either laugh or cry
– and they would rather laugh. It was something they could do. Something that
would help them feel less hopeless and frustrated. I am paying attention to
this.
Their trajectory is a shining example of how social media
tech can enable activists to create and have impact through art stunt.
