12 Artistic Responses to Gun Violence
15 years ago, I started working on a project to understand how to prevent gun violence. I was prompted by the April 16th Tragedy at Virginia Tech, where an Asian American creative writing major shot 49 people, killing 32, then himself. Writer Aaron Jafferis joined me after the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, where a 20-year-old killed 28 people, including children aged six and seven. As part of our inquiry, Aaron asked:
“Why do young people in this country shoot each other, or get shot?
And how do I recover from losing young people I knew, or not?
And how can I and the people I love get these shootings to stop?
I don’t know. I’m asking you. A few questions are all I got.”
Our project turned into a music theater forum with three titles: The Ones, a.k.a. (Be)longing, a.k.a. Trigger. This oratorio about coming of age in an age of guns has been performed and workshopped by local participants in multiple locations throughout the United States, produced by ArKtype.
We are not the only ones creating artistic responses or researching gun-related deaths. In 2018 and 2019, I co-taught a course with Dr. Erin Grinshteyn, from public health, at the University of San Francisco. One of the assignments was to consider how art influences and responds to firearm violence. Here’s a slideshow from the course:
The slides share 12 artistic responses to gun violence. They include projects by artists, curators, parents, photographers, and producers. Artworks range from installations to performances to videos to site-responsive actions to sculptures to interactive murals:
- Gun Country, Michael Murphy
- Murals & Statues, Manuel Oliver
- Every 28 Hours Plays, Claudia Alick
- This is America, Glover/Murai
- (Be)longing, Au Yong/Jafferis
- Guns in the Hands of Artists, Ferrara Gallery
- Art of Peace, Robby Poblete Foundation
- Primitive Games, Shaun Leonardo
- Disarm, Pedro Reyes
- Oklahoma, Gun Neutral
- Until, Nick Cave
- Guns in America, JR
I hope learning about these projects provides comfort and activates change in the ongoing national conversation and public policy work to ensure people—especially Black Americans, students, and teachers—are safe from getting shot. Included in the slides is a definition of “artistic response” from activist and writer Arlene Goldbard’s Art Became the Oxygen: An Artistic Response Guide, published by the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture in 2017:
“Artistic Response: an arts-based work that responds to disaster or community-wide emergency, much but not all created in collaboration with community members directly affected.”
Slides 24 to 26, include an assignment:
- Consider an artistic response you will make.
- Note how it provides care, comfort, connection, protest, reframing, and/or resilience.
- Write down five possible steps to actualize your project.
Many of my friends are exhausted by the thoughts and prayers from politicians. Likewise, I have been depressed and wonder if my gun violence prevention work matters (see posts from April 2020 and November 2020). Inspired by organizers who continue to call out injustices, and spurred by the data along with debates surrounding firearm-related deaths, I provide this resource. Creativity helps in this ongoing process towards a more peaceful world. Share your projects as an antidote to the attacks.
