Why does political protest art feel so pointless right now?

Last week, Idles performed a headline set on the Other stage at Glastonbury. You might have seen some clips in your social feeds, showing the shouty men and “symptoms of a general cultural malaise” chanting “Fuck the King” or calling Nigel Farage a “fascist”. You might also have witnessed a controversial act of performance art, consisting of dummy migrants in an inflatable life raft, which was passed over the crowd during their set.

Apparently, Idles didn’t know anything about this raft, which didn’t stop many fans assuming the band had organised it themselves to illustrate their politically-charged songs about immigration and unity and the Power of Love. Actually, it was made by Banksy. A couple of days later, the artist himself shared a video to Instagram, confirming he was behind it.

The reaction was mixed. On the one hand, Banksy has been praised for bringing the UK’s brutal immigration policy into the public eye at Glastonbury, alongside the likes of Damon Albarn and Dua Lipa, who made a conscious effort to force a Palestine flag into the BBC broadcast. On the other, the artist has been criticised for trivialising the deaths of refugees with what was essentially a fun stunt – an inflatable to be bounced around by a “coked-up, middle-class” crowd, most of whom probably weren’t in the headspace to take in its ‘deeper meaning’. The former UK Home Secretary, James Cleverly, was (predictably) among the critics. “People die in the Mediterranean, they die on the Channel,” he told Sky News. “This is not funny. It is vile. This is a celebration of the loss of life in the Channel.”

Obviously, the idea that Banksy’s artwork was a “celebration” is a wilful misinterpretation, and a bold one from a man who’s supported the government’s draconian immigration crackdown. Banksy himself called the reaction “a bit over the top”. But Cleverly’s quote does – and if it sounds like I’m defending a Tory here, please forgive me, that is not my intention – hold a grain of truth: the life raft, with its crew of wobbling, life-jacketed mannequins, was in pretty bad taste, if only because it’s hard to imagine what political purpose it actually served, beyond making an Idles crowd feel quite good about themselves.

This isn’t just about Banksy though. Earlier in the day, the festival’s main stage also witnessed a conceptual performance by Marina Abramović, who asked the crowd for seven minutes of silence between music acts, to reflect on the “dark times” we’re living through. “There are wars, there is famine, there is protest, there is killing,” said the 77-year-old artist, wearing a Riccardo Tisci-designed robe that unfolded into the symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (more popularly known as a peace sign). “Here, we will try to do something different.”

A music correspondent for the BBC, who was on the scene, reported: “The sound of music from the surrounding stages still bled into the silence. Half the crowd hadn’t turned off their phone notifications, either. And beside me, there was the tell-tale ‘psssht’ of a beer can being opened. But the overall effect was strangely moving.”

Again, this act of protest received a mixed response. Festival organiser Emily Eavis lauded the “public intervention” as “meaningful and profound” after kicking it off with a big gong. Overwhelmingly, though, the Marina Abramović Institute’s post from the event is flooded with comments calling it a vague and “empty gesture” with no actual reference to real-world events such as the ongoing murder of innocent Palestinians (besides a half-hearted acknowledgement that “the world is in a really shitty place right now”), even after the performance was over and part of the crowd erupted in a “Free Palestine” chant. Other comments call the whole thing “cringe”, echoing the reaction to Banksy’s work, and then there was that guy who cracked open a beer – safe to say he’s probably not going to start smashing up his local Barclays branch based on a brief lull in his big Glasto weekend.

Is it reassuring to see widespread support of peace, however vague, alongside more specific calls for Palestinian liberation and an end to anti-immigrant policy in the UK? Yeah, of course. But unfortunately, Banksy and Abramović’s off-the-mark appearances at Glastonbury only highlighted the fact that the revolution probably won’t start with middle-aged dads who listen to 6 Music over their free-from crumpets, or public schoolkids on the hunt for a bump of whatever Paul Mescal’s carrying about in his little bag.

After it was revealed that Banksy had staged the boat stunt during Idles’ set, the band itself shared some of the footage to Instagram. “The stunt recalls images fixed in our minds of small boats packed with migrants risking their lives crossing the English channel,” reads the caption of the collab post with Clash magazine. And maybe that’s the problem – not just with Banksy’s art, but with political art in general in 2024. For years, we’ve been bombarded with very real, tragic images on a daily basis, from boats of immigrants to flattened homes in Gaza. We don’t really need art, or artists, to remind us that the world is “in a really shitty place right now”. 

If anything, the kind of political performance art that came out of Glastonbury last week only serves to remind us of the insufficiency of art to make real, concrete change in times of actual crisis (unlike protest groups like Just Stop Oil, whose taste for defacing art really is riling up the general population and creating conversation that goes beyond the confines of a £350-per-person festival ground). In Banksy’s defence, he does do some real, meaningful work as well, such as funding a real boat, the MV Louis Michel, that’s saved hundreds of lives in the Mediterranean. Unless the Glastonbury boat will be auctioned off to raise money for more of these boats, though, it’s unclear what it’s contributing to the cause, and the same goes for Marina’s apolitical calls for peace and unity. The fact is, “raising awareness” among a few Idles fans or “making time to reflect” isn’t really enough.