Outsourcing Protest

You fill out a form on a Dutch NGO's website and it "gets a bunch of Africans to protest for you." It is not a joke.

A still from one of ActieLab's outsourced "protests"

This is either a bad joke, a brilliant art project or another Dutch viral campaign. A group called Actie Lab (translated: Action Lab), based in Amsterdam, has found a way for Europeans to “help” Africans by outsourcing protests to Malawi and South Africa. Basically you don’t have to do protesting anymore. You just fill out a form on Actie Lab’s website and Actielab “gets a bunch of Africans to protest for you.” They also do birthday greetings.

In this video, which prompted this post, a group of Africans do an on-demand protest around the Chinese government’s imprisonment of artist Ai Wei Wei. (He is now under house arrest.)

Since they started the “service” in May this year, Actie Lab claims to have had more than a few clients.

Not everyone thinks its a joke. For example, What’s Up Africa!, thinks it’s real and skewers it in the latest episode of the weekly Youtube broadcast.

Further Reading

On the pitch

This year, instead of taking a publishing break, we will be covering the African Cup of Nations. To transition, we consider why football still matters in an era of enclosure, mediated presence, and thinning publics.

Davido’s jacket

Davido’s appearance at ‘Amapiano’s biggest concert’ turned a night of celebration into a study in Afrophobia, fandom, and the fragile borders of South African cultural nationalism.

Empty riddles

Drawing on his forced migration from Rwanda, Serge Alain Nitegeka reflects on the forms, fragments, and unsettled histories behind his latest exhibition in Johannesburg.