John Keane

Fear No. 59744

 

Fear No. 59744, 2012, Oil/Linen, 200 x 150cm

The painting is based on an NKVD (soviet secret police) mugshot of Grigory Zinoviev, after he was arrested.  He had been an original member of the Soviet politburo and an ally of Lenin. Having been an architect of the Bolshevik terror he ultimately fell victim to it. He was chief defendant in Stalin’s infamous show trials of 1936, after which he was summarily executed.

http://www.johnkeaneart.com/

University of Kent, FutureLearn, Tate Modern and http://artistsvsdeathpenalty.blogspot.com

 

Over the last four years I have completed a good number of MOOCs and I cannot thank enough Edx, Coursera, FutureLearn and the universities they are associated with for the knowledge I gained.

Recently, I completed one of my favourite MOOCs: “Politics, Art and Resistance” (https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/politics-art-resistance). Thanks to two History of Art courses (Open University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Institute of Youth and Lifetime Education Thessaloniki, Greece) and one History of Modern Art course (State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece) I had attended in the past, I was familiar with the impact of art to the society. “Politics, Art and Resistance” took this knowledge to the next level as I learnt new art and political principles. In addition, I learnt more about connecting art with resistance and applying it to everyday life so to improve the society overall. I highly recommend completing this MOOC.

Furthermore, thanks to “Politics, Art and Resistance” I had the opportunity to participate in a group exhibition in Tate Modern. Every participant of this MOOC could upload a picture of what Resistance means to them on a padlet. All these pictures were gathered and formed a beautiful mosaic which was at Tate Modern Blavatnik Building, Level 5 from 30 May 2018 until 3 of June 2018 (http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/tate-exchange/workshop/other). As Resistance for me means fighting the death penalty, my contribution to this project was the picture of the first post I wrote for this blog: http://artistsvsdeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2011/01/under-article-2-of-human-rights-act.html. Needless to say, that I am really happy indeed raising awareness about the cruelty of the capital punishment to the visitors of Tate Modern.

So, I would like to thank Dr Stefan Rossbach (S.Rossbach@kent.ac.uk) and Dr Ian Mackenzie (I.Mackenzie@kent.ac.uk) for creating such an enlightening course and kindly offering their time answering questions of students on this MOOC comments section, Ms Hollie Mackenzie and Mr Conor Heaney for being so great mentors, Ms Catherine Wood and Ms Cara Courage from Tate Modern for two thought-provoking discussions with Dr Stefan Rossbach and Dr Ian Mackenzie that were part of the course, my co-students for their comments, such a great global study group and everyone working for this MOOC in the University of Kent, FutureLearn and Tate Modern. 

Special thanks to Dr Stefan Rossbach who took photographs of the Mosaic and then he sent them to me so to publish them on this post. I am really grateful indeed!

Athina

University of Kent https://www.kent.ac.uk/elearning/themes/PARmooc.html, https://www.kent.ac.uk/politics/news-events/index.html?view=1093

FutureLearn “Politics, Art and Resistance” https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/politics-art-resistance

Tate Modern http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/tate-exchange/workshop/other