We, the outraged

They tell you we are dreamers. The true dreamers are those who think things can go on indefinitely the way they are. We are not dreamers. We are awakening from a dream that is turning into a nightmare. 
 — Slavoj Žižek, Occupy! Scenes from Occupied America

The Indignation issue was inspired by a question. In a global context dominated by financial crises, social inequalities, and various forms of repression and dictatorship, where more and more citizens are taking to the streets to express their anger, how do artists express their indignation? This question could have given rise to a commentary on the new faces of activism and engaged art, in the process reviving the debates between so-called polemic art and “art for art’s sake.” Yet more urgent seemed to be to remember that artists are first and foremost citizens. If certain individuals among them decide — occasionally or persistently — to express their indignation through their art, others choose to take political action and to participate in popular demonstrations. For this reason, rather than analyzing the aesthetic codes of engaged art, we preferred to contemplate the various motifs of indignation, as well as the strategies employed by artists and citizens to express their discontent.