Did you hear about all that bad stuff?
I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but stuff is happening in the world. Dark stuff. I got an email from an artist colleague recently that called going to openings “acts of resistance”. Shortly after, I caught wind of the dance educator led “protest” outside of the Kennedy Center that featured a conga line of people performing Pina Bausch’s Seasons March. Despite both of these extreme acts of resistance, the horrors are somehow persisting. It’s making me wonder if a change in tactics is needed.
Tomorrow there is a call for a 24 hour economic blackout. Many people who have remained silent on the Palestinian genocide and the dangerous precedents around healthcare and immigrant rights laid out by the Biden administration are suddenly very loud. Despite seeing major successes from the BDS movement–a decades long boycott movement–the neoliberal, capitalist riddled brain can’t seem to fathom anything beyond a few days of not shopping. This is how we push back? A day, perhaps a week of not buying?
The U.S. American need for comfort remains our downfall. “We have to make this easy so people will want to do it.” The slander of progressive movements, the siloing of direct action, the insistence on hyper-individualism–can we not imagine something more? So much of the rest of the world suffers because of the U.S. American need for comfort–so many U.S. Americans suffer so that richer citizens can remain comfortable. It seems like we are entering a dark period that is going to require more than performative resistance. Are we willing to invest in mutual aid instead of a 5th vacation? What happens when the suffering around us becomes impossible to run from? Will we stage a flash mob?
I was recently given professional advice to let my mind wander. Some very large parts of me want to brainstorm next moves and ways to connect and what it would mean to do something tangible towards a better world. I also know that allowing myself to wander, to sit and think, to process in my own time and terms, is what creates more fertile ground for the bigger things. I read something recently about how the ability to make and witness abstract ideas–through art or creative expression–actually helps keep us from being controlled. If we can think beyond what is right in front of us, we cannot be contained by the harsh limitations of fascism.
There is so much urgency right now. There is uncertainty and fear. At the same time, there are decades (centuries? Millennia?) of groundwork laid down by people who imagined better worlds. There is resilience and beauty. There are immediate and tangible actions to take (like moving your money to a credit union or boycotting major corporations long-term or joining movements or contributing long-term to mutual aid or reading theory or questioning and challenging what is right in front of you or gathering people in your immediate communities to talllllk). There are less palpable things like getting stoned and looking at silly photos and crying at nature.
I don’t have answers. I don’t think one person should. I don’t think its the role of an artist to broadly prescribe how to do things. I think it’s important for artists to show new and vast ways to be alive. When those ways are threatened, it’s important for the artist (as someone who should be thinking expansively) to put down the brush or the dance belt and to step outside of the hyper insular into the communal.
If the whole world is on fire, no one will care which hot gayguy you photographed or how much your painting sold for or which grant the uber wealthy gave you. As creative thinkers, we must imagine new ways and we must protect each other along the way. We must carry forward the work and not lose our humanity in the rat race. I was going to rant about people with money and how vile the very fabric of the United States is, but I think it’s better to leave it at that: we gotta protect each other along the way. And we have to do that both tangibly and with long-term vision in mind.
But also wouldn’t it be so funny if all rich people exploded? In space? Haha