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FROM THE EDITOR

So here we are.

Viaduct Arts has always been about exploring what art and artists can do in the face of challenges like climate, social justice, and increasing fascism. The question ‘what to do’ obviously takes on new urgency now.

I’m trying to think in terms of a two-year plan for starters, to stave off as much of the worst as we can and get us to the midterms with as much of our institutions and rights intact as possible. If we still have legit midterms we can consider it a success. Then see if we can claw back some of what has been lost.

In a way, the ugliness that has and will be unleashed will be difficult and painful but can also work in our favor. They will show everyone who they are. Things will no longer be under the surface. I suspect even T supporters won’t like it (too late, sorry). Of course too many will, but I hope some of them are misinformed and/or ignorant more than evil.

Mis/disinformation is one root of the problem, the battle for truth, but that’s for another post.

This is a global problem. There are so many things that need to be done to defend ourselves, the world as we like it, and all we hold dear. Everyone has to choose what they can do, where they are - and get to it.

I will do what I can in my own practice to be on the side of humanism, understanding, and truth-telling. Since returning to Nairobi from DC a month ago, I’ve doubled-down on my volunteer efforts at photo education in Kibera, the city’s biggest informal settlement (aka slum). I conducted a workshop last spring for up and coming documentary photographers from Kibera, two of them were part of a great exhibition that opened there the day I arrived.

I'm assisting a weekly photo program for young people from the area, Kibra Films and Creative Hub.

I started a photobook library for them as a resource. I’m determined to use my experience to help them become powerful truth-tellers themselves, telling their own stories.

I've also been spending time in Kibera shooting for my ongoing photo project on Nairobi. Seeing people's resilience and spirit in the face of incredible challenges helps me put my own problems in context. In just one day last week, when I was feeling at my lowest, I found unexpected beauty, humanity, and community.

I hope to inspire people through this newsletter, which I will try to make into even more of a space to explore and empower the arts in our moment of crisis. How art can offer us grounding and guidance.

Art itself won’t remove tyrants from office any more than it can remove carbon from the air or eliminate poverty. But it’s not trying to do those things. What it - we - can do is assert our humanity and empathy, provoke ideas, tell truth, show beauty (which isn’t always pretty), combat toxic attitudes and preconceived notions, and challenge the status quo.

Art is a kind of camaraderie in the human endeavor, a way of standing up for people and life. Can you think of art that is anti-human?

What can you do in your community? I don’t think any of us can save the world. But we can do a LOT to protect, strengthen, and support our slice of the world. And that can add up to make a real difference. Art can help.

Believe it. I do.

In my lifetime, I’ve watched a mass movement centered on artists overthrow an entrenched regime in the former Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia, sending dissident playwright Vaclav Havel to the presidency.

I know what the Beatles and John Coltrane meant to people behind the Iron Curtain, how it helped them hang on for something better.

I know what bands did to fight a sharp rise in racism and fascism in 1970s England.

I watched the DC punk scene’s pushback to the Reagan years, and the activist solidarity at the heart of the scene.

I saw what Viaduct Arts salons and concerts meant to my community during T’s first term and under COVID.

I saw what art meant to my former students’ development as not just creative people but as empathetic critical thinkers.

I know what art has meant to me from an early age, reassuring me that cool, smart, compassionate, idealistic artists with creative superpowers were on the case, showing the way to a world worth living in.

I know what art means to cultural identity from America to Iceland to Ireland to Belarus to Kenya to Japan.

Our very cultural identity is part of what will come under siege, directly and indirectly. Make no mistake, they are coming for art and culture. I remember in T’s first term, a number of Washington DC tiny independent art spaces - obscure pop-up basement venues and the like - immediately started getting threatened by anonymous right-wingers online. “Degenerate” art and music they called it.

It reminded me of Belarus Free Theatre, a group I saw perform in an abandoned house on the outskirts of Minsk one night in 2007. They have to operate in secret, living in fear of the KGB. Ultimately they went into exile. Because in their plays they express opposition to the authoritarian regime. That’s where things can lead.

It’s not hard to find examples online of Vance and others like him lamenting the left’s dominance of the broader culture and the arts, and their desire to change that. They are not joking. What’s coming is no joke. Minority rule has been the right’s dream and guiding principle for decades. Now their moment has arrived and they will move at pace.

We need to act energetically right away, before their gains can solidify and too much gets taken away. It’s tricky because it’s not about big pink-hat protests this time. What would we be protesting, those who voted for him? How will that work?

The new administration will be seeing what they can get away with. We need ways to make loud and clear that society (as we see and define it) is not just going to lay down and die. We need to stake our claim to the culture and defend it.

I think there are key steps in these early days of what will be a hard slog.

First, feeling all the feels. We need a moment to grieve. I know I’m not alone in feeling deep sadness, shock, and dread at what has happened, at what too many Americans have done. It’s a loss of trust and faith that manifests as a roiling, raw wound inside, at the core of my being. I have it from the moment I wake up in the morning.

I’ve never seen anything like this, even after 9/11. We knew everything has changed, but at least we had a moment of solidarity then. Remember the post-9/11 concerts for NYC? It was like rolling out the big guns of cultural artillery.

But we cannot collapse in despair. Once we start to come out from under our grief, it will be important to go about gathering our peeps in earnest. Intentionally create, build, and reinforce your community. Reach out to those who can be a support network, and offer your own support. Anything that is needing to be done now will work better at the collective, not individual, level.

So once we’ve dusted ourselves off and are watering our communities, we all have to decide - each of us - what we will do. We all have different superpowers and all will be needed, amplified to a higher and hopefully collective level. If you don’t feel up to fighting, support those who do.

Don’t wait. The time is now, as soon as you can muster. Anything you can do will have more impact now than it will later.

We are already at the barricades whether we like it or not.

“Just Take Them and Leave Me Alone” - Raoof Haghighi (Iran)

What you see is what you get
You've made your bed, you better lie in it
You choose your leaders and place your trust
As their lies wash you down and their promises rust
You'll see kidney machines replaced by rockets and guns
And the public wants what the public gets
But I don't get what this society wants