NOTE: This post is to introduce you to the 58th episode of François Matarasso’s and my monthly podcast, “A Culture of Possibility.” It will be available starting 21 November 2025. You can find it and all episodes at Stitcher, iTunes, and wherever you get your podcasts, along with miaaw.net‘s other podcasts by Owen Kelly, Sophie Hope, and many guests, focusing on cultural democracy and related topics. You can also listen on Soundcloud and find links to accompany the podcasts.
François and I were very happy to interview writer and curator Laura Raicovich in early November, just a couple of weeks before the beginning of Fall of Freedom, a “nationwide wave of creative resistance” focused on November 21-22, 2025, including hundreds of events around the US (and some beyond) calling on artists “to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation.” Watch the trailer here.
Anyone can submit any type of cultural event, micro to macro, by adding it to the calendar, which will put it on the searchable map. There’s a tookit and other materials available for free download. The focus is on November 21 and 22, but Laura explained that while the folks planning this don’t want to create an organization, they do want to be responsive to the moment, so don’t hesitate to join the mailing list so you can follow the November 21 and 22 documentation and learn about possible future actions.
It was a wonderful conversation touching on many of our favorite and evergreen questions, such as “What can art do?” We think you’ll enjoy what Laura had to say as much as we did.
We asked Laura to begin by introducing herself.
“I often introduce myself as a recovering museum director, but I am primarily a writer and curator. I was the director of the Queens Museum and worked for over 25 years in the more classical cultural institutions in New York, including Creative Time, Public Art Fund, Dia Art Foundation, and the Queens Museum, among others. I came out of that experience thinking perhaps there’s more that I can do from the outside of those institutions than from within them. There’s a rather long story about why I left the Queens Museum in 2018 that relates to the conditions that were created by the first Trump administration. So these issues are very close to my heart, and I really believe, and have always believed, that culture and art has a very important role to play in our civic lives, and it does so regularly, whether or not we are attuned to that. Fall of Freedom has been an incredible project to get involved with on any number of levels, but primarily because it really speaks to the civic importance of cultural expression and of free speech.”
She had just concluded work on large project in St. Louis, Circus of Life, which used the frame of circus with a big top tent featuring performances and more than 40 artists and cultural producers interacting with participants. Laura explained that the challenge of connecting in real time and with real presence is important to her:
“I think we are living in a moment of profound alienation, whether it’s because we are always on our screens or the political polarization of this moment. Having shared cultural experiences gives us a place—no matter what our political leanings might be, or our intellectual roots or life experiences—gives us a place to start from, a moment that we are having a shared experience that we can then talk about. The Circus was meant to create a space that not only produced a front-facing classical experience of going to something and receiving information or receiving culture, like most museums and galleries and performances are about broadcasting something to an audience. We also tried—with not only the performers and people and musicians who graced the stage under the big top, but also through multiple circus booths throughout the complex—to actually engage people in an exchange of ideas. Often times people show up at a cultural experience not prepared necessarily to share their experiences, but to receive. I do believe that many of our publics have an enormous amount to contribute to those cultural experiences. And if we can create spaces where there can be an exchange rather than simply a broadcast, we shift the entire basis and power structure of that cultural experience.”
Be sure to listen to the whole episode, because Laura has wise and interesting things to say about presence, context, and intention, for instance pointing out the difference between a museum, which is framed as educating the visitor, and a circus, which embodies a much more open and participatory invitation; and also talking about opening our imaginations to the creativity manifested in daily life.
François connected that to the question of validation: “The art world has been very powerful at controlling validation and then granting it to some and not to others. I have real objections to that whole way of of working. One of the things I love about Fall of Freedom is the the inclusion, the openness that says, you may be a Broadway theater or a major museum, or you may be a school student who wants to read a book that is currently being banned as an act in just your own school.”
“This is a very highly decentralized action,” Laura explained. “The way that this started is that Dread Scott, who’s an artist and a friend of mine, sent me an email, like in late July, early August: ‘Hey, I have this idea. Would you come to a meeting to talk about it?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, hell yeah. We’ve got to get on this.’ He had written a kind of manifesto, a version of which is the mission of Fall of Freedom that’s on the homepage of our website. We came up with this idea of Fall of Freedom to mark a moment in time and to make a statement about the fact that art matters and courage is contagious in this moment where we are experiencing the rise of an American fascism that is profoundly detrimental. This is a call to action to all culture makers across the United States to say, I am making culture and it is a form of my resistance to what is happening in this country and to my desire to make it stop.
“The act of making culture was important to us as a lever to say no more—and not just to say no more censorship and no more trampling our rights as artists, because, of course, that’s important, but it is also not all that this is about. This is about not wanting people to be taken and kidnapped from the streets by armed masked federal agents. This is about wanting the benefits that come from our tax dollars to be extended to people who cannot afford food to eat. This is about so much more than just the rights and needs of culture to produce itself. It’s about the cultural community coming out and saying the way that this federal government is acting in this moment does not represent the values of this community. We reject the harm that it’s creating and the pain that it’s producing, and we stand in solidarity together.”
The backstory is interesting.
“We came up with this name, Fall of Freedom, meaning fall the season of freedom, but also meaning that freedom is falling, just like the East Wing of the White House. We decided that we would select two dates in the not too distant future—that was in August. We thought November was close enough to address the urgency of the situation, but also far enough away to allow us a minute to get ourselves organized. So we jumped into action right away. There were about eight or nine of us in that initial meeting. We started meeting weekly, and thought what if we set up an umbrella for organizations and individuals to contribute events, performances, and other any other form of action, readings, film screenings, you name it, any form of cultural production, music events, concerts, etc. If we designate a short time period on a Friday and a Saturday so that we could have events that were happening in the evening, in the daytime, some places are closed on the weekend, some places are open on the weekend. We tried to troubleshoot for all manner of possibilities and put a call out there.
Many people have answered the call. If you see this on Friday, it’s not too late to add your event or find one to take part in. Let freedom ring out!
Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom” with an all-star ensemble, 1988.
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