I’m excited to be engaged this week in a “virtual residency.” My friend and colleague Francois Matarasso is using his blog “A Restless Art” (where you can also download the excellent book with the same name) to publish daily excerpts from my workshop handout on the “Values and Ethics of Participatory Arts Practice,” then to …
A few days ago I wrote about the utter neglect of equity and wider awareness in arguments for their own funding being issued by “mainstream” arts advocates. “So what should they be saying and doing?” some readers asked. This is my answer. I’d be interested to know yours. First, a little context. There’s a persistent …
What if—as I’ve recently written—the current pandemic is a “hinge moment” in history, offering the possibility of a break from the past? What if the actions taken in response to the pandemic, especially the things that we have repeatedly been told are impossible (such as radically cutting emissions) demonstrate that another world is indeed possible? …
Today, May Day (traditionally a worker’s celebration), could be a hinge moment in U.S. history, when a critical mass of voters and others said “Enough!” to the fat cats attempting to use the pandemic to profit further at public expense. An excellent account of the principles that should guide a compassionate and effective body of …
Full disclosure: This essay is about something that most people I know would dismiss as a pipe-dream. But there’s a difference between (a) the likelihood of an idea being adopted and fulfilled—the usual definition of success—and (b) having an influence. Even if (a) is impossible, (b) is worth pursuing. I would love you to read …
Here are the things that have been going through my mind: Solidarity, The Velvet Revolution, the fall of Apartheid. Why? Because each of these represents a moment in history in which a critical mass of people awakened to the truth that the regimes oppressing them were far from the permanent and unshakeable authorities portrayed in …
I feel sad this morning. There is blame-slinging all around. It’s all about the last few weeks at the moment, as if all that came before had been forgotten. I’m seeing people blame sexism as the sole cause for defeating Warren, as if her own choices were entirely irrelevant. I’m seeing people focusing on the …
The Great Hack, a new Netflix documentary directed by Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, is not to be missed. The film explores the question of data rights: privacy, ownership, exploitation, and cultural manipulation. To make a complex story powerful and accessible, the filmmakers used the clever device of following one man’s quest to impel British …
The maxim “the map is not the territory” was coined by philosopher Alfred Korzybski, who also said, “the word is not the thing,” perhaps inspiring Zen teacher Alan Watts’ dictum, “the menu is not the meal.” Experience is deeply affected by (and often confused with) the way we label it. One of Korzybski’s proofs was …
I woke up with history on my mind. Not the polished history of textbooks but the felt sense of living in the past. In rapid succession, I saw myself in a series of moments, in a series of places I had never lived: Germany in the thirties, Korea under Japanese rule, apartheid South Africa. The …