Go to the 3rd Anti-Columbus Day Tour: https://www.facebook.com/events/235077237185003/ We build on our “Artwashing and Soho” episode using our direct experiences and observations of gentrification in our neighborhoods. We do a “Goofus and Gallant” for anti-gentrication art. Shoutout to the locals, but also these thoughts can be applied all over the place. It’s a layered topic, but I think we illustrate our points well even though I have a bad cold.
We went to many events so you didn’t have to. We discuss the Festival Workers Association born during the many controversies of this year’s Small Press Expo. While OK was in Maryland Lucia went to the Marx@200 show at Verso Books, which was a celebration of Peter Frase’s new book “The Four Futures” and included Alfredo Jaar’s piece that is only ever revealed on September 15th. Finally, we discuss an episode we recorded after the W.A.G.E. Rager we attended at Artist’s Space that we’re probably abandoning for being “too drunk” There’s a big chunk about One Piece too!
Sorry for the delay, I was working the polls from 5AM-10PM yesterday! Fucking wild! We will discuss it and SPX next week when I escape the hurricane zone. Today we read Ben Davis to you. For more, buy his entire book of the same name.
Boots Riley interview where he mentions Ben Davis:
Episode 14 - What is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag
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Jingoism! For the inherently racist American imperial project?? Capitalism with a conscious??? We’re NOT having it. We talk destroying and deconstructing the American flag at home and abroad. Please check out the full show notes of this one.
We go through the demands of Bad Art World’s A contribution towards a programme for the arts on a brutally hot August evening in NYC. It’s a contemporary application of Trotsky’s manifesto on revolutionary art. “Eighty years ago the world was entering another great opening. Then, too, there was a gap between what was necessary to defeat capitalist catastrophe and workers’ general political understanding.”
READING - Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art
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We’ve decided to start reading art manifestos in full and providing light commentary. First up, of course, is 1938’s Towards a Free Revolutionary Art ghostwritten by Leon Trotsky, signed by Diego Rivera and André Breton. Trotsky was one of the leaders of the Russian revolution, he was famously forced to flee to Mexico. Thanks to funding from the American communist party, he was able to stay near Rivera and Frida Kahlo, but was eventually assassinated there. The manifesto denounces both fascism and Stalinism, and is a seminal text to the history of Muralism and Surrealism/Dada.
We yelled at the mayor! This episode is a response to a recent Chapo Trap House interview about music, identity politics, and activism (listen here: https://soundcloud.com/chapo-trap-house/unlocked-amber-interviews-aaron-j-leonard). We want to challenge the podcast left to do better coalition building, and to think more critically about art’s potential in revolution. We encourage folks to consider Rivera’s Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art, and will be posting another episode where we read the whole thing.
A Fucking Didactic Educational AUDIO File! We basically spin a weird collage about surveillance and privacy (a lost cause). A lot of time traveling this episode. We go back in time 5-7 years when folks were rushing Youtube with How To videos like it was the dang gold rush. We receive a prescient transmission from Jack Smith about the commodification of counterculture and the hyper capitalization art fairs were about to cause. We also heed lessons from David Wojnarowicz. Thank you queer history. Folks on the margins are often destroyed by the state, listen to them, and give them space.
The department of defense, the CIA, and the FBI have all had a hand in influencing art, culture, and academia. We discuss the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Marvel movies, Rockefeller, modernism, futurist fascism, and Mexican muralism. Are you bummed about MFAs and institutional partnerships with banks? Us too buddy. If you like us please consider donating for bonus writing, memes, and art:https://d.rip/art-and-labor
