But as Hitler understood, artists play a distinctive role in challenging authoritarianism.
.. Like the proverbial court jester who can openly mock the king in his own court, artists who occupy marginalized social positions can use their art to challenge structures of power in ways that would otherwise be dangerous or impossible.
.. In his memoir, the composer and pianist Dmitri Shostakovich writes that the Stalinist government systematically executed all of the Soviet Union’s Ukrainian folk poets. When Augusto Pinochet took power in Chile in 1973, muralists were arrested, tortured and exiled. Soon after the coup, the singer and theater artist Víctor Jara was killed, his body riddled with bullets and displayed publicly as a warning to others.
.. Such extreme intervention may seem far removed from the United States today, until we consider episodes like the president’s public castigation of the “Hamilton” cast after it issued a fairly tame commentary directed at Mike Pence.
.. Young people, queer people, immigrants, and minorities have long used art as a means of dismantling the institutions that would silence us first and kill us later, and the NEA is one of the few wide-reaching institutions that support that work.
.. it is imperative that we understand what Trump’s attack on the arts is really about. It’s not about making America a drab and miserable place, nor is it about a belief in austerity or denying resources to communities in need. Much like the disappearance of data from government websites and the exclusion of critical reporters from White House briefings, this move signals something broader and more threatening than the inability of one group of people to do their work. It’s about control. It’s about creating a society where propaganda reigns and dissent is silenced.
.. In saving the arts, we save ourselves from a society where creative production is permissible only insofar as it serves the instruments of power. When the canary in the coal mine goes silent, we should be very afraid — not only because its song was so beautiful, but also because it was the only sign that we still had a chance to see daylight again.
The Stormy Elm: Alternate Arts Interview
Pink Floyd puts a voice to the elusive irony of it. It’s like some wily riddle that I compulsively keep grappling with, even though I know that while I exist within it, it will always escape my grasp
.. Time… It’s is a sly, unwieldy companion that’s both a bequest and a blight. Still, rather than view it as an enemy, I’m trying to figure out how to accept it and allow it to be a redeeming element in my life.
I think my attempts to represent it in my art allow me to express how the absurd incongruity of being bound by it clashes with the core of my timeless nature. It gives me a chance to examine, process, and in some way, embrace it, when otherwise it’s like try to hold vapor or rolling ocean waves in your hands.