Some times, when people ask what kind of activism I’m involved in, I reply that I’m not an activist. I contribute to political projects, volunteer in democracy initiatives and participate in current debates. The reason I don’t call myself an activist is that its fun and empowering to be in undefined position. It might help folk approach citizenship as something which includes participation in civic life (which is how it should be).
But there is another reason. Over the 20 years I’ve worked as a performance artist I’ve experienced that people identifying activists have a different mindset toward organizing than me. Before art school, I was involved in student organizing at a vocational school, but I didn’t see that having a long-term objective. Whereas many people who profiled as activists in art-school settings, were there to achieve a long term goals and used art education to tool change.
When challenged about the politics of my art, I imagined myself providing a support role. We could, for example, organize workshops or experiences that help people recover agency, or help formulate aesthetics that support peoples positions. I also perceived that the value I could bring to progressive organizing was in criticizing progressive organizing. With the hope that it could rectify matters, at least concerning the aestheticization of politics and simplifications.
That trajectory brought me all the way to COVID, when I observed I had missed out on a huge, vibrant cultural plane: a space of ongoing negotiations around what it means to be human. Transformative debates which become accessible only by engaging with the fundamentals of political thought: what is means to live and die?
On this plane learning depends on engagement. Just like in a vocational school, when learning carpentry, being in contact with wood gives you access to the engineering of wood. Branching out from cultural activity into political activity is where you realize the fallacies, and feel the impact. There is more feeling on that plain then anyone can handle and it is alive.
During COVID, it was horrible to realize that political operators and institutions were always primed in a way that the most cynical activists had described them: there were institutions, ready to impose austerity and lying without accountability, doing whatever institutions needed in order to legitimize themselves. And we witnessed that our rights didn’t erode, we never had any.
I’ve been on an adventure of trying to rediscover and reestablish a connection between what I’ve done professionally and what I’ve done as a citizen ever since.
And I still think it is valuable that I don’t call what I have now being an activist, but rather being a citizen. By that, I mean that I am in solidarity with all other citizens, and that it would be great if everyone who imagines themselves as part of a society and contributed to it as intensively (or loosely) as they can.