<nettime> So what's the use of art, theory, activism? OR the public sphere?

[Dan S Wang via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

Brian and nettime: 

Call it the last disruption. Trump flipped the script on Marx. The first go-round was farce. Now we have tragedy. 

It’s the worst case scenario. And what I mean by that is, this is just the beginning. 

Bannon, Miller, Musk and the rest are working the levers according to plan. The authors of Project 2025 move at breakneck pace, as well. In about two weeks time Trump’s lieutenants have captured all the enforcement agencies. The high court won’t stop them in any case. 

Every disaster, whether climate related like the LA fires or human caused like the DC jet-helicopter collision, will be weaponized to demonize, repress, and criminalize the political opposition, beginning with the Democrats but certainly not ending with them. Whatever purported fixes they put in response to a disaster will only worsen future preparedness. The ill-advised release of reservoir water in California being the most direct example… that is, until we learn about Trump’s inevitable crackpot “plan” to improve air traffic safety. 

“Create the conditions for more disasters” equals “more weapons for us.” This is Bannon mind.

This is only the beginning. Imagine what’s coming next. Because it will. And we won’t be waiting long for it. I’m talking next week and the week after. 

In the meantime the US Left remains paralyzed. Some public protests are now materializing here and there, but without any power relationship to lawmakers or government, which has been the defining dynamic of American protest politics ever since the Bonus March of 1932. Public protest has no leverage to speak of. The demonstrations we see now are pure desperation. Further, the field of impunity has been opened for right wing unofficial enforcers to counter public assembly with armed intimidation and outright violence. So the demonstrations, as politically defanged as they are, probably won’t be happening for long. 

The Democrats for their pathetic, cowardly, and clueless part, are STILL talking about “bipartisanship” and other liberal values demolished by the conservatives more than a decade ago. The grassroots Left has been reduced to individuals making a big show on Meta platforms about leaving Meta platforms… only to find that Bluesky, too, is politically compromised on the one issue that cost the Dems the state of Michigan, ie Gaza. 

Like I said, the worst case scenarios. As you can see, I’m including the state of the Left in this assessment.

So what about art? What is it good for? As the darkness descends, the triteness of pronouncements such as “art preserves our humanity in the worst of times” begins to lift. For example, imagining reciting poetry or humming an aria from a prone position on a bug-infested mat in a detention camp, my co-suffering bunk mate having disappeared just yesterday, seems not so far fetched. It is no longer a scene evoked by the black and white images of Night & Fog, or the austere descriptions of Winston Smith’s quarters in 1984. Substitute a Grateful Dead tune for the aria and I’m there, doing the humming. 

If this is my imagination, then Bannon’s goes far beyond it. Because, as has been conclusively determined, he’s a very imaginative guy.

So, art. Yes, we need it now. And like Brian, like Stella, I’m not talking about viewing a painting or making paintings–though both count, and in fact I’m doing a lot of drawing myself right now. But rather we can really use now the art of hanging out, of being together, of a different kind of drawing–drawing towards each other, drawing others in and near. 

Over the weekend I was in just such a circumstance, doing some designed and deliberate hanging out, sharing a meal, sharing time, sharing space. And one fellow, a Jamaican writer, was telling me about the virulent streaks of homophobia in Jamaican society, a stain on an otherwise accepting culture. He was talking about how it fuels misogyny and toxic masculinity–not the fear of queer people per se, but rather the fear of being perceived and fingered as a gay guy. So in addition to the repulsion sited on the queer male body, the homophobia produces a regime of fear and paranoia. Of course, this made me think of other totalitarian contexts, times and places wherein loving bonds between persons were torn by betrayals. 

The once cornered animal Trump is free, victorious, and vengeful. He knows no limits. The detentions begins with ICE. It continues with pro-Palestinian activists. At some point–again, maybe very soon–arrests of political opponents go forward. Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, anybody Trump personally hates. Maybe even the Obamas. At that point, anybody at any level who disagrees with the Republicans is a possible target. Nobody can do anything but perform as expected to save their skin. The blanket of suspicion descends, nobody knows whom they can trust, or who may point the finger at them. 

Keeping this deliberate and massively traumatic erosion of trust outside of our personal spheres is where art can be useful. And, given that the right wing collection of ambition-laden egos and contradictory agendas bears internal fissures of its own, preserving our core communitarian humanity is an essential part of the struggle. It really is the last front we can hold. Which breaks first, our mutual trust and faith in each other, or their fascist coalition of competing interests and priorities? 

Of course “art” can mean a lot of things. But I’ll begin with where we are: nettime, a project of collective creation, reading and writing. I’ve been on this list for a little less than thirty years. I remember when it was a new thing, and the Web was a new thing, exciting and vibrant for just that reason. Now nettime is an old thing, nearly antique in tech terms, and hardly recognized as art though somehow still more than adjacent (I myself am an artist and not a tech guy). And it’s exciting for that reason, even if less busy. Because the world that has passed nettime by turned out to be a world of collapsed thought spaces, of thought turned into data and data reduced to dollar, Euro, yen bets. Nettime is now Other, a gift of its, which is to say, of our, endurance, inertia, luck, and anti-GUI stubborness. It’s a small but distinctive piece of the puzzle in the imperative to draw ourselves together against the onslaught in-progress, a togetherness most or all of us experience hopefully in real space, but also through at least this one keyboarded channel, going against what most other keyboarded channels do, which is pull us apart.

More to say, more to come. Especially about the rest, ie theory, activism, and the public sphere. But happy to be here now with all of you, as “locally” as any other cyber-hang can be, our Zoomy present notwithstanding.

Dan W.


--

danswang.xyz
@type_rounds_1968 
2025 Winter Artist-in-Residence, Dartmouth College
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: ProtonMail
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=S350
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Attachment: publickey - danswang@protonmail.com - 0xF06CF882.asc.sig
Description: PGP signature

-- 
# distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
# <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
# collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
# more info: https://www.nettime.org
# contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org