How to become a cultural worker in such an era

As a generation Xer, I grew up as “thinking globally, acting locally.” However, today, the tsunami of anti-democratic and oligarchic actions that flood the United States and many other geographic areas is absolutely global. The drip potential of once promised local action has clearly failed.

To fight back, we will need a multitude of divergent but parallel efforts. This will require us to reshape the cultural work and change it so that we can take a closer look at the “truth” even if they provide comfort, as well as long-term maintenance methods and behaviors and behaviors that no longer serve us.

How can cultural workers contribute in such an era? Next is a lesson I learned in Trump’s first semester. When I resigned as director of the Queens Museum in 2018, because of the many problematic events that happened after Trump’s first election, I had to face a difficult reality: At the end of my term, my husband said to me, “You may never work in a museum.” I felt as if I had been kicked into my stomach and the air was knocked down from my lungs. After spending 20 years in a cultural organization, this seems to be an impossible outcome. It challenges my vision of myself, my identity, and how I think I might contribute to the world. Who would I be if it weren’t for a cultural worker working within museums and other nonprofits? I know that the strange leadership model at the helm of the organization is deeply in existence. Any cultural worker knows that the work of an institution is a profound collective act shading by the hierarchy of organizational charts and unequal salary. But it’s the only work I know about ecology. My imagination is limited by my own life experience.

However, the more I think about it, the more I know that this is the choice I have to make. I had to get rid of the situation where I couldn’t keep the priority value. Maybe I can realize some of the ways I want the institution to operate outside the wall.

So, a trajectory began, which brought me far beyond my imagination in that gut moment, which broke my imagination of the possibility of other work. I hope it also expands the way I contribute to the urgency around me. Not all changes come from a range of situations I experienced at the Queens Museum, but the earthquake shifts in my daily work made me more satisfied with the various accomplices who negotiated at the museum every day. This also made me see my world, and leverage opened up a whole set of imaginations about what
It may be possible in cultural work.

Not long after that In 2019, Warren Kanders’ controversy unfolded at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Kanders, who served as vice chairman of Whitney’s board of directors, owns a military equipment company called Safariland, which sells body armor, tear gas, and label lines “less lethal solutions.” Once artists and cultural workers learn that tear gas wildlife production is used for asylum seekers on the border with Mexico. Black life protesters against Ferguson, Missouri; in Palestine, they led the movement to remove him from the board.

What is shown in the consequences of these revelations is a valuable model to achieve the change of change. In my book Cultural strike: Art and Museums in the Time of Protest (2023), I wrote about how the microscopic world of change manifested by Whitney is consistent with the stratified theory of change. Instead, in this case, journalists are writing key articles. Staff are questioning their role in the museum and attracting the attention of their leadership. Militants held protests in public places in museums and elsewhere. Many unknown dialogues and conflicts occurred behind the scenes. Several artists demanded that their work be withdrawn from the Whitney Biennale. Some people involved in these actions overlap, others do not: In fact, many are skeptical, if not completely hostile, about the strategies adopted by others. However, Kanders eventually resigned from his position to deal with these shared pressures. Various strategies, not used at the same time, create pressure and strength.

All of this reminds me of a conversation with Rhoda Rosen, a white Jewish South African woman who was a member of the African National Assembly (ANC) to end segregation a few years ago. She was surprised by the timing of the regime’s depravity: when tactical differences occurred, she felt the internal unification of resistance became atomized and dispersed. At that time, the wall of apartheid fell. So, so is the American civil rights movement. There are various groups that work together, but the groups that often parallel to each other are excellent: NAACP, Black Panther Party, SNCC, SCLC, Islamic states, Islamic states, underground and core, etc., usually take fundamentally different approaches and tactics. However, the change has come.

As a culture, especially in movement construction, heterogeneity has power. The friction between different realities and tactical methods makes the overall message stronger. It brings room for competition to more people. Production conflicts may arise to strengthen the position. The effect of working in parallel rather than explicit collaboration can resist the effect of flattening messages into sound bites. It allows the view to exist in all its complexity and encourages solidarity to form despite differences. If we respect the advantages of dissonance, can we also alleviate the well-known “circular shooting squad”?

Our personal and collective responses are increasingly urgent in amid a large number of attacks on freedom of expression, human rights and civil liberties; the removal of basic public goods and services; and threats to democratic and constitutional order. Many of us are asking ourselves profound questions about how to act in the work of an organization. To avoid consequences, should we adhere to the restrictions we consider to be coming in advance? Do we choose to wield obvious resistance to protect what we have to survive to fight? Or do we disobey? Taking greater risks, making bolder statements, and public resistance – could potentially induce greater retribution?

If democracy and freedom In a way, I and many others think they are, we have no choice but to resist, refuse to comply with the injustice we know. The contribution of cultural and intellectual institutions to democracy means they must have strong or even “dangerous” ideas. This is why they become targets. What role do they play under autocracy and oligarchy? There is no museum or library that can fulfill its stated mission without self-determination and active civil society. Without these, they existing causes of collapse eliminate their social and educational functions. Resistance may take many forms, but it is essential that we refuse to obey, especially to prophesy as we imagine possible Here comes. Each of us can do this, under what circumstances, the skills are.

I would like to suggest that multiple resistors are most likely to produce the changes we need. These can only be brought together from a common good, permanent or temporary network of solidarity. This does not mean that we will fully agree to even fully understand our allies. In her recent important books Imple perfect unityAruna D’Souza for respecting the reality of incomprehension for such conditions as survival strategies and more complex and effective solidarity. “Being able to act together without a full understanding, being able to float on the ocean of change: what would politics look like based on this ability?” she wrote.

While I don’t know the answer to this question, it’s obvious that a fully coordinated chorus is impossible and may be unwelcome. After all, homogeneity is exactly the desire for incitement. Polyphonic chorus can be said more.

One of the most frustrating aspects of the current moment is that what is about to happen seems to be a Faits. How do we do it justice Does it seem inevitable? It won’t be achieved through the generally familiar, least common method of genitalism: this is the secret to failure. On the contrary, through the accumulation of stimulating disobedience, we may also be inevitable.