A Curatorial Perspective
Singing About the Dark Times by Moriah Russo
In the dark times , will there also be singing ? Yes , there will be singing about the dark times .
— Bertolt Brecht , “ Motto ” Svendborg Poems ( 1939 ), trans . John Willett
In Denmark during the middle years of the Second World War , radical lyric poet and playwright , Bertolt Brecht , included the lines above as an epigraph to the collection of verses named for his place of exile . Known now as a celebrated dissident and prominent émigré writer of exilliteratur , Brecht had fl ed the Nazi seizure of Germany and its accompanying crackdown of insubordinate artists and authors following the expurgation of his screenplay for Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World ?, and just one day after the Reichstag fi re . Brecht ’ s displacement later brought him to the United States , where he was subsequently blacklisted and forced to testify before the HUAC .
McCarthyism , Nazis , exile ... you may be wondering why I ’ m digging up these dated demons of fascism . At the risk of anachronistically writing our doomsday politics into works of another era ( or to the ArtNet-identifi ed “ disorienting Trump-is-everywhere effect ”), I want to walk through Brecht ’ s “ Motto ” to discover a defi nition
Audre Lorde , PEN American protest poster , Molly Crabapple of our present dark times , fi eld a query of our crisis in creating , and affi rm art ’ s place as an upholder of radical imagination and resistance — for both the artist-denizen and the curator .
Truly , we live in dismal times . For many of us ( including myself ), the ability to think of this political era as a new or emerging menace is refl ective of our multifaceted privileges . At the time of writing , no less than a dozen executive orders — in only twice as many days — have made real the threats many feared regarding the prioritization of white supremacist , capitalist , patriarchal interests in our executive offi ce . Criminalized refuge , religious discrimination , repealed reproductive freedoms , and disregard for native land rights ( just to name a few ) are shaping the experiences that American artists both live and reference .
Threats to the safety and security — not to speak of prosperity — of ourselves , our families , friends , and neighbors are enormous , and we would be wise not to ignore what is at risk in the realm of the arts , which — formalists may disagree — is inalienable from society . Annual federal arts funding has never recovered from the post-Piss Christ cuts , but preliminary proposals from the White House ’ s budget offi ce outline not only reductions in spending , but outright eliminations of cultural programs like pittance-recipients National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities . Along with the hazard to education posed by
51 www . ARTBORNEMAGAZINE . com