Today’s main event was the Co-Dreaming meeting at Bloc Projects. A few interesting presentations and some discussions around the idea of collective ideas of how best to act progressively within the city. My main worry about it was how little class and cultural capital came into the conversation. There was also an emphasis on personal transformation as a motivation for making art interventions. Novel though that is, set against the prevalence of today’s professionalised artist, it doesn’t fulfil it’s declared transformational function this way. Transforming the individual doesn’t seem like enough.
Also, the acceptance of the idea that it’s somehow not the activist’s job to come up with new solutions, and merely to be accepting of and responsive to the unknown future, feels like a capitulation to the idea of the neoliberal precarious entrepreneur. What happens when resistance and compliance have the same hallmarks, and are indistinguishable from each other?