Art, politics and resistance: An interview with Will Caron
I personally don’t believe that there is any art without politics. Art does not exist in a vacuum, and its creation is always connected to the world around us. I suppose you could paint a picture of an idyllic landscape and ask how that would be politicized. But I would come back and ask if the reason you chose to paint that landscape (and even your very decision to try and create apolitical art in the first place) didn’t have to do with the environment you live in and the experiences you are accustomed to, versus an artist who creates images of police violence against Black American men because of her experiences.
We’re all shaped by our politics, even if it’s through an attempt to avoid the subject entirely. And, in that case, that type of art is really not very useful to anyone, even to the person who created it. Why bother at all?
The role of art in society has always been one of advancement I think. Art pushes boundaries and explores new ideas, it asks questions and it challenges status quo norms across every aspect of our lives. So it is always at the forefront of societal change. When art shifts, society shifts; it is a harbinger of the evolving nature of our society. It is the arts that make manifest that vision of progress, lending form to our goals and ideals.
In this day and age, art is more crucial than ever. For the past 40 years in America, our culture has stagnated and, in many ways, taken steps backward from the era of civil rights breakthroughs in the ‘60s. We’ve made some substantial steps forward in specific areas: marriage equality, for example, and certain environmental, medical and technological successes (so long as they do not disrupt the overarching neoliberal structure), but in terms of economic justice, in terms of social justice, racial equality, the wealth gap, workers rights and benefits, union involvement, quality of life and standard of living—these things have really floundered and, in many cases progress for the general population has receded. Trump is not, therefore, an anomaly but, rather, is simply the continuation—the next evolution—of a trend toward regressivism, a less open and less democratic society, and a less tolerant one.
"Art has an incredible ability to level the playing field, cut through the obfuscation and smokescreens thrown over our eyes..."
Art, in its natural role as a progressive force, therefore, can’t help but be a leading counter force against this trend. And the past 40 years are littered with examples of this: the birth of hip hop is the example I like to point to because it personally resonates with me and because I am old enough to remember, not the beginnings per say, but some of the early energy coming out of the ‘80s. Hip hop is an artistic force expressed through dance, music, visual art and poetry. It was a cultural counterpoint and resistance to the cultural repression represented by the War on Drugs, the Tough on Crime approach in response, the housing crisis, the drug and AIDS epidemics, the violence and the economic downturn of the 1970s, all of which were brought on by neoliberal capitalism as wielded by an socioeconomic-political elitist class. Hip hop was never about violence, it was about nonviolent, but certainly militant, resistance through art and self expression. It was a means of empowering communities and the individuals within it; of inspiring youth and of keeping the spirit afloat to continue struggling against regressivism.
Art has an incredible ability to level the playing field, cut through the obfuscation and smokescreens thrown over our eyes by these neoliberal elites as they seek to dominate and control the extraction of social wealth from our communities as well as its conversion into capital that they can then use to repeat the cycle and become even more powerful.