Creative Resistance meeting // Director's note #2

On Sunday nite of this week, I led a session to explain why freeDimensional convened the Creative Resistance meeting. Whereas it was early in the meeting, I mentioned (again) that the primary reason for the meeting was to inspire (or instigate) collaboration, AND that freeDimensional does not have an expectation of what will come from our four days together. So instead of setting an agenda, I opted to share a few principles that I personally hold important (and on which freeDimensional was founded). Here they are: (1) The art space as civic space is ever more important in the current global moment when there is less and less space for rigorous debate (2) Art space managers are often community organizers who take the extra step of building (or finding) a space in which their community can convene, show, exhibit, talk, sing, challenge, and debate (3) It is not uncommon (or out of context) that artists put themselves in harms way (danger) in order to reflect the current moment, issues, injustices ... this is a part of a long intellectual tradition which cannot be described in strictly vocational terms (4) This means that artists and creative folks are often the vanguards (first voices to speak out) on critical issues and conditions in their communities (5) People using creativity to fight injustice need support when society / regimes / systems of power react to their witnessing in violent and suppressive ways (6) courageous witnessing is not lucrative in today's art world; this can be seen on the same continuum of counter-incentive as artists endangered for raising their critical voices.