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Don’t Expect Art To Save Us
(www.currentaffairs.org)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
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As an artists who has struggled for years with this very topic (how can I / my art make a difference?) I feel like this is one of these endless "Let me tell you the thousand ways our environment and nature are fucked by humanity for three hours straight" documentaries that only (if you are very lucky) in the end spend three minutes on what we could do about it (no easy answers, capitalism has to go, people need to change their lifestyle).
I feel it's the same here, a long article how the world is descending into fascism while art can't stop it followed by a short paragraph how art could channel fighting back (which is one of the conclusions I've come to as well - along with giving people a moment to breathe and pause from the world's horrors).
I guess what I'm saying is: I'd preferred if the article (and these climate crisis documentaries) was the other way round: a short paragraph on how art can't save the world from fascism and then an article about what art could do.
I see your point. Well put.
Actually, thinking about this some more there is probabaly a need for both, this article (and the climate crisis documentaries) - because not everyone has thought about this for years (and whatched hundreds of tgese documentaries) but also media about either people trying to fight climate crisis / fascism or practical tipps on how to do so and I feel like they are a not a lot of those ... (I might be wrong about that, I dont know?)
No, I agree with you. The biggest amount of work in regards to fighting climate crisis, fascism and creating resilient social structures is done on the fringes of society and hence rarely mentioned outside equally fringe publications. While people can learn a lot by joining solidarity networks, their work is often (in my experience) scrappy and inconsistent, because even they are lacking knowledge. Besides the need to balance their own interests with the demands of the capitalist society around them.
I see a big potential for art in that space: Spreading knowledge and positives visions of a livable future without being overly dry and preachy. The Solarpunk genre serves this purpose to a certain degree, but - I think - it isn't hard to introduce similar concepts into other genres, if done with respect, conviction and a basic curiosity to learn from others.
Yeah, Solarpunk, Hopepunk, utopias and positive visions of the future in general; now that they seem farer and more "unrelastic" every day we need them more then ever (and mainstream entertainment is full of the opposite, apocalypse and dystopia everywhere). Thanks for posting the link to that article and your comment 😸
My pleasure.