Dismantle Everything
illustration by Brad Jones for Outer Voice
As the child of divorced working-class parents in Reagan’s America, Legos were a cost-prohibitive luxury. The purported boom of the ’80s never quite trickled down to us.
In my early adolescence, I was obsessed with knights and castles. The Lord of the Rings, Dungeons & Dragons, Masters of the Universe. Anything with armor and sieges was my jam.
After a nearly a year of badgering my parents in what I thought to be a brilliant divide-and-conquer campaign, I received a Lego castle set for Christmas. It was a glorious thing. Enormous and complex, I couldn’t wait to get started.
It was not as easy and joyful an experience as the smiling kids in the Sears catalog led me to believe. The book of instructions was intimidating and a little bewildering.
Every time I reached a certain level in construction — once a tower or wall reached a certain height — I’d push too hard on one thing or another and the entire section would collapse. I couldn’t build what they told me to build.
After considering chucking the entire thing in the garbage (which would’ve been a sure conjuring of incendiary rage from my mom), I dismantled what I had, spread out the pieces and just built my own damn castle.
I have the same feeling as I watch the world right now, and at arts institutions in particular. The instructions don't make any sense, and the picture on the box has lost its allure. Recent events in all of the arts have brought to the forefront deep issues that have existed for as long as arts institutions have existed.
It’s time for artists to disassemble the institutions, spread out the pieces and build something new. And, it’s time for us to do the same with our personal practices.
Dismantle and Reassemble Personal Practice
I won’t quote Michael Jackson, but it is true that to change the world, I have to start with myself.
It’s important always for us as artists to examine our practices. Like a mechanic rebuilding an engine, we can take apart our practice piece by piece, examine each element, clean or replace the parts that need it, grease everything up and put it back together.
If I look closely at my personal writing practice, I see some parts that must be swapped out or the whole thing will fall apart. I don’t just mean the inner critic or the ego. There’s a colonialist deep inside me. There’s a man quick to talk and slow to listen. There’s a mansplainer who, to quote my friend Alaya Howard, has the “caucacity” to make assumptions and easy statements.
These are old parts and, to be honest, parts that have been faulty from the moment they were installed in me by generational habit, institutionalized racism and the experience of growing up a white straight male in the south.
What can I replace these parts with? How can I rebuild my practice?
Dismantle the Institutions
As Anni Pullagura wrote in Without the Master’s Tools: Imagining Another Future for the Arts, “Institutions are by nature exclusive, built around a shared mission for an unshared authority.”*
On June 16, I was fortunate to listen in on Art - Work - Place: Emergency Session III, sponsored by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. Featuring panelists Kemi Ilesanmi, Tavia Nyong’o, Shani Peters and Michael Rakowitz, as well as respondents M. Carmen Lane and Anni Pullagura, this was an evening dedicated to building an art world centering on BIPOC voices and dismantling racist, colonizing structures.
Nothing I can write here could live up to hearing the speakers, so I’d recommend watching the video.
Ultimately, the evening was a call to action to create something new.
The museum industry is built on colonialism, pillaging, “othering” non-white cultures and celebrating artists without rectifying their problematic histories. Theatre is built on white casts performing white plays for white audiences. The foundations of the publishing, visual art, museums and theatre industries are white (even if the talent isn’t), and the big money goes into white bank accounts.
I firmly agree with the multitudes of artists, curators and writers who state that now is not the time to restructure museums and theatres, shuffling positions to create inclusion positions in which to place their only executive hire of color. Now is not the time to create representation festivals helmed by white artistic directors or cobble together seasons dedicated to diversity.
Now is the time to walk away. We as artists must walk away from the old institutions. They are flawed from their foundations, and any work we do to support them simply slaps a bandaid on a sucking chest wound.
Now is the time for indigenous, black and artists of color to lead. Now is the time for white artists to embody active allyship, building coalitions, following others’ leads and focusing on people over prestige and equality over ego.
Now is not the time to build new castles. Now is the time to build sanctuaries and bridges.
The collapse of the music industry in the 1990s provides a case study in how exiting an existing structure doesn’t mean the death of a discipline. While major labels crumbled due to a number of factors (from Napster to good old-fashioned greed), artists found a new path online. Did it suck for artists in the moment? Yes. Did they adapt? Absolutely.
Today, while Spotify and Apple may have seemingly cornered the market on getting music to the masses, the truth is that musicians themselves now own the means of production. We can make records at home or with our friends. We can distribute them immediately. We don’t have to rely on labels, distribution companies, publishing companies, managers and radio programmers (all of whom always get a cut) to get our music to the world.
While this isn’t a perfect fit for all disciplines, it is a reminder that we don’t need the old institutions to make our work and to share our work.
Ok, that’s a big ask. Where to begin? How the hell do we do this?
Look Local
We can create local organizations funded, supported and staffed by our communities. Why not build a national network of them? Look at the models of organizations like The Landromat Project, The Black School and Culture Push.
Reevaluate Your Idea of Success
It’s time for us to rethink how we look at success as artists. Is it celebrity? Is it money? Placement in famous art institutions? Why? What value does it add to our work and the human experience, and is that value worth the ethical assets we barter away?
What value is my work in a museum built on stealing cultural artifacts? What value is my work on a stage where only certain people can afford to hear me? What value is my work when it is sold for profit to someone who doesn’t value my values?
What if success is building an alliance? What if success is sharing your work with someone who may never have the opportunity to experience it? What if success is making time and opportunity for everyone to make art?
Rethink Funding
In her article “Why COVID-19 Is an Unprecedented Opportunity to Radically Rethink Arts Funding,” Artadia’s Carolyn Ramo says, “Gone are the days of monolithic support. The philanthropic field is diverse, dispersed, and interconnected.”
She adds this:
“62% of artists in America are now fully unemployed; artists have lost an estimated average of $27,103 in annual income; 80% have no path toward recovery. This year, artists and creative workers—including members of our most vulnerable and marginalized communities: the disabled, people of color, LGBTQ+—will lose around $50.6 billion.”
The traditional arts funding structures can’t help us anymore. Pandemic, economic distress and a national awakening have stretched everything to the breaking point.
It’s time to make alliances. Alliances with artists, with audiences and with businesses. It’s time to make ethical alliances. If we crowdfund, we have to live up to our promises and not take advantage of our patrons. If we reach out to for-profit businesses, we better look at that executive complexion and the company’s mission and ethics.
Nobody Works for Free. Ever.
Never ask anyone to work for free. Never work for free. Work has value. People have value. Creators and curators of color in particular have been asked to contribute for little-to-nothing for far too long, only to have their work marginalized, sidelined and usually co-opted.
The Path Forward is Interdependent.
The path forward is intersectional. It’s inclusive. It’s egalitarian. This doesn’t mean it’s all hugs and rainbows. Real inclusivity requires hard conversations, hard work. the willingness to be wrong and the character to grow from it.
For visual artists, musicians, theatre artists, writers and all arts workers to walk away from the old structures and build instead sanctuaries and bridges, it’s going to take us all. Together. In humility, in fortitude and in perseverance.
*The title of Pullagura’s piece comes from the incendiary speech by Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” which should be required reading for everyone at this moment.
Learn More
Hue Museums: A directory of culturally responsive museums created by and centering Black, Indigenous and other People of Color in the US.
The Black School: An experimental art school teaching radical Black history.
Andrea Montiel de Shuman’s amazing resignation letter from the Detroit Institute of the Arts.
The Peoples Cultural Plan: Movement to fight exclusionary funding, gentrification and more for the New York art community.
