el Journal de Aesthetics and Protests writes:
Journal of Aesthetics and Protest
Issue 4 Available Online
With a creaky call, issue #4 of the LA based Journal of Aesthetics and Protest is now available.
http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/4/iss ue4.php
We are dancing in the dark. Tough luck kids. In January 2005, we held a dark mass and wailed. We are now dark energy. Darkness has shifted with this ever-expanding fucked-up system. Our dearly held agendas and assumptions- once truisms- are now suspect. How can we work in this glue gloom?
On May 13, 2004 cultural production in 5 cities in the Center of the United States just stopped. The towns themselves didn’t seem to notice, their TV’s still brought in moving images, their radios still played the programmed music. It was unclear if the disappearance was a coordinated act of refusal, or if the producers were taken away. It is unclear whether similar events have occurred elsewhere. Are they dead? Have they disappeared, are they dead or are they in hiding?
This fourth issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest has been most difficult to put together. We conceived the Journal when all things felt possible: just a few years back the Bush Administration was impotent, everyone was high on Hardt and Negri and activists of grassroots globalization were infecting everything with “possibility.” Insurgent action was metastasizing into a holy universal of Zapatista inspired world dance revolution party. Locally, nationally, and internationally, activism was beginning to affect policy. Journal issue number two came together as we were touching on concepts of the grassroots as “Second Superpower…
But now we are unable to hide behind dreams of possibility – there simply is no sublime to buoy our relationship with the current US regime. Some of our previous forwards seem now funny. We, and the movement have changed. What recently seemed achievable now feels impossible: currently the strongest freak-culture is not an anarchist collective but the Bush cabinet.
In piecing this issue together we looked at several contemporary models of resistance from the United States and abroad. From the States, it was difficult to find something not developed in relationship to the recent presidential elections – replaying themes of carnival, intervention, pop-culture dissent. These models are inspiring and locally effective, but few of them leave hints of how to work broadly in the current political context.
