What did I miss? It has been my belief ( and I know I am not alone in this!) that when Bernie got ousted from the primaries on March 1st, 2020, we entered a dark and twisted alternative universe where things get progressively worse in a more complex and, at the same time, exceedingly ridiculous way every season. A Clown Upside Down world, if you wish. Hey, Happy New Year of the Fire Horse! I am binge-watching this train wreck of a humanity plot where a global pandemic era gave way to an extreme cancel culture era, which gave way to a mix of natural disasters, hostile takeovers, a drooling president who said he will be the bridge to a new generation but just sat there, the starvation of a captured population in Gaza, a second Trump presidency, Greta Thunberg on sailboats and so so many war crimes on Instagram. I often feel the need to turn to my fellow human and ask, "Are you still watching this?" If you had told me in the summer of 2020, at the height of the George Floyd protests and Defund the Police demands, that there is an even more racist state agency, A Bush-era orphan Obama took in and funded but dormant at the time, that ends up unapologetically shooting a white woman in the face for being annoying, a few blocks away from where George Floyd was killed (!!!) I would have turned to Madonna and said, " Can you believe this shit? If you had told me in July that the same people who cheered Trump and Netanyahu on for bombing the sh*t out of Iran would also cheer the brave young people's ( and yes, women, it is always the women who need to be the poster victim for supremacy) revolution this week, well, I would have believed that. I know by now we have all become expert content manipulators. The people of Iran revolt against an oppressive regime; no, not the oppressive regime the US installed in the 50s or the one US and Israel want to install now, the one in between. And somehow the US stole Venezuela's president and then paraded him in NY in a van as if it was a Kanye West ad. Women, Life, Oil Company Interests, ammaright?
This is an essential read; I don't know why they buried it right before the holidays. It took me a bit to get over the fact that David Velasco considered himself and Artforum "a leftist art publication" affectionately called "Wokeforum", I mean... lolz. But he writes sincerely, intelligently, and yes, from an unapologetically leftist position of solidarity with Palestinian self-determination. He has worked for 18 years at Artforum, the last six as Editor in Chief after a MeToo ousting, and was fired in October 2023 for publishing one of the first Palestinian solidarity letters demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. He seems genuinely surprised that something so benign (and banal) got him fired. Going after the Sackler family didn't get him fired; commissioning a fiery polemic that cinched the departure of weapons manufacturer Warren Kanders from the Whitney's board didn't do the trick; nor did his support for bail funds and defund-the-police demands in 2020. (It was all fun and games when we could cancel bad people, and each other.) Unsurprisingly, it is Palestine that got him fired. “The art world, with all its progressive scaffolding and humanist ornamentation, was practically designed to celebrate and aestheticise every rebellion, but it couldn't metabolise Palestine. It still can't.”
Velasco describes Nan Goldin's opening at the Neue National Galerie in detail and reveals something I didn't know: Biesenbach gave a rebuttal speech to Goldin's (after being booed off the stage) when everyone had left. "A puzzling speech describing how he turned 20 in Israel, how he met Nan in 1992, how he was a caregiver for Susan Sontag in 2004, how Susan taught him to "be unafraid"- Biesenbach always be namedropping even when he must have been very much afraid for his livelihood.
“The stealth punishments are the most pernicious: the jobs not offered, the sales not made. They contribute to an ambient fear that persists in people's minds. The resulting silence is the only sign of its efficacy.”
I feel this. Opportunities just sizzled all around me the last two years. Civilized smiles and turned backs. I post and unpost the little watermelon emoji on my profile. Such a joyful little image can it signlehandedly implode my career? Not to mention the self-doubts: Is it mid-career, is it Palestine, or is it me? One by one, my Instagram comrades have fallen silent. People want to live their lives. People move on. The algorithm is relentless in training us on what can be said and what cannot.
“It's increasingly hard to care about the fate of an art world narcotised by money and self-regard. We had a chance to at least try and make a difference. We had a chance to not sell ourselves out. We had a chance, and we blew it.”
Unlike David, I never really had the cushy blanket of establishment to warm my revolutionary ambitions, a crochet blanket at best, but I try to keep the flame alive. The more of us there are, the more of us are there—two tiers of involvement. You can speak up. You can protect the people who speak up by continuing to employ them. And here is a not-so-subtle thank you to all the galleries who are still members of Berlin Independents Guide.
Equator is a new magazine for politics, culture and art. You can become a free or a paying member. They accept fiction, non fiction and poetry pitches.
