Show latest news, more from November 2007.
30 Years and Counting: A Context for Building a Shared Cross-Cultural Commons
What can we in arts and culture do to about neoliberalism's creation of hollow selves, hollow cities and hollow cultures? Written by award-winning public historian, curator and cultural activist, Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen, 30 Years and Counting was drafted to promote a cross-generational dialogue at 'Sustaining Voices from the Battlefront: Community Grounded Cultural Arts Organizations @ 30,' a conference convened by The Caribbean Cultural Center/African Diaspora Institute at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, June 8-9, 2007.
In the world of art, culture, and the humanities, the clashes of the 1980s into the '90s and present have been formulated as a series of “culture wars” between “liberals” and “conservatives.” This essay proposes it is more useful to understand these conflicts within the broader frame of a reorganizing political culture of “hypercapitalism,” or what has also been called “neoliberalism.”, whose false system of survival “merit” serves to promote massive individual alienation and social fragmentation.
If the Midas touch of neoliberalism creates hollow selves, hollow cities and hollow cultures, we must ask: What can we do about this!? This is the question posed for those involved in cultural work and the fight for cultural equity and justice - in each region, in each locale we need to listen and talk about what has happened over these past 30 years and brainstorm what we can do to rouse us out of this druggy fairytale fantasy. How can we work together, in all our diversity, to build a shared cross-cultural commons?
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