Artists in 2025: Democracy's Signals, Sirens and Solace

In 2024, imperiled democracy was not a story captivating enough to chart the course for 2025. Or perhaps, it was captured and aimed against itself- a narrative sleight of hand as dexterous as it was damaging. We now face our future, and our own selves, seeming equally uncertain and inconsolable.

We have a Presidential administration advancing policies and people who will wreak havoc on vulnerable communities and dismantle needed social systems.

There will be deportations, book bans, attacks on civil rights and on bodily autonomy; there will be economic instability, nationalistic isolationism, vengeful prosecutions at the federal level and regulatory rage at the local level; there will be painful government downsizing and ominous government overreach.

There will be calls to show up, to stand with, to walk beside, and to step between.

There will be need.

We will show up.

But we won’t be able to do it all, every day. It would swallow us whole; our psyches, our energies, our potential. If we are all, all of us, consumed entirely by the constant crises each and every today, there will be no one to imagine and plan tomorrow. Or the day after.

In the context of a democracy overrun by corporate interests and the influence of money, a media landscape dominated by the profit potential of division, disinformation sown and spread for domestic political gain and geopolitical digital warfare, and residents who often don’t trust local government and neighbors who often don’t trust each other…there is work for artists.

We can make malfeasance visible. We can tell tales of crises beyond view. We can build bridges. We can light fires. We can be the charge, we can be the safe respite. We can breathe in chaos and breathe out siren, signal or solace. We can be different things in different moments, but we can’t be every thing in every moment. We can not be all.

What is your work?

Are you a siren?

Is your light red and loud?

Do you want to sound alarms, and hold crisis front and center for none to forget?

Do you want to insist that none avert their gaze?

Do you want to catalog the damage?

Do you want to call out deceit?

Do you want to demand attention be paid?

Are you a signal?

Is your light blinking, green and quiet, again and again?

Do you want to guide people towards a path?

Do you want to bring people towards each other?

Do you want to bring people towards what might/could be next?

Do you want to make certain people don’t get lost in a darkness of noise and distraction?

Are you solace?

Is your light steady, silent, a pale pale blue?

Do you want to offer respite?

Do you want to make spaces for rest?

Do you want to build calm moments, where and when people can be still, and listen to themselves?

Do you want to make certain that they are able to stand the times, and be whole on the other side?

Every artist will have to choose their way to be, the work they’ll do, the posture they’ll take. What does your youth tell you an artist is supposed to do in days like these? What does the middle age before or behind you say? What about the old person you will one day be?

Me-I’ve been thinking about certainty and story.

Certainty is poisoning our civic body, being deployed as a manufactured ideological bond, and diminishing the value of curiosity as a civic virtue. And story, it has lost much of it’s singular power. I used to believe that the right story could unlock and open the potential for change. I used to think connection and persuasion were both reasonable goals for story. I now think we are post-persuasion. I’ve come to believe that without rigorous attention to source and context in the telling, story is seen not as connective, but as a persuasive tactic, and it acts as another divisive factor in a fractured landscape.

As artists, how might we intervene in the notion of certainty as a valid foundation for identity?

How might we remind each other that humility, generosity and curiosity are qualities to admire and emulate?

How might we remind those who are certain, that discovery is joyful, and certainty places that joy out of reach?

What creative acts of listening and imagination might we offer to make space for connection, to build trust, and to invite coalition?

How might we make certain that certainty itself does not move us at a pace, perhaps impossible to slow, in a direction from which we certainly can’t return?

What I used to believe story could accomplish on its own, I now think is entirely dependent on the building of relationship.

Relationship happens person to person.

Relationship happens with groups, through process.

Relationship happens with intention and care.

So I ask myself-

How does care show up in my work as an artist? How about listening? Do I listen to people with whom I don’t agree? Can I care about people with whom I disagree? Have I given up on people who believe things I don’t believe? Do I believe coalition has to be in agreement on all things? Can I work towards an end with people who want the same end I do, but who also work for other ends that don’t match my values or goals? What do I need for trust to exist?

What about you?

What role does trust play in your work?

Do you need to build trust for your best work to happen?

If you trust someone, does that mean you care for them?

If you build trust with someone you disagree with, does that mean you care for them regardless of the disagreement?

If your work builds trust, and trust builds care, and care extends the responsibility we feel for each other, is that a siren, signal or solace?

Does a siren get a response from a stranger? Does a signal light the way regardless of the guide? Does solace only soothe those who believe we care?

Does it matter, if its useful? Does democracy depend on care, and do artists have a unique ability to manifest care in visible and invisible ways? Does the health of our bodies, our communities and our nation depend on the creative ways we tackle the uncertainty and urgency of this moment?

In a chaotic world where harm, dread and anxiety abound, we will all have to decide how to care for those around us, and ourselves. We won’t be able to do it all, every day. We’ll have to decide where to put our attention, and our energy. We’ll have to decide what questions are most important. We’ll have to decide where to place our creative muscles and our imaginations.

We’ll each have to choose, over and over-

What is our work?