Editors’ note: This workshop was presented at the Socialism 2014 conference in Chicago on June 26th. It was part of a track of radical art talks done every year at the Socialism conference. It now appears at the website WeAreMany.org. Broken up into two parts, the talks take on the broad question of creative expression’s relationship to activism, first from the outside in, then from the inside out.
The first speaker, Alexander Billet of Red Wedge, attempts to provide a framework for understanding art both under capitalism and how it is impacted by radical social change. The second speaker, Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi, then picks up by performing two of his own poems and shares his experiences as an “artist-activist.”
Alexander Billet is a music and arts critic and writer based in Chicago, and is on the editorial board of Red Wedge.
Remi Kanazi is a poet, writer, and activist based in New York City. He is the author of Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine, and is the editor of Poets For Palestine.