Fuck Your Decorum

January 7, 2019 Alexander Billet

The US Capitol rotunda. An upward funnel of wealth.

We don’t need to listen all that closely to hear the voice of right-wing reaction lately. But over the past few days its questions have been particularly and flagrantly silly. “How dare these brown women swear? How dare they dance? How dare they dress in ways that go against our expectations? And how dare they think they can now walk the halls of Congress? Who do these socialists think they are?”

For sure, all aesthetic standpoints are political, and especially in the United States. This is after all a country where the far-right gained a level of influence it hadn’t seen in sixty years through the election of a reality TV star.

Shake the City: Experimental Theses on Space and Time, Music and Crisis

December 11, 2018 Alexander Billet

Brighton Walls by Laura Oldfield Ford. — *Brighton Walls* by Laura Oldfield Ford.

Plato insisted that slaves, allowed full access to musical and artistic expression, might bring down Athens. Though it was clearly a turn of frenzied hyperbole on his part, he also appears to have seen a genuine danger, not just in the underclass’ possession of music, but in its ability to change it.

“Musical innovation is full of danger for the state,” he wrote, “for when the modes of music change, the laws of the state always change with them.” Or, in its catchier, vulgarized version, “when the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake.”

Bad Dreams

July 9, 2018 The Editors

Ring around the rosies,
Pocket full o’ posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall down!

Most everyone knows this nursery rhyme. Urban legend places its origin in the Great Plague of London in 1665 and 1666 – one of the last major outbreaks of bubonic plague on the European and Asian continents – the beginning of the end of a three hundred year pandemic.

Red Wedge at Historical Materialism London

October 23, 2017 The Editors

Red Wedge will be presenting two panels at this year's Historical Materialism London conference. This year's conference takes place at the confluence of three auspicious anniversaries: the 20th anniversary of the HM journal, the 150h anniversary of the publication of Marx's Capital, and the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

It is no surprise to anyone familiar with Red Wedge that we share HM's commitment to Marxism's reinvention and rediscovery. Which is why we are glad to be contributing these panels, dedicated to a creative and critical assessment of the Marxist aesthetic experience.

Good Bait: A Lesson In the Political Economy of Desire

February 14, 2017 Crystal Stella Becerril

black on black on Black on
Timbs;
an interruption – no,
an intervention.
a reminder to the Columbus-ing ass fuckboys
(and girls) that
they
still

Red Wedge Panel 1: Art Against Global Apartheid

June 11, 2016 Alexander Billet, C.S. Becerril and Adam Turl

The Red Wedge panel "Art Against Global Apartheid" at Historical Materialism Toronto 2016 (York University). Crystal Stella Becerril speaking, Adam Turl in the background. — The *Red Wedge* panel "Art Against Global Apartheid" at Historical Materialism Toronto 2016 (York University). Crystal Stella Becerril speaking, Adam Turl in the background.

Red Wedge presented two panels at last month’s Historical Materialism conference in Toronto. The first panel was designed to expound on the theme of our second issue, “Art Against Global Apartheid,” which was officially launched at the conference. The following presentations were part of the panel:

“Time/Space/Resistance and the Aesthetics of Neoliberalism” by Alexander Billet
“Bitch Better Have My Marxism: Notes On the Intersection of Politics and Pop Culture” by Crystal Stella Becerril
“November Network of Anti-capitalist Artists” by Adam Turl

Art Against Global Apartheid

May 23, 2016 The Editors

The sign, homemade, carried by a protester, reads “Ferguson to Gaza, Intifada, Intifada.” The slogan is more than a sentiment, more than a simple but powerful statement of solidarity. It is all of these things, but much more too. It is an explicit recognition of the world’s reality, far beyond Ferguson or Gaza.

"Apartheid" in today's world does not describe just a particular legal circumstance in this or that corner of the globe. It is, in varied and intricate ways, a fact of daily life under neoliberalism. Global capital communicates to us in any political, economic or aesthetic language it can muster: "This world is not yours, and you do not belong here."

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