BA: What do you think is the role of artists in protest?
AW: Documentation’s very important, archival stuff. This is what we’re working on at Naropa. After 38 years we have an extraordinary audio and video archive. But that you’re leaving some trace of some Temporary Autonomous Zone, which is the term that comes from Hakim Bey. It’s a book that City Lights published called T.A.Z. He’s kind of an anarchic figure and philosopher-poet. The view is that these things don’t have to last forever, they’re not permanent, they don’t have to become institutionalized and micro-managed. In more and more universities the presidents are like CEOs. It’s a different model, not just for anarchists, but for an alternative way of operating. Then you’re usefulness can be extended, exploded, morphed into something else and you’re not so invested in your immortality.
It’s just very important that you have alternative language to describe what the experience is at Zuccotti Park rather than a canned media interpretation or one person’s point of view. So, the idea is that artists involved with any of this are mirroring reality. It’s better served by a rhizomic model: what the artists mind, I think, can bring to the situation; it’s not just one master narrative or one view: it’s as various as the people involved.
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