Activating The Artists
A Call For The Artists of The Rise
One of the most distinct features of the Political Rise is creativity. As creators of our world, it’s up to us to imagine, envision, and actualize a world that is beautiful, fair, and free. Classical philosophers of the distant past believed that the three transcendent aspects of humanity were our search for truth, goodness, and beauty. Our scientific methods tell us with increasingly narrow accuracy what we know to be true about our world; our religions assert a dogmatic claim on what is good; but our civilization’s orientation around what is beautiful is left to fringe members of society who often struggle to get by, living in warehouses and other forgotten, abandoned corners of our decaying urban spaces. All the while, our skyscrapers look like identical blocks of glass and steel, our cities often gentrify with an aesthetic that looks the same whether you’re in Austin, TX, or Venice Beach, CA. Our rural communities are an endless drag of stripmalls, and our suburbs sprawl across McMansion developments. What is lost when our creative impulse towards beauty is ignored and disregarded as excessive or unnecessary? Might a civic renaissance of the Political Rise also be a renaissance of beauty? Systemic structural changes to our education, food, healthcare, and economic systems can’t happen without deep cultural changes that drive our care for the whole of humanity.
Artists have always served a vital social function, inspiring us to imagine beyond our current circumstances and use the materials around us to leave the world more beautiful than we found it. Whether creating music that uplifts and heals the soul, or painting murals on the sides of community centers, artists access intuitive and trained capacities to reveal hidden harmonies in color, light, and sound that texture and enliven our world.
In tapping into these harmonies of light, color, and sound, artists are tapping into the underlying field of harmonic possibility that we see reflected back to us in nature and our own bodies. Call it God, the Universe, or Evolution — there seems to be a universal yearning towards more harmony, more thriving, and more complexity. Artists tap into this essential unifying force as they create and bring dreams from the adjacent possible into reality. These qualities make artists natural stewards of the Political Rise.
While many artists may not consider their work political, any creative expression rooted in care for the space in which we inhabit is a political act. Creating beauty is inherently an act of care, offered selflessly to those that experience it. As a political context that intentionally invites care and creativity, the Political Rise is a domain for artists to experiment and bring leadership forward as we remake our world in beauty and care for all.
While all acts of beauty could be seen as part of the political rise, some artists may feel inspired to claim themselves as “artists of the rise,” intentionally choosing to identify themselves and their work as part of a larger political movement to create a thriving world for all. Artists of the rise can work together and separately to create the art that will drive the most creative and visionary change possible, all while making it engaging, connective, and real to audiences.
Art provides a multi-sensory access point to what could otherwise be complex and confusing subjects. Creating a thriving world will be a long and complex journey, but being able to directly experience the potential fruits of humanity’s rebirth process will enable us to experience a taste of what that world might be like as no other medium can.
Humanity’s collective potential is certainly greater than its current state, but it’s often hard to know what we’re capable of until someone illustrates it for us through their own expression. By organizing artists as powerful political actors, we can collectively discover our best possible future via diverse pathways.
We need artists, of all skills and medium, to bring creative force into the Political Rise as we give birth to a more beautiful world together. If you’re inspired to bring creative vision as an artist of the rise, share your art on social media with the hashtag #ArtistOfTheRise and #PoliticalRiseArt.
