This was originally written in April 2024 and distributed to attendees at the LUST 10th Anniversary Show in May 2024.

Due to the circumstances, this was not intended as an all-encompassing document but rather a summation and general framework for the audience at hand. 

This document is being shared in its original writing, and these ideas and illuminations shall be expanded upon elsewhere over time. 

However, I take no claim to this statement in itself as wholly “original,” and a variety of literature has been sourced and specifically bolded at the bottom.

- Faye Yin

As cultural theorist Stuart Hall once said, “although emergent cultural forms do not contain their own guarantees, they do contain real possibilities.¹”

The intent of and the mere existence of art does not always equate progress, nor does progressive art necessarily mean progressive politics.

However, we must not undermine that, within the totality of the machine of political conscience, art is as fundamental as a cog and a screw².

The current struggle must be fought on all fronts, whether political, economical, social, cultural, ideological, and so forth.

If left alone, we face the reality of spaces claimed and power seized by reactionary forces wherever they please. 

The purpose of art must be defined for the current struggle:

(I.) The purpose of art is not to simply entertain, but to educate.
(II.) The purpose of art is not to simply produce content for reaction, but for the conscience of response.
(III.) The purpose of art is not to simply uphold, replicate and reform the commonly held structures, but to abolish them.

During the last several months, the significant impact of social media has been acknowledged by Palestinians as “important.³”

The U.S. empire has acted swiftly to denounce this “generational problem⁴”, which directly challenges its PR narrative⁵.

Yet many in the arts, who have previously shown “moral support” of past struggles (especially of their own particular identity politics), are suddenly silent about the current struggle. These indecisive, apolitical attitudes bare revelation of complacency and, in hindsight, opportunism. 

Strikingly, a main symptom of the artist is often laying claim to the extraordinary forms that art possesses:

Freedom!
Humanity!
Expression! 

But one must ask: 

Freedom for what?
Humanity where?
And expression for who?

WHAT  does the “freedom” of art mean in an unfree Palestine? 
WHERE  does “humanity” lie in ungiven support for the oppressed masses?
WHO is “expression” for within individualistic forms of “self-expression” that fail to recognize the interconnected conditions of struggle and solidarity?

What must we reject?

(I.) The art, no matter its artistic quality, which is explicitly antagonistic towards the mass struggle for Palestine, is to be rejected politically. 
(II.) The art, no matter it’s artistic quality, which serves and replicates oppressive, reactionary forces, is to be rejected politically. 

This art must then be appropriated and transformed to suit our cause to create an art that is “rich in content and correct in orientation.⁶”

This art must speak with the times and for the times. 

The artists must collectively merge together with all other forms of mass struggle and take on the whole of which has produced the current situation: the capitalist system.

For if we engage only in reform, the world shall continue to be wrought by neo-colonialism, imperialism, economic exploitation, climate disaster, and all other interconnected consequences of capitalism. 

This does not end with Palestine nor any meager concessions offered by the ruling class.

We must recognize the immediacy in which all our lives are intertwined by the mass exploitation of the U.S. empire.

Only then can we learn and take on the correct path of struggle towards liberation.