Across the U.S., artists and organizations have organized more than 600 pop-up events, performances, readings, and other forms of creative protest as part of Fall of Freedom, a new artist-led movement that aims to activate the country’s culture community against growing authoritarian threats.
The nationwide program, taking place November 21–22, serves as “a cultural roadblock,” said the artist, curator and writer Accra Shepp, one of the project’s initiators. “You won’t be able to scratch your nose or turn your head without bumping into a movie, or a video on your phone, or something you read. It will be everywhere. You will be reminded that the rule of law matters and that the arts—they not only celebrate freedom of expression, they are the reason for freedom of expression.”
The initiative officially launches at the performance space National Sawdust on Friday, with a night of music and dance, but events are scheduled throughout the day and into the weekend. In New York City alone, there are nearly 200 projects taking place, ranging from a participatory art action by the cooperative ABC No Rio held in Madison Square Park, to a video installation hosted by the media arts non-profit Los Herederos in the Jackson Heights-Roosevelt Ave subway station. A group called the NYC Resistance Salon is displaying artwork and political cartoons critical of the Trump administration on a roving digital billboard, and the Banned Book Brigade plans to wear sandwich boards bearing the covers of their favorite censored publications on the steps of the New York Public Library.
Some galleries and art spaces in New York are taking part or have submitted existing shows under the Fall of Freedom umbrella, including 601ArtSpace, Jack Shainman Gallery, Cristin Tierney Gallery, and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts. Among the museums participating are El Museo del Barrio, which is hosting a retrospective of the influential Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco, and the Bronx Museum, which is presenting a show dedicated to the sculptor Reverend Joyce McDonald, a member of the activist organization Visual AIDS. The Public Theater is hosting a free screening of Ask E. Jean, a documentary about the journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who successfully sued President Donald Trump for sexual assault.