Artists in the coronavirus crisis with Max Haiven 3/4/20

This week author and academic Max Haiven joins us from lockdown in London Fields. Our theme is artists in a moment of crisis, how do we respond? Coronavirus capitalism, disorientation.. how to remain positive and productive while being trapped between four walls and in the middle of a crisis.

We try and bring some positive perspectives amid a moment of global crisis and work out how artists can even just get through this.. Max talks about mutual aid networks, peer to peer support, especially where and when the state will not take responsibility - artists are emerging as protagonists in building systems of care from below. Artists dream outside the box. They are 'abandoned by capitalism'. Artists know how to organise people, and a movement in art towards catalysing community. Artists are emerging as activists with a unique set of skills. Max talks briefly about aid for artists during the coronavirus - but his focus is on universal basic income, and all precariously employed, fully funded public services and reductions in rent, mortgages and debt. The key thing he thinks is that artists need to break the spell, where people think we should be getting back to 'normal'.

“Normal is just slow death.. we could have something different - something better. "We can take this weird hiatus to dream as dangerously as possible." Hilary agrees that she has been suffering a crisis in imagination - the big question is how do we create and fuel a national movement of hope. Hilary then wonders how to come to terms with being unable to be together in a space with others making things. A sense of mourning for what went before, a grief for our old lives. We then discuss Astra Taylor who quoted from Milton Friedman who said that 'during a crisis people pick up whatever ideas are lying around". This is the danger - that at the end of this crisis, those to the right will use this to impose another terrible dose of austerity.. we're poised between these two conflicting sets of crisis opportunities. We discuss the Green New Deal very briefly.. At times like this we have to get together - so please do share the vodcast with others and let's get together through the new Bank Job membership site. It's free to join - and has been designed as a tool for national organising. People on the ground, working at grassroots. It's not just a battle of ideas - it's about how people are connected together. We need to stop the social atomisation and bring people together. Final thing Max says is there's a third force - we know we have the right, and then a left - he also talks of a 'revengist centrism' A big push from people who have been unseated and want things to change back to 'technocratic neo-liberalism' the 'middle class normal'. Max sees it as a threat. A system that serves the top 20% of earners in society.. We do not need to settle for a return to business as usual!