Abstract
In early December 2016, a call for an Art Strike on Inauguration Day, in league with other J20 demonstrations and in solidarity with the Women's March the next day, began to circulate. With graphics that echoed the 1970 New York Artist's Strike Against Racism, Sexism, Repression, and War, it urged individuals, galleries, museums, art schools, and other cultural spaces to engage for the day in “an act of non-compliance” with the Trump regime. “Like any tactic,” the call explained, “this call is not an end in itself, but rather an intervention that will ramify into the future. It is not a strike against art, theater, or any other cultural form. It is an invitation to motivate these activities anew, to reimagine these spaces as places where resistant forms of thinking, seeing, feeling, and acting can be produced.” The full statement by the anonymous organizers of the J20 Art Strike, first released on e-flux, is reprinted here.