What’s the Point in Art When the World Is on Fire?

Plenty of artists imagine their work as political, whether that means writing manifestos, forming collectives, staging ‘happenings’ or simply describing the world as they see it. But the million dollar question remains: can art change the world?

To follow the pipeline from art to activism and back again, Nadia Idle is joined for an ACFM Microdose by Amber Massie-Blomfield, former chief of theatre company Complicité and the author of Acts of Resistance: The Power of Art to Create Better World.

They discuss Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell’s Power Station, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, the Gaza Free Circus,
Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark, Blood of the Condor (1969), the writer Edouard Louis, Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ and the artist-activist Jay Jordan.

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