Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights
Showing posts with label arts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arts. Show all posts

July 12, 2016

Zapatistas 'The CompARTE Festival and Solidarity'



The CompARTE Festival and Solidarity

'Organize yourselves to celebrate humanity in the face of the machine'

The CompARTE Festival and Solidarity
July 2016
Translations
Compañeroas of the Sixth:
Artists from the five continents:
Teachers in Resistance:
As you know, we have decided to suspend our participation in the CompArte Festival. Of course, for those who know how to read carefully, we didn’t say that the festival itself was suspended. We merely indicated that we as Zapatistas would not be able to contribute. So if someone thought the former and decides not to participate, well then we apologize because we know you already took on expenses. No one should give orders to the Arts. If there is a synonym for freedom, perhaps the last bastion of humanity in the worst situations, it is the arts. We Zapatistas neither can nor should—nor has it even crossed our minds—to tell the workers of art and culture when they should create or not. Or worse, impose a topic on them and, using the originary peoples in rebellion as justification, drag out concepts of “cultural revolutions,” “realisms,” and other arbitrary notions that merely hide what is some kind of cop determining what is “good art” or not.