These speculations include: “Building the Next America”;  “Women’s Congress: Game On!”; “The Matrix of Bullshit”; “National Artist in Residence Program at Community Colleges throughout the US”; “Invincible Artists: A Cultural Hub Inspired by the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals”; and “Fierce, Feisty, Fearless: The Campaign to Invigorate Democracy.”

But there has also long been a political side to cultural work I have done in the past, especially at The Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF). Interestingly, AIVF was structured as a 501c6 organization, which is a structure for trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce. This was brilliant because the organization, founded in 1976, was freer to lobby around issues that might affect independent filmmakers. During my time in the indie film world, we were very involved in organizing around the cuts to regional indie film grants at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the (successful) creation of The Independent Television Service (ITVS), and the (unsuccessful) opposition to the Telecommunications Policy Act of 1996. While the promoters of that bill said it would foster competition in the telecom industry, it did just the opposite: it created the media consolidation we see today. At the time, it was seen by many in the public interest community as corporate welfare on a massive scale.   

You can see political ideas in The Village Voice piece “What is to be Done?” and The Independent piece “On Culture and Power,” both from the summer of 1995. I am also outspoken in “Break on Through to the Other Side,” in my early 1995 quotes in The Independent reacting to cuts to indie filmmaker funding, and in a 1997 Open Letter in The Independent proposing solutions to the dwindling support for independent makers. At Creative Capital, in the aftermath of 9/11, we were asked to sign certifications that we weren’t supporting terrorists. My board refused to let us sign those contracts; you can read about this incident in “Assessing New Anti-Terrorism Policies” in the Spring 2005 Issue of the Grantmakers in the Arts Reader.

These days I am more focused on what I refer to as the “cultural-political” sphere, in which artists and cultural work play a bigger part in envisioning, strategizing, and organizing for a free and more inclusive future for all.

Here are some of the speculative proposals I am working on now: Snarky solutions for women in Fascist states (let’s call them what they are) like Texas, Florida, and too many other states to name; a plan for International Women’s Day in 2024; Myths NOT to Live By: A Primer for Progressives; We are The WAVE, a project that is designed to bring together a broad swath of people who are already in the process of building a better future in their communities; and a literary contest for Retrospeculative Fiction asking: What if We The People had made different political choices at crucial points in history–where might we be now?

These ideas are not fully developed at this time, but I hope to work on them in the coming days. If they come to their fruition as coherent conceptual projects, I will post them here.

You might have ideas that, like mine, don’t seem feasible. That doesn’t mean they aren’t valuable. You never know what might be sparked as a result of something you have envisioned. One of the pieces I wrote landed at a prominent Washington DC think tank, where the Director called it “ambitious.” You never know. Create a space for your ideas. Share them with friends.

What is your wildest idea? I gave this assignment to my 2020 class at The New School, Performing Arts Strategies for the Future, and what they envisioned was thrilling: a whole new economic system, a maker space that could accommodate people with varied physical and emotional abilities, arts programs on Mars, music that could restore coral reefs, and so much more.