A Partial + Schematic History of Red Wedge

Red Wedge (RW) was started in 2012 by a group of (then) ISO (International Socialist Organization - US) comrades around Alexander Billet, Brit Schulte and others. From the beginning there was a commitment to, tension and dialectic between, RW’s desire to play a modest role helping develop the actual production of socialist, left-wing, and working-class art, and its role reckoning on the socialist theory of art.

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In Defense of Transgression

In the days following Donald Trump’s election, we at Red Wedge – shell-shocked and terrified as we were – ran an editorial arguing the basics of survival and resistance for artists and leftists alike. Few need reminding of the terrors that were – and still are – gripping those close to us. Non-male identifying friends and comrades were threatened for wearing their hair “too short.” Armed posses of white supremacists were announcing their intent to patrol colleges and abduct professors teaching the “queer agenda.” The need for self-defense was obvious. And it still is. 

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Trump, Art, Music + Revenge

President. Donald. Trump. These are three words that never had any reality outside of a grotesque comic. Until now. The man who has bragged of sexual assault, threatened to “build a wall” and refused to denounce an endorsement from a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan is President of the United States.

Hate crimes and proto-fascist incidents are spreading across the country. A right-wing terrorist outfit in Texas is threatening to arrest and torture “diversity professors.”

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An Announcement From Red Wedge

Red Wedge was founded in the wake of Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. Despite any number of heroic struggles, most notably (in the U.S.) Black Lives Matter (BLM), things are far grimmer today. The weakness of the workers’ movement the radical left is mirrored in the weakness of the artistic and cultural avant-garde. This two-sided problem, of course, has a major impact on Red Wedge, rooted in our belief both in the independence of art and the possibility of a revolutionary socialist project.

A defeated and marginalized left bears little fruit. A false dichotomy between theory and activism pervades the left. There are the academics who look down on concrete activism. Then there are the oddly anti-intellectual activists who have internalized diminished horizons. The latter are those who might say the “workers don’t want to read/think/look” at that...

 

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Art + Revolution

The following is the lead editorial from Red Wedge's first full print issue, which is being sent to the printers shortly. Copies of Issue One can be ordered at the Red Wedge shop.

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In August 2012 a handful of Chicago-based Marxist art junkies launched Red Wedge. The moment was distinctive: Tunisia, Egypt, Occupy Wall Street, the Indignados in Spain, general strikes in Greece and South Africa. Our aim was to try to pull together the artistic and creative flourishes that came with the social and political upheavals: the music and poetry of Tahrir Square, the painting, sculpture and performance of Occupy. It was impossible to ignore the transformation of public space when working-class people took it over. The static reminders of authority and alienation became living breathing carnivals of resistance. It was our belief that this indicated a new audience eager to discuss the aesthetics of rebellion and ready to explore the intersection between art and radical theory. We hoped our website might be a humble contribution to building and cohering a new cultural resistance.

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