Art Is Not Decoration. It Is a Witness.
On Cornell, protest, student loans, power, and what happens when you refuse to behave.
I keep thinking about Cornell.
Not because I went there. I didn’t.
Not because I think Cornell is uniquely rotten. I don’t.
Mostly because it gave me one of those little moments where several things I’ve been pissed off about suddenly looked like the same thing.
A former student says she was drugged and raped by members of a fraternity.
Cornell says the disciplinary process was more substantial than the version going around online. There were suspensions. Expulsions. The fraternity was shut down. Her lawsuit says writing essays was also part of the punishment.
The criminal investigation went nowhere.
Then it came back.
A prosecutor is looking at it again.
Fine. Good. Let them look.
But I’m thinking about something else.
At the same university, people protesting the war in Gaza disrupted a panel and police detained or arrested them.
Different situation.
Different law.
Different people.
I know.
You don’t need to email me.
I’m interested in the reflex.
A room gets disrupted and everybody knows where the cops are.
A woman says powerful young men did something monstrous and suddenly we become very interested in process.
Meetings.
Hearings.
Statements.
Jurisdiction.
What exactly was known at what exact time by which exact office.
Nobody ever seems confused about how to preserve order.
Justice gets a flowchart.
That stuck with me.
Then the student-loan thing happened.
An MFA lands in the ordinary graduate pile.
A Master of Divinity can land in the professional one.
And I know there are statutory definitions and federal regulations and historical reasons and somebody somewhere can explain to me why one box says one thing and another box says something else.
That isn’t really what bothered me.
What bothered me was how familiar the sorting felt.
Real work.
Not real work.
Useful.
Not useful.
Professional.
Not professional.
Serious person.
Unserious person.
Somewhere along the way we built a civilization where everybody is forever being sorted according to how useful they are to the machine.
How much money do you generate?
How much authority do you have?
How many people report to you?
How efficiently do you perform?
Do you have the right credential?
Did you go to the right school?
Can you afford the right school?
Do the people already sitting at the table recognize you as somebody who might someday belong at the table?
And most of us spend our lives trying to answer those questions correctly.
That’s the bargain.
Go to school.
Get the degree.
Get the job.
Behave.
Network.
Work hard.
Be useful.
Don’t cause trouble.
Eventually something good happens.
A lot of us did it.
I did it.
And then one day you look around and realize the reward was apparently another opportunity to prove that you deserve the reward.
That’s a pretty good racket.
Power loves people who want power because everybody understands the transaction.
Kiss the ring now.
Maybe somebody lets you wear it later.
The people who scare power are the ones who stop wanting the ring.
That is where art comes in.
Not because artists are better people.
Christ, no.
Artists can be some of the most insecure, status-hungry assholes alive. Give a filmmaker twelve dollars and a festival badge and watch him become Louis B. Mayer before lunch.
That’s not the point.
The point is that art can exist outside the approved record.
A court makes a record.
A university makes a record.
A corporation makes a record.
A church makes a record.
A government makes a record.
Then some asshole writes a novel.
Someone makes a movie for no money.
Someone paints something ugly.
Someone makes a joke nobody in charge finds funny.
And now there are two records.
That’s dangerous.
Not terrorism-dangerous.
Obviously.
But dangerous in the way an unlocked door is dangerous to somebody whose authority depends on convincing you there is only one room.
A movie can say this happened.
A book can say this is what it felt like.
A joke can say look at this ridiculous motherfucker.
And suddenly all the official language in the world has competition.
That is what art is for when everything is going to hell.
Not inspiration.
Not enrichment.
Not whatever phrase goes on the grant application.
Evidence.
I was here.
I saw this.
This is how it felt.
You are not going to tell me I imagined it.
Which makes our current arrangement particularly funny.
Because where am I putting this?
On the internet.
More specifically, on social networks owned by corporations and billionaires.
Their servers.
Their rules.
Their terms of service.
Their algorithm.
Their battlefield.
We keep trying to defeat concentrated power by producing content for concentrated power.
That seems worth noticing.
I’m not leaving.
Neither are you.
That isn’t the point.
Use the battlefield.
Just stop pretending it belongs to you.
Maybe the real mistake was believing any of these systems were neutral in the first place.
Universities.
Governments.
Corporations.
Churches.
Platforms.
They are made out of people.
People protect the things that validate them.
Put one group of people in charge and they will make rules that seem reasonable to people like them.
Replace them with another group and they’ll do the same thing.
Everybody thinks their thumb on the scale is justice.
So maybe the answer isn’t finding the perfect person to own the scale.
Maybe it is making sure there are enough people standing around saying what they see.
Even when nobody asked.
Especially when nobody asked.
Art isn’t decoration.
It’s a witness.
Leave evidence.