"I don't do Politics"

I have spoken to artists who say they "don't do politics", which is a statement that I find almost absurd. Art, involved with then? In a time of such massive conflict, coercion and censorship, artists  voices and platforms must engage with the precarity of such a state. If you are employed in the arts, funded, paid, sponsored, if you perform in venues, if you spend your time working to get the work, you are a part of that political economy, to ignore that is to bury ones head in the sand. It often appears to be a case of "I'm alright Jack" or "Don't bite the hand that feeds you", which is what the system aims to do by individualising people as if they are unique. But, the fact is they/we are not if we just roll along in that system, it is a strategy aimed at the homogeneity of precarity: designed to fracture communitas, artistic or otherwise.

An artists duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times
— Nina Simone