A collage of seven people on video calls, each in separate windows with varied backgrounds, displayed against a purple chat interface.

Prep School: Popular Revolt

Courtesy the Artists is a shifting collective based in New York, organized by Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, who started the project when moving from LA to New York in 2012.

The collective has taken on prompts and performed at a range of institutes, and is now convening as part of the On Your Marx festival to consider the question of Popular Revolt, asking their collaborators (and audiences): How would you act in a Social Democracy? Learn more about the Popular Revolt performers:

Miguel Gutierrez | Latasha N. Nevada Diggs | Ryan McNamara | Seung-Min Lee | Alison Kizu-Blair

indefinite article

Fred Moten on My Barbarian

Read more about Gaines & Segades’ other collective, My Barbarian, in an Indefinite Article by Fred Moten.

My Barbarian would have been outside. Their invading socialist society is already here. After the final soliloquy of the interior paramour, spread out in uncollectable diffraction like a shawl Walter Benjamin sees but can’t see because he can’t see through it, their c is the c of an unprecedented choir flowing nowhere, like a sea. Everywhere, too, in being uncollectable; uncountable thread, threat level all orange and pink, they’re a three without a three on it, innumerably dangerous and endearing.

OFFICE HOURS

November 13, 2018: Alisa Zhulina interviews Alex Segade and Amy Ruhl about “Courtesy the Artists: Popular Revolt”

GET INTO IT

Courtesy the Artists: 24-Hour Ballad

Courtesy the Artists: Civil War

Courtesy the Artists: The Meeting

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Freedom Back: Sounding Black Feminist History, Courtesy the Artists

Curation as collaboration was the ethos behind The Meeting… Gaines and Segade were much more than masters of ceremony, but performed alongside the artists and musicians they invited. At times The Meeting felt more like a jam session than anything else, following the improvisatory and ensemblic ethos of experimental jazz.

Sounding Out! | February 11, 2013

Trad.

This is the structure of the song; this is Malik and Alex’s structure. Duet as genre; love affair as collective action. Your song’s lyrics are acts of seeking and longing: She is everywhere — at the roses fair, grounded — but nowhere to be found. Like blackness. Like love… Here, he can be she can be you can be you.

EXTRA CREDIT

Before the show, do your homework! Read Brecht’s “He Said Yes/He Said No” – one of the texts being used as a shared source text for performers.

Nothing is more important to learn than agreement.
Many can say yes; at the same time there is no agreement.
Many are not even asked, and many
May be agreeing to error. Therefore:
Nothing is more important to learn than agreement.