Pre-Text n.2

October 25th, 2019

Featured Artists: Ian Fisher, Drew Austin & Tobias Fike, Channing Williams, Kyra Weinkle, Matthew Harris, Joseph Coniff, Lucía Rodríguez, Aaron Mulligan, Caleb Hahne.

There is a politics of dreaming, that the social sphere might be so organized as to render certain aspirations more easy to reach and others less so. This organization is not innate, but is a reflection of a silent agreement shared among members of a society, that out of all the latent potential inherent within its members, a social body is comfortable actualizing only certain of those potentials. And yet societies do grow and change, however so slowly, which indicates the persistence and rambunctiousness of those who dream, those who are willing to endure discomfort. The contributions of these people add to our lives in ways that, in time, become part of that silent agreement; something we take for granted. Thus, persistence in dreaming seems to be of the greatest social importance, and the means by which we, as a community, foster this spirit is a matter of great consequence.

Pre-Text is a context designed to serve a political function, to make public the aspirations of dreamers. The dream projects which they here present are only a small sample of the vast potential that exists within our community. These projects may or may not be realized in physical form, of course. Sometimes, the resources simply do not manifest. However, in making these projects public, we are aiming to begin the process of aligning those who might have access to the right resources with those who need them.

Yet Pre-Text serves another function: to stimulate the popular imagination. To actualize a dream project if not in physical space, then in the imagination of the community. It asks the question: what if? This is always a question of the values active within the present. What if we were to align our resources to realize these or similar projects at their maximum potential? What if we don’t? What projects will realize instead? A brewery? A Wal-Mart? A highway? What does surrender to the seeming inevitability of the comfortable say about us? These are questions about us; our willingness to persist in envisioning the future we want now, rather than merely accepting the present that was made comfortable yesterday.