I have a dream. Or is it a nightmare? 
I wake up standing at the front.

Not at the front of a queue for a grand opening with cheap wine.
But at the front, where the asphalt is still hot.
At the barricade.
Where you can smell the burning rubber.
Where the batons set the rhythm. 
With a smoke bomb between your legs and tear gas that refuses to clear. 
Where you're not sure you belong, but you can no longer turn back. 

To be honest... I 've never been at the front.
But somewhere in the middle. A little further back, actually.
Among the parents, with children on their shoulders.
Holding cardboard signs with letters too big to fit.
Slightly embarrassed to be too loud.
There was urgency, sure. But also looking forward to coffee afterwards.

I told myself: my art carries the voice.
I create, therefore I'm involved.
I make work. I grieve. I contribute. 

But now, I ended up at the front.
Where the air is thin and your eyes are red and blurry.

The front isn't a concept.
The front is a responsibility.
The front means there is nothing between you and the blow.

You shout something and your own voice startles you. 
You do it once, letting everything out, almost without permission. And then there is silence.
No answer.
No echo.
You look behind you. There's barely any backup.
No day shift coming to relieve you.
No well-equipped brigade with a media plan and a crisis communications.
You are the last voice still standing.
The last man standing.

Sometimes being an artist feels like that.
As if, all of a sudden, we're standing at the barricade without ever having signed up for it.
As if everyone else missed the train to the demonstration.
While we stand here, face to face with the water cannon,
the politicians are still on the platform analysing the timetable.
Because they would rather analyse than move.
They analyse slogans we've been shouting for years.
They speak of complexity while, behind the line, an extermination is taking place. In plain sight, in high resolution.

Inefficiency isn't a mistake. It's an attitude.
Buying time.
Weighing every word.
Waiting just long enough for the moment to pass.
Meanwhile, we watch bodies being pulled from the rubble.

People lie openly and are still believed.
Not despite the lie. Sometimes because of it.
The media look for someone who denies it. For balance.
And then amplify the denial.
And so what is visible, what should be unbearable, becomes 'complex' again.
While the dead have already been counted.

It's in that space between denial and repetition, between lies and balance, that we find ourselves now. The arts.
Not because we're heroes.
But because we didn't walk away.
And let's be clear: that's no achievement. It's simply what remains when others withdraw.

We see art students beside us being handcuffed.
Young artists only beginning to find their own language.
Still discovering what it can do.
Before they've even had the chance to search, something else is already demanded of them. 
Be urgent. Be political.
Take a position.
There's barely any time left to search.
Like us, they become minute made-activists.
Not because they chose to, but because the ugliness of the world is at their heels. So they carry that weight.

And then there's us. With our Bromptons and bicycle helmets.
We write applications judged on coherence, while speaking of urgency.
We prove that we're financially sound, sustainable, professional.
We answer questions and write reports about how we're decolonising. 
While colonisation is happening before our eyes.
We put stickers on our laptops saying: ‘Fuck the Bureaucracy’.
And then make sure we stay within the character limit.

Maybe the arts have lost their teeth.
Not because they've grown old. But because they've learned to bite gently.
Managed risk. Urgency without consequence.
Criticism without names.

At the Berlinale, it was said that art and politics should remain separate.
Maybe.
But what if politics has already checked out?
What if policy has already chosen the safe side?
Then the separation between art and politics is no longer a principle.
It's an excuse.

Maybe the arts need to ask themselves:
What do we want to reward?
Who do we want to protect?
What is art still allowed to do? 
Is it allowed to disrupt?
Is it allowed to lose?
Is it allowed to fail?

Real necessity is rarely neat.
It walks in with mud on its shoes.
It breaks something.
It doesn't apologise for the discomfort it causes.

I fear that in five years we'll say: we managed everything well.
We upset no one.
We woke no one.
Yet I have another dream.
That we dare to stay where we are.
That we don't wait for someone else to shout first.
That there's room for the unexpected. For makers without a network. For ideas that do not fit the grid. For projects that fail, but were necessary nonetheless.

Because the real crisis isn't the money.
Not taste.
Not attention.
It's belief.
The belief that art isn't decoration for policy. That it's a force capable of contradicting it. 
That sometimes it has to say: this isn't right.
That it doesn't wait for permission.

Maybe we'll find ourselves there again. At the front.
Maybe we'll look behind us and hear something other than silence.
Maybe there'll be a second voice.
Then a third.

Haider Al Timimi
Artistic Director Antigone