We are currently reading Amy Siskind’s brilliant snd terrifying book The List: A Week-By-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year which, along with her original website The Weekly List: This Is How Democracy Ends, is a vital reference work as we write No Philosopher King: An Ancient Guide to Art and Life under Trump.
Reading Siskind’s book is a relentless, but necessary, experience, an excruciating accounting of the daily outrages of the Trump regime’s first year, marking shifts over time in brutal detail. Today, as we look back over a crucial period of the “Minus Plato Today” project (June 5-July 19), a period that breaks free of our two-week constraint, on account of it being squarely focused on our engagement with documenta 14 (specifically in Athens, we’ll get to Kassel next week), we realize how different our project must seem to that of Siskind. While her work explicitly marks the transformation and erosion of American democracy at the hands of Trump and his administration, our work, written within these same conditions, instead of marking them, seeks to find ways of escaping from them as an act of refusal and, even, masking of time. (It is no wonder that this period is what we are currently rewriting as the chapter “Escape to Athens”). At the same time, this masking or refusal of time via art shouldn’t be seen as a simplistic denial. Instead, writing before, during and in the aftermath of our visit to Athens, in these posts we reflect on some of the more fundamental questions that unite our’s and Siskind’s projects: what it means for a book project to begin life as a blog and how writing and memory are renegotiated when that blog can still be accessed after it has been reprocessed into a book, how time and space are negotiated in the connected global and digital worlds and how access to events may be mediated by artistic and creative interventions. We believe that both a direct accounting of Trump’s regime and a day-by-day account of the way art and life can offer us means to the same end: a spirited resistance. In what follows we have juxtaposed Siskind’s descriptions of the pertinent weeks of her project with images from her original posts as well as our posts over the same period. By juxtaposing these two projects we hope to speak to the contrast between marking and masking time, as well as the shared investigations of returning, reforming and refreshing in present acts of resistance.
This was an abbreviated week with Memorial Day and Congress out of session. Republicans were largely in hiding. Without the background noise in DC, two major themes played out: the spreading Russia crisis, and the shaping of a new world order.
June 5 June 6 June 7 June 8 June 9
This week all eyes were on the James Comey testimony, which opened the door for what could be obstruction of justice, an impeachable offense. Despite Republicans controlling the House, Senate and White House, legislative progress has largely come to a halt amid weekly and sometimes daily bombshells, as all eyes turn to the Trump-Russia scandal. Also of note is the complete disarray of the Trump regime, and the difficulty Trump is having hiring staff and even finding legal representation
June 10 June 11 June 12 June 13
Another week for the history books: Trump is under investigation for obstruction of justice — a fact he confirmed through a tweet. With his increasingly erratic behavior, Trump has become his own worst enemy. While investigations by the House, Senate, FBI, federal investigators and special counsel into Trump-Russia steam ahead, Trump’s continued efforts to interfere with investigations may prove to be his ultimate undoing.
There were signs this week that our democracy is fading. The unusual process undertaken by McConnell in attempting to pass AHCA without Senate input or public support. Alarming evidence that Russia may have tampered with 2016 Election Day results, and possibly with help from the Trump campaign. The Trump regime taking steps to shut down access for the media, while our country burns in bigotry and hate.
June 24 June 25 June 26 June 27
This week the first evidence of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia surfaced. Several key members of the Trump regime could be ensnared — big news, with major ramifications! Yet, most of our country was distracted by Trump’s Twitter war with Joe and Mika.
This is arguably the most alarming weekly list so far. A plot that has played out week-by-week as Trump alienated our allies while cozying up to authoritarians, followed by his embarrassing behavior at the NATO and G7 meetings, culminated this week at the G20 with US isolationism.
I’m pleased to share that “The Weekly List” has found a safe home at the Library of Congress. May future generations learn from our slow slide to authoritarianism, and never let it happen again!
