A post or two past we talked of participation but in what? During the so called saga of socially engaged art the question of 'participation' was always framed as some form of socially ameliorative project or intervention in response to neoliberal capitalism, as understood by the authors, that people could join or use and regardless of the success or failure of such a offering the equation was similar; social practice for the public against capitalism. If the artists involved in this work now have morphed into social movements as Young Yates1 persuades us then the equation is different. its far more antagonistic but less clear what against and with the rise of a hitherto invisible far alt right public in opposition to the snowflakes of the cathedral who are the proponents of the critique, then its no surprise to feel that a real 'face to face' antagonism exists. The imagined community of the critical artists has been invaded by the alt right and forced to fight. So where does that leave the would be anticapitalist avant garde artists? In a tribal trap perhaps but that is too easy to say, after all how could you not take sides against the extreme far right? Would some distant and lofty compromise, articulated within an artwork be a good idea? Probably not. All I am wondering about is the imaginary division and quite simply it would be very welcome to find a way to dissolve the divide without that very tolerance seeming irresponsible in terms of appeasing some very nasty yet popular ideas. The Poor Peoples Campaign do it in their focus on poverty in a non partisan way which, as we said I believe before, raises the question of anticapitalsim up once more but in a way that is framed by religion and that is unfamiliar territory for a dark matterer like us although we have rounded on the idea of abstinence, a religious concept, as an essential practice in relation to the data surveillance. 

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1 Refers to Yates Mckee, art writer and author of Strike Art: Contemporary Art and the Post-Occupy Condition. Also mentioned int Work ?

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