Political narratives are strategically deployed by parties as modes of mass public persuasion to secure votes. Politicians present sound bites, drawing on issues that carry resonance. The artists and activists invited shareed tactics for breaking open political language to create new possibilities to further equity and community needs. Both Joey de Jesus and Amy Rose Khoshbin had both run for public office as artists.

With Daniel Bejar, Amy Rose Khoshbin, Munir Atalla, hosted by Joey De Jesus, comedy set by Winter

This was the first event in the Civic Dis/Engagment series at CTHQ (October 23, November 6, November 13) 

How can you engage a system that you refuse? Can disengagement be productive? Can we build within this tension and imagine new realities, new infrastructures for equitable life? This series brought together artists, organizers, performers, healers, and writers, for lively debates to discuss how we work within, through, and/or outside of electoral politics to seed better futures, and how we stay in the fight.

Daniel Bejar is a Latinx multi-disciplinary visual artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Brooklyn Museum, NY; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY; Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, Spain; El Museo Del Barrio, NY; SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM; Artnews Projects, Berlin, Germany; and The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY. Bejar’s work has been supported through grants/fellowships from the NYFA, Franklin Furnace, and the Rema Hort Mann Foundation and through artist residencies at Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY, NY; and SOMA, Mexico City, D.F.. His work has been featured in publications such as the New Yorker, Harpers Bazaar HK, Magazine B, and Hyperallergic, among others.
Bejar has an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz, NY, and a BFA from Ringling College of Art & Design, Sarasota, FL. @danielbejar

Amy Rose Khoshbin is an Iranian-American New York and Los Angeles-based artist. She pushes the conceptual boundaries of artmaking to foster radical social change through installation, performance, social practice, sculpture, video, and collage. She has shown at venues such as The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Times Square Arts, Artpace, The High Line, Socrates Sculpture Park, VOLTA Art Fair, Leila Heller Gallery, Arsenal Contemporary, National Sawdust, BRIC Arts, and festivals such as River to River and South by Southwest. She has received residencies at spaces such as The Watermill Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Project for Empty Space, Anderson Ranch, and Banff Centre for the Arts. She has received a NYFA Grant, Franklin Furnace Fund and a Rema Hort Mann Grant. Khoshbin received an MFA from New York University in Tisch School of the Arts and a BA in Film and Media Studies at University of Texas at Austin. She has collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, House of Trees, and poets Anne Carson and Naomi Shihab Nye among others. @tinyscissors

Joey De Jesus is the author of HOAX Limited Artist Edition (Operating System, 2022), and chapbooks: We Animate the Dream: A Poet’s Run for Public Office (Mount Analog Political Pamphlet Series II, 2021) and NOCT- The Threshold of Madness (The Atlas Review, 2019). Joey received the 2019-20 BRIC ArtFP Project Room Commission for HOAX and 2017 NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship in Poetry. Poems have appeared in Poem-A-Day, Barrow Street, Bettering American Poetry, The Brooklyn Rail, The New Museum, The Texas Review, and elsewhere. Joey is senior co-editor at Apogee Journal and lives in Ridgewood where they ran an abolitionist campaign for New York State Assembly District 38. @dejesussaves

Winter is a sarcastic and witty, queer/Yemeni comedian born in NYC. Being raised in an environment of colliding cultures, she’s always used a comedic wit to convey messages that would otherwise not be received with openness to people in these different spaces. She hopped on a stage one day and found a passion in being able to reach people with her commentary and expand her own world views through the art form. Her goal is to use her inersectionality, life experience, and sociological studies/observations to paint a picture of the comedic, ironic, and contradicting reality of our world. She also hopes to build bridges between communities through a basic comedic honesty and to break down the illusion of it all with the power of perspective. She’s only been in comedy for a few years but has made quite the impression on comics, producers, and audiences alike and plans to aid in creating a path outside of conformity for artists like her who share the common goal of building a better world. @this.arab.right.here