50+ artists deliver national addresses.

Artist Constance Hockaday has created a project that helps us to imagine what leadership could look like, what the trajectory of our collective agreement could look like. Fireside Chats for 2020 brings together fifty artists to assume authority over our collective future. Alongside the 2020 presidential campaign, artists have addressed the nation over radio, podcast, social media, and in a virtual gallery.

The project is inspired by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Depression-era Fireside Chats. FDR took office during the Great Depression, when the nation’s economy was decimated and trust in government was at an all-time low. Under these conditions, Roosevelt began to speak directly to the public via a series of radio broadcasts dubbed “the Fireside Chats.” His aim was to address Americans’ greatest concerns In intricate poetic detail, Roosevelt unfurled an accessible vision of a unified American public and called upon citizens to participate in democracy as an act of faith.

Today, Americans are faced with the crippling social and economic fallout of a global pandemic which only accentuates the existing disparities in our communities. Similar to Depression Era FDR, we have arrived at a moment of crisis and possibility. We are not calling for a Fireside Chat re-do, but rather an acknowledgement that many of the national narratives of liberation have erased the voices of women and people of color. It is time for an update. We are expanding the vernacular and aesthetics of power with the bodies and voices of brilliant thinkers of artists, writers, performers and musicians—calling on them to assume authority over our collective future.

Participating artists include Nafis White, Deana Haggag, Mel Chin, Ishmael Reed, Kennedi Tezano, Gabrielle Civil, Yasmine Nassar Diaz, Coco Fusco, Carmelita Tropicana, Sasha Debevec-Mckenney, Jasmine Nyende, Rosamund S. King, Kyle Abraham, Madame Gandhi, and many others.

In this overwhelming moment, may we ground ourselves in the voices of these creative leaders.

To listen or watch, visit www.artistsinpresidents.com