An Antidote to Art Cynicism
Bread and Puppet in front of the Big Top at CIRCUS OF LIFE, 2025. Photography by Nicolas Poblete.
The circus is coming to town. Leave your cynicism at the door. Try to be present for the miracle of it all. Look around you. Share a meal. Sing karaoke. Transform community imagination into community action. Don’t let the big foot crush you. Be less of a cop. Protest and survive. Incivility is care in authoritarianism. Write what you think, print what you write, and share what you print. You’re part of a whole, so be with it and for it.
In anticipation of their 2026 triennial, St. Louis-based nonprofit Counterpublic felt the city needed something. Executive director James McAnally invited New York City-based writer and curator Laura Raicovich to arrange a three-day arts convening, their inaugural non-triennial event. Embracing the potential of a gathering centered around arts, play, and community, she concocted the CIRCUS OF LIFE: “a weekend festival that connects people, and makes tangible the inherent relationship between daily life and art,” as per her curatorial statement. The idea of a circus came to her before she even knew about the Big Top in Midtown St. Louis—usually housing Circus Flora—or the election and ensuing catastrophe of a second Trump administration.
The Big Top at CIRCUS OF LIFE, 2025. Photography by Nicolas Poblete.
For those who know Counterpublic or Raicovich, it should come as no surprise that the CIRCUS OF LIFE is a miracle of art-based social practice. Since 2021, Counterpublic has been devoted to St. Louis through permanent public art projects that embellish the city and solidify the community. Under McAnally, they’ve proven to be one of the only art conventions actively committed to ecological sustainability, civic engagement, and social justice. As for Raicovich, her directorships at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art and the Queens Museum, and recent projects like the Art and Society Census or the Francis Kite Club, testify to her integrity and care for the intersection of art and daily life. CIRCUS OF LIFE is a culmination of her practice. It sure comes close to Raicovich’s ideal, articulated in her 2019 book Culture Strike: “This is what cultural space can do and be; it can become a location, a scaffold to explore the potential of such ideas and how diverse publics might participate in the reimagination of who, what, and how contemporary society functions, how it treats its members, and how and what it creates and destroys. Artistic production can help us make sense of it all”[1]
We shared a meal with Raicovich in the Counterpublic house before opening night. Recreating a circus, she explained, was not just an aesthetic nod, but a genuine revival of this age-old tradition where all may gather across gender, race, class, and age to eat, discuss, and wonder—a potent, democratic site for consciousness raising. I appreciate the conceptual commitment, but the convening was far too openly progressive to ever appeal to all across the political spectrum—including liberal parrots like Ezra Klein.
Artist booths by the Big Top at CIRCUS OF LIFE, 2025. Photography by Nicolas Poblete.
Despite the autumn cold, hundreds gathered at the circus around the Big Top, where tents had been erected to house artist booths. There was a mask-making table with multidisciplinary artist Finnegan Shannon; an altar with feminist collective Hilma’s Ghost; educational tables by Kameelah Janan Rasheed and Galen Gritts; a discussion area by artist collective NEU ER WORLD; and an artmaking table by Bad Drawing Club, amongst many others. We meandered through every booth: spellcasting, collaging, learning, conversing, drawing, offering our entire selves. Tania El Khoury’s interactive booth was most touching. Hiding inside a white box, she waited for you to sit across from her, insert your hand through a hole, and wear headphones placed nearby. During the seven-minute testimony and song about Palestinian liberation, she would gently cleanse your forearm and, on it, draw child-like visions of collective unity. In another tent, you could find knowledge-sharing community tables by EarthDance Farms, St. Louis Design Week, Left Bank Books, Metro Trans Umbrella Group, Invest STL, 4theVille, and Action St. Louis—all of which remained throughout the circus.
I was sharing my love for musical visionary Arthur Russell with a fellow writer when a band dressed all-white started playing music atop a school bus parked by the Big Top. The initially shy, somewhat clumsy intervention blossomed into an infectiously joyful dance, which soon turned into an impressively coordinated mock presentation on the failures of late-stage capitalism. This was the inaugural parade by the Bread and Puppet Theater, which then guided us inside the Big Top, where the main events took place.
Bread and Puppet mock presentation at CIRCUS OF LIFE, 2025. Photography by Nicolas Poblete.
The three-day program was laid out across five acts. “Act I: Speaking Truth to Power” consisted of opening remarks by McAnally and Raicovich, a sermon by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, and a musical theatre act by Bread and Puppet. “Act II: Undoing & Redoing,” emceed by Dr. Treasure Shields Redmond, consisted of talks and performances by Rashida Bumbray, Kayla M. Reed, Sarah Kendzior, Circus Harmony, Chloë Bass, Roxane Gay, and a music set by Ali Sethi and Nicolás Jaar. “Act III: Resisting/Existing” gave us a moment to engage with the various workshops organized by Hilma’s Ghost, Circus Harmony, Kenneth Bailey, and the Department of Transformation. “Act IV: Cultivating Radical Love” consisted of an evening with Larry Krone, Prem Krishnamurthy, and Nermeen Shaikh. The final morning, “Act V: Reflections for the Future” started with a parade by Bread and Puppet and the Kendrick Smith Quartet, followed by a communal meal prepared by Jeanne van Heeswijk and Joia Walker, and a concluding open mic.
CIRCUS OF LIFE is packaged in this earnest folksiness that repels analytical critique. The dense program, despite constant tonal shifts, felt cohesive in sentiment—so much so that identifying weak links would miss the forest for the trees. The whiplash I endured as we drifted from didactic talks to visceral performances quickly dissipated. I came to appreciate the dissonance, as I soon realized the performances functioned to enrich, complicate, or simply open a space to collectively digest the ideas, hopes, and laments articulated by the speakers.
Larry Krone and the Aerialas at CIRCUS OF LIFE, 2025. Photography by Nicolas Poblete.
Every performance was outstanding. Rashida Bumbray danced the blues to reenact the history of Black exploitation within the circus tradition, both questioning its democratic legitimacy and answering Redmond's call to honor our ancestors. Nicolás Jaar and Ali Sethi blessed us with two musical pieces, both of which showcased the power of Sethi’s ghazal-inspired vocals and Jaar’s otherworldly excursions between glitchy ambient and microhouse. Larry Krone—joined by his family band and the Aerialas—performed a few stripped-back country songs interspersed with diaristic soliloquies about home, familial trauma, and queer solace. Bread and Puppet’s inaugural show was an overwhelming spectacle. Across some twenty sketches, they tackled the tragedies of our time—such as US governmental brutality, immigration and housing crises, and international conflict—without ever compromising on specificity. Hundreds of costumes, puppets, and flags appeared on stage, against a mural which read: “OUR DOMESTIC RESURRECTION, REVOLUTION IN PROGRESS.” Walking the fine line between entertainment and activism, the production proved to be more radical and humane than anything I’ve seen in traditional performance this past year.
Bread and Puppet performance in the Big Top at CIRCUS OF LIFE, 2025. Photography by Nicolas Poblete.
The speakers were mostly a success. Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s sermon on despair and gratitude was crucial in cultivating the atmosphere of kinship that would permeate the entire event. Kayla Reed spoke passionately about her work with the Black activist collective Action St. Louis and art's key role in community organizing. Chloë Bass spoke about her work in the New York subway and poetically praised rehearsal as a generative mode of world-building. Cultural critic Roxane Gay warned of the dangers of apathetic centrism and preached incivility as ethics. Prem Krishnamurthy offered two ways of being together: a guided meditation and a karaoke sing-along to Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” Author Sarah Kendzior and Democracy Now! co-host Nermeen Shaikh, who both spoke eloquently about their noble work in current politics, felt somewhat out of place. While every other speaker also addressed political despair, their intention always looked toward a beyond. Kendzior and Shaikh reawakened my cynicism. They got me believing that being there at that moment couldn’t possibly change anything—that hope is a privilege. Perhaps that’s true, but it’s not what I want to hear.
Cynicism has captured many of our minds lately. Facing the brutality of the job market, the rise of authoritarianism in the US, and the bipartisan scapegoating of non-white, queer, trans, and immigrant folks has accelerated the cancellation of the future. Where does that leave contemporary art? If art’s societal value is to reflect or articulate the cultural moment, what can it achieve right now, especially in its chronically neoliberal state? What could even aptly articulate this dystopia, except for some Nick Landean, post-identity, post-political AI slop? CIRCUS OF LIFE is the antidote to art cynicism and a manifesto on art’s value today. That’s why it faltered whenever it felt like a political convention, like preaching to the choir—because there’s an embodied care in artmaking that simply lacks in discourse, and a utopian thrust that can break open the frontiers of mainstream politics. As St. Louis taught me, this is nothing exceptional. Art’s resistance belongs in everyday life everywhere. “If you hear something, free something,” as Bass proclaims in her MTA commission. A gust of wind can turn a ripple into a wave. Every seemingly insignificant exercise of consciousness can steer and enact meaningful political transformation.
Bread and Puppet during the Closing Parade at CIRCUS OF LIFE, 2025. Photography by Nicolas Poblete.
After a rave night at Mississippi Underground, I woke up, prepared my stuff, checked out of the hotel, got coffee, and rushed to the Counterpublic house to catch the closing parade. It was raining and the streets of St. Louis were almost empty, but Bread and Puppet performed as though the whole world was watching.
We all gathered behind the house, hiding from the heavy rain under tents. I was tired, wet, and cold, but intensely connected to those around me. Nicolás Jaar sat close to me. The previous day, we’d spoken about our shared heritage as offspring of Chilean exiles. We locked eyes and smiled. We were handed a “timeline of white supremacy, genocide, displacement, and systemic theft in St. Louis.” The six-page document went from pre-Columbian times to 2025, ending with a foreboding final entry: “Last month, as we were preparing for this event, our collaborator Patrisse Cullors, who spent ten years living in St. Louis during the beginning of the Black Lives Matter Movement, was targeted by the Federal Government. For this reason, she’s unable to join us today in person.”
We ate spaghetti and salad together, which chefs Jeanne van Heeswijk and Joia Walker introduced as the quintessential communal meals. Nyara Williams and Justin Mikhail Solomon from NEU ER WORLD distributed polaroids they’d taken over the convening, and both gave loving speeches about solidarity and kinship. Solomon started his with: “mics are interesting—like, I could say anything right now.” Everyone laughed. It’s true—to have a space of belonging where you feel emboldened to express your every thought is unquantifiably liberating. Raicovich told us about this popular saying common in circus culture: “with it and for it.” As her CIRCUS OF LIFE made abundantly clear, it’s an equally powerful guiding principle for artists, art workers, and activists.
CIRCUS OF LIFE ran at the Big Top and the Counterpublic House from October 24 through 26, 2025.
[1] Laura Raicovich, Culture Strike: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest (Verso Books, 2021), 153.
