At a moment of political upheaval and criminalized dissent in the US and reverberating abroad, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics joins the nationwide Fall of Freedom protest on November 21, 2025, in an urgent call to the arts community to unite in defiance of authoritarian forces sweeping the nation. Alongside artists, curators, writers, culture workers, and organizers, we convene on Friday, November 21, from 9 am to 9 pm EST for a 12-hour marathon reading of the VLC’s anthology Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech (co-published with Amherst College Press). 

Originally published in 2023, Studies into Darkness explores freedom of speech through the lenses of history, poetics, and social justice, bringing together the writings and ideas of dozens of contributing artists, activists, curators, and writers. Three years after its publication, its central questions—of who has the right to free expression and when—have only become more urgent and timely.

For Fall of Freedom, this program gathers the book’s international contributors alongside other culture makers whose works and practices intersect with key themes of free speech, legibility, and (mis)translation. Structured as a 12-hour program spanning multiple time zones and connecting disparate locales, the marathon features essays, poetry, songs, scores, and letters, forming an open classroom with multiple entry points to the historical and contemporary discourse on free speech politics.

Among the invited presenters are book contributors Zach Blas, Mark Bray, Gabriela López Dena, Natalie Diaz, Aruna D’Souza, Silvia Federici, Jeanne van Heeswijk, shawné michaelain holloway, Prathibha Kanakamedala, Amar Kanwar, Carin Kuoni, Lyndon, Debora, and Abou, Svetlana Mintcheva, Obden Mondésir, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Vanessa Place, Laura Raicovich, Michael Rakowitz, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Nabiha Syed, and book designers Nontsikelelo Mutiti and Julia Novitch. Full lineup and schedule to be announced. 

About Studies into Darkness
There have been few times in American history when the very concept of freedom of speech—its promise and its contradictions—has been under greater scrutiny. Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech provides a practical and historical guide to free speech discourse and combines it with poetic responses to contemporary crises around free expression. Ultimately, this publication provocatively questions whether genuine communication is ever attainable.

Studies into Darkness emerged from a series of seminars guided by acclaimed artist, filmmaker, and activist Amar Kanwar at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School. This collection of newly commissioned texts, artist projects, and historic resources examines aspects of freedom of speech informed by recent debates around hate speech, censorship, sexism, and racism. “Darkness” here holds the promise of complexity, discovery and, in Kanwar’s words, “visions from within the depths.” Designed by Nontsikelelo Mutiti and Julia Novitch, the book itself plays with the concept of darkness as both a tonal variation and a factor of legibility, a space from which truth can be extracted or hindered.