Taking Capitalist Realism as a point of departure, this open letter responds to Mark Fisher’s words:

How long can a culture persist without the new? What happens if the young are no longer capable of producing surprises?

Considering this statement in the backdrop of the National Campaign for the Arts which works to ensure arts are upheld, funded and valued on a social and political level I ponder the essential nature of arts in Ireland and pose that the arts are not a stand alone institutions and practices but have wide spread political and cultural impact and role in wider society

Sara Muthi is a Dublin based performance curator, writer and teaching assistant in the department of Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. She is an NCAD graduate currently undertaking a MPhil in Philosophy at TCD. Recent projects include POST-DANCE (2019) commissioned for the Project Arts Centre developed during her INCUBATE residency at Draíocht. As managing editor ofinaction.ie she commissions critical writing on Irish performance art while developing events such as Anticipation: Actualisation (2018) at the NCAD Gallery.