The Revolution Will Be Spiraled

Spirals
Multi-genre arts event
770 Chapel St.
March 30, 2025

What is protest art? What is political art?

Since the dawn of state-regulated ​“artivism,” artists have felt the pressures of society to either opt in to the whole label — use the right keywords on applications, categorize themselves neatly for gatekeepers and audience members, and perhaps be taken less seriously by those who espouse the ideals of ​“pure art” — or attempt to stay out of politics, an impossible task for someone whose existence is inherently political. 

On Sunday afternoon at 770 Chapel St., artists and art-lovers alike simply chose a secret third approach.

That happened at Spirals, an art event run by creative studio vibr. It featured DJs, live music, and upcycled streetwear, along with a mutual aid table, a radical archive display, and free literature on prison abolition and police brutality.

There was no need to justify the merging of these offerings. They were all part of the same desire for something new, something different, something young people could take part in without appealing for approval from an authority figure first.

A live music event featuring tables of vendors and community organizations, spirals was a space for artists to receive and share the materials they needed to create alternative infrastructures. It was an act of public recognition that the artists we most admire in town are often also the ones in need of care. The activist efforts were not just to benefit some unseen other, but to help each other in very concrete ways. The artists folded radical concepts into their artwork not to separate themselves, but as part of a perpetual goal to see more clearly, in order to make better art.

New Haven’s art scene has undergone major changes in the past few years — the Artspace location becoming the new Pride Center, the scandal and resulting personnel fallout at the Ely Center, and the loss of the city’s biggest art supply store, Artist & Craftsman. Rising from the ashes is something new and beautiful, something the DIY weirdos and freaks across Connecticut have been building this whole time. The irreverent, wholesome, harsh-yet-hopeful attitude of this generation of musicians and visual artists in town has lit a path not to reinstating past structures, but to something transformative, elemental, and strange.

Sunday’s event was both a reflection and an active creation of this grassroots approach.

Tyasha/Ty, the artist behind such hits as CT Grapevine, the CT Artist Union, and Break the System Radical Archive, showed up to showcase a table of works from artists in the union, but inevitably ended up representing all three (and more) of the major projects they take part in.

Mini-zines declaring ​“Job Suck? Tell Us!” sat on the counter at the front entrance promoting CT Grapevine, a ​“space for CT workers to break the silence and shed light on workplace mistreatment” so workers can vent about their workplace and ​“folks can make up their own mind about where to work instead of relying on the curated reviews, lip service, and lies of employers.”

Back at the CT Artist Union table, Tyasha’s scanned, reprinted, and transmuted artifacts from their radical archive nestled in among pieces from three other artists in the union, Xóchitl Ahtziri, Jacqueline Barnes, and Aaron M. Miner. The union itself currently hovers around 25 members, Tyasha told me, and is currently prepping its first campaign. The union formed out of a collective frustration from artists in the area experiencing exploitation, underpayment, overwork, and unfair work conditions.

Spirals was the Artist Union’s first event together. Miner, also working the table, told me the group’s art sales from the event would go toward financing mutual aid. He said the union was getting its toes wet when it came to finding alternative resources and participating in public events.

Toward the back of the room, beyond a thick haze of fog steadily pumping from a machine in the corner, the Connecticut branch of multinational group Dare to Struggle sold revolutionary texts and handed out information about their efforts to ​“resist and stop injustice no matter who holds political office.”

The group’s mission statement explains further, ​“We don’t lobby politicians. We don’t use insular activist lingo. We don’t chase social media fame. We don’t seek careers or corporate sponsorship through activism. We’re committed to standing with the people subjected to the horrors of the American nightmare.”

Tiffany Embden from Dare to Struggle told me the Connecticut branch is currently based in New Britain. The group goes out on the street every Saturday to ask people what they are seeing and what to watch out for: police brutality, unhealthy conditions at homeless shelters, evictions, and ICE raids. In Dare to Struggle member Kimmy Reindl’s words, they aim to ​“expose the oppressive workings of the system.” On March 10, the group held a press conference in front of Friendship Service Center in New Britain to share stories from former staff members and residents of the shelter about moldy food, bed bugs, and fear of retaliation.

Dare to Struggle CT is now expanding to other areas of Connecticut, heading next to the Ives main branch of the New Haven Free Public Library. They’ll meet there tonight Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the Philip Marrett room on the first floor for a general interest meeting to discuss ongoing campaigns against police brutality and the increasing criminalization of homelessness in the city.

Next to the green laser lights and projector, Ty Fernandez and Sarah Pimenta from local prison abolition group CT 4 Abolition passed out information about their projects on political education and community building. Their current projects include community event calendars and a regular letter-writing program to send messages to incarcerated youth as well as adults in immigrant detention. Fernandez said the group is spending this period of time building relationships behind the scenes with groups like Bridgeport collective Justice 4 Jayson.

The members of these groups were not separate from the musicians and visual artists featuring for the night. Many of them were artists themselves, and they danced, chatted, and mingled, indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd.

The methods and presentation of the art at spirals pointed to a taste prioritizing roughness over wide appeal, and honesty over saving face. Elizabeth D’Andrea, designer and founder of the art zine HiGH asf*, stood behind a table of the zine’s multiple editions — including the ​“Final Edition” as the cost of production had gotten too high (high asf, one might say). The event was ​“one of my last hurrahs,” D’Andrea said. In its multi-year run, HiGH asf* featured smaller artists around Connecticut and beyond, with some people contributing from Australia and Indonesia, offering a semi-underground space to share work without needing a big break first.

When singer Mary Fraud and her band took the stage, they were not there just to be ​“the art.” Fraud echoed CT Grapevine’s skepticism of exploitative employment, saying coolly into the mic between songs, ​“Quit that fucking job you hate.” The energy of the crowd heightened as Fraud continued, ​“I don’t know, there’s gotta be someone in here that hates their job. Quit it, leave. Go find something else to do. You’re gonna die in that casket alone.”