‘Home to Roost’ is an experimental public gathering that blends town-hall discussion, performance, and participatory workshop. With US artist Jeremiah Day, we create space for collective reflection on urgent crises — disability benefit cuts, cost-of-living, climate, youth violence, wars, crisis of democracy, transforming them into embodied responses; in a way that moves beyond passive consumption of news and towards active meaning-making as a precondition for civic life.

”the recent cataclysm of events, tumbling over one another, whose sweeping force leaves everybody, spectators who try to reflect on it and actors who try to slow it down, equally numbed and paralyzed…”

-Hannah Arendt, ‘Home To Roost’

The project takes inspiration from Hannah Arendt’s 1975 text, ‘Home to Roost’, in which she argued that politics begins with the act of facing difficult facts. In the current climate of dramatic events —where events unfold at overwhelming speed, making it difficult to process their impact—Home to Roost challenges this inertia by modeling new methods of engagement.

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was a German-American political theorist renowned for her analyses of totalitarianism, authority, and the nature of power. Her work has profoundly influenced contemporary thought on democracy, public life, and civic engagement.

In the mid-1990s, Fred Dewey founded The Hannah Arendt Working Group in Los Angeles, a platform for public seminars exploring Arendt’s writings. These gatherings aimed to foster democratic dialogue and collective reflection on political theory. Dewey’s approach emphasized the importance of communal reading and discussion in understanding Arendt’s concepts. 

Jeremiah Day, an artist deeply engaged with public life, collaborated with Dewey on several projects that intersected with Arendt’s ideas. One notable collaboration is the exhibition What is Power?, presented by Arcade and Flat Time House in 2023. This exhibition featured Day’s work alongside Dewey’s film essay “Reading Aloud: What Is Power?”, directed by Dana Berman Duff. The project explored the intersection of art, activism, and Arendt’s political philosophy. 

Through these collaborations, Arendt’s theories continue to inspire and inform contemporary artistic and civic practices, demonstrating the enduring relevance of her work in addressing issues of power, democracy, and public engagement.

please contact: info@thisisarcade.art for future events (something brewing for Brussels soon)