Welcome to Nox study grouP
Study Group is a monthly meet-up facilitated by Nox Library as an alternative community-oriented space for critical thinking and dialogue. With a focus on the relationship between art and revolutionary change, it encourages a collaborative approach to learning key concepts across the topics of labor, class, race, decolonization, anti-imperialism, and peace.
Each month, Nox Study Group will focus on a new topic to explore the question: what is the role of art in revolutionary change? Nox Library will provide optional supplemental material for participants to review prior to each meeting. Study group sessions will be rooted in conversations facilitated by Nox Library.
Check back on this page for the upcoming session’s list of supplemental material.
Join us in person every last Thursday of the month, 6PM @ Vámonos
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Schedule
July 30th - Art & Imperialism
August 27th - Art & Fascism
September 24 - Art, Liberalism, and Neo-Liberalism
July 30
art & Imperialism
The items listed below are supplemental to our discussion and optional for participants to review beforehand. We recommend checking out at least one:
Video: A Summary of Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
Movie: Soundtrack to A Coup d’Etat
Video: Angela Davis on Amilcar cabral’s UN appeal
Article: Amílcar Cabral: Liberator, theorist, and educator
Article: Solidarity and design: An introduction to OSPAAAL
Image Library: OSPAAAL Designs
Archive: OSPAAL Poster Archive
Article: Paul Robeson: ‘Unity for Peace’ — Speech at Chicago Peace Congress, 1951
June 25
art & the labor movement
The items listed below are supplemental to our discussion and optional for participants to review beforehand. We recommend checking out at least one:
podcast: Collective Force: Chicano Artists and the United Farm Workers
Throughout decades of protecting workers and their rights, the United Farm Workers union has been a significant nexus for artists and activists. In this episode, listen to three artists who have been instrumental in illustrating and activating the labor advocacy of the UFW, as Barbara Carrasco, Carlos Almaraz, and Ester Hernandez recount the importance of collective action and working alongside Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.
project: Union hall residency
Union Hall Harts is a project of the UNITE HERE Education and Support Fund (501c3) that explores new ways of building power for working people by shaping culture and by investing in the latent creativity that exists within the labor movement and adjacent working-class communities.
exhibition: Art for the Millions at the metropolitan museum of art
American Culture and Politics in the 1930s
Video: What is the role of art in the labor movement? Interview with artist sonali menezes Workers Arts and Heritage Center
Menezes talks about how art is used in the labor movement, specifically her arms trade, anti-war posters and zines project, and how artists are workers are ,a part of the working class.
artist: Latoya Ruby Frazier, Monuments of solidarity exhibition at the museum of modern art
For this exhibition, Frazier reimagined her diverse bodies of work as a sequence of original installations that she calls monuments for workers' thoughts," which address the harmful effects of industrialization and deindustrialization, the healthcare inequities facing Black working-class communities in the Rust Belt, the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and the impact of the closure of a General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio. Monuments for Solidarity celebrates the expressions of creativity, mutual support, and intergenerational collaboration that persist in light of these denials of fundamental labor, human, and civil rights. As a form of Black feminist world-building, these nontraditional "monuments" demand recognition of the crucial role that women and people of color have played and continue to play in histories of labor and the working class.
history: Ford Hunger March 1932: When workers were gunned down in Detroit
On March 7, 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, over 5,000 unemployed auto workers and their allies marched in Detroit to demand relief and jobs from billionaire auto boss Henry Ford. The event is known to history as the Ford Hunger March.
Bonus watch: With Babies and Banners: Story of the Women's Emergency Brigade(1979)
May 28
art & the working class
The items listed below are supplemental to our discussion and optional for participants to review beforehand. We recommend checking out at least one:
Reading Guide: Wage Labor and Capital Reading Guide Karl marx
You can also read the full pamphlet here. This is a good introduction to understanding wages and the labor market, and how this is in a dialectical relationship with capital.
Articles: columns by woody guthrie in People’s World
Woody Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was a singer, songwriter, and one of the most significant figures in American folk music. Born in Oklahoma, he was a troubadour of the working class, farmers, and the poor. He rose to prominence during the Great Depression years and inspired generations of folk singers that came after him. From 1939 to 1940, he wrote a daily column in People's World called "Woody Sez."
Report: DIA Millage Mid-Term Scorecard – Executive Summarysteve panton/Essay’d.org
Taxes are a fundamental bread-and-butter issue of the working class. The Detroit Institute of Arts is partially funded by people from Wayne, Macomb, and Oakland counties through the voter-approved millage. How the DIA has (or has not) lived up to the expectations of this agreement is detailed in this report.
Article: Patchwork Pictures from ChileBlack Phoenix: journal of contemporary art & culture in the third world (no.1) winter 1978
An arpillera is a sewn fabric composition depicting everday life in Chile. Scenes typically depict town centers, reginional landscape, and people interacting with one another and their environment. Patchwork pictures from Chile covers how the arpillera was created by working class people to denounce the political oppresion they were experiecing. The article also points out that many of these artworks were made from workers clothes and the arpillera’s were sold to sustain their livelihood.
essay: Introduction to stockhausen serves imperialism cornelius cardew
In the introduction of his book, Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, Cornelius Cardew lays out fundamental connections between art and the working class. This introduction is only four pages. The items listed below are supplemental to our discussion and optional for participants to review beforehand. We recommend checking out at least one:The items listed below are supplemental to our discussion and optional for participants to review beforehand. We recommend checking out at least one:
March 26
art & capitalism
The items listed below are supplemental to our discussion and optional for participants to review beforehand. We recommend checking out at least one:
paper: art work: A national conversation about art, labor, and economics
Temporary Services
Art Work is a newspaper that consists of writings and images from artists, activists, writers, critics, and others on the topic of working within depressed economies and how that impacts artistic process, compensation and artistic property. Temporary Services created the newspaper in direct response to the 2009 economic crash. The paper was made to be taken apart and turned into an exhibition and used as a backdrop for conversations. Over 18,000 copies of the paper were distributed in 90+ cities in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
discussion: Anti-capitalism In These Times: A Conversation with Boots Riley and Charisse Burden-Stelly Claudia Jones School for Political education
Charisse Burden-Stelly is a scholar of political theory, political economy, and intellectual history. Boots Riley is an American rapper, producer, screenwriter, film director, and communist activist. Here, they join in conversation with the Claudia Jones School for Political Education on being a Communist in the 21st Century and the struggle against capitalism.
Video: base and superstructure | approaching marxism prolekult
This video gives a broad explanation of Marx’s concept of the base and superstructure and then further breaks down the varying interpretations of these concepts. The base and superstructure attempts to explains capitalism’s relationship with the ideological formations of politics, religion, art and culture.
article: detroit 2050: A Present With and a Future Beyond Billionaires
nox library for runner mag
Article written for Runner Mag in December 2025 on Swords Into Plowshares’ exhibition, Detroit 2025: A Future Beyond Billionaires. The exhibition, as well as the article, question the relationship between art, culture, and billionaires and challenges artists and their communities to imagine a future for art beyond billionaires.
preface: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Karl marx
In his preface to ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’, Karl Marx plants the seed for his developing theory on the base and superstructure: “The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”
april
no study group—stay tuned for may!
FEBRUARY 26
RED BOOKS DAY
The items listed below are supplemental to our discussion and optional for participants to review beforehand. We recommend checking out at least one:
BOOK: cOMMUNIST Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
The Communist Manifesto is a pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1848. Originally published in English, it has since been re-printed in a plethora of languages, inspiring peoples movements in all corners of the world.
Website: International Union of Left Publishers
The organization which put out the initial call for a celebration of the Communist Manifesto is the International Union of Left Publishers (IULP). Red Books Day is not just a commemoration of the original publication of the Communist Manifesto—it’s also a celebration of the legacy of movements rooted in scientific socialism and communism. The IULP calls for Red Books Day to be “a time to stand in solidarity with the comrades across the world who have been facing attacks from the right-wing.”
ESSAY: Black Panther’s Ten-Point Program
The Black Panther Party was established by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in 1966. Initially established to protect Black communities from police violence, the BPP developed to serve its communities and the broader working class in a myriad of ways. Their ten-point program is an exceptional example of grass-roots organizing centered on political demands and working-class liberation, with a focus on the added layer of oppression imposed upon Black Americans. The BPP was heavily inspired by communist revolutionaries throughout history, as well as the Communist Manifesto itself.
Podcast: Black Communist Women’s Political Writing with Charisse Burden-Stelly and Jodi Dean by Guerrilla History Podcast
This podcast episode features Charisse Burden-Stelly and Jodi Dean discussing their co-edited book, Organize, Fight, Win, the history of Black communist women, and how the work of these women is relevant today.
Article: MAGA’s new McCarthyism by people’s world
Anti-Communism did not die with Joseph McCarthy; This article outlines the fascistic attacks on the broad left from the White House itself, starting with the Executive Orders and memorandums signed by President Trump, and what the implications are.
brochure: Detroit People’s Timeline by 2024 red books day detroit committee
Created in 2024, this timeline features working class people’s movements in Detroit.
January
ART & COMMUNITY
The items listed below are supplemental to our discussion and optional for participants to review beforehand. We recommend checking out at least one:
Art: Justseeds, Celebrate People’s History Poster Series organized and curated by Josh MacPhee
Justseeds is decentralized artist cooperative made up of 41 artists that was founded in 1998 and is currently based in Pittsburgh, PA. Celebrate People’s History Poster series is an artist project by Josh MaCphee and is produced at Justeeds. The poster series has highlighted 165 (and counting) artists that feature a movement, organization, person or event of successful moments in the history of social justice struggles. Both Justeeds and the poster series is a clear example of artist-centered projects that focus on community over individualism.
Art: Project Row House by Rick Lowe
Project Row House is a socially engaged artist project that started in 1993 in Houston, TX. Ricke Lowe and a group of other artists rehabilited a block of row houses in the Third Ward. The artists worked with community organizations like SHAPE and were able to support single mothers who needed housing. This is one example of how an artist project working with community can have a material impact on a people’s lives.
Article: Claudia Jones, Triple Oppression and Super Exploitation
When thinking about community, we should simultaneously work to understand the layers of oppression that exist among the people of a community, and how triple oppression and super exploitation call for unity in a common struggle.
Article: “Detroit students fight to save classmates kidnapped by ICE”
A look at how community members rally to support each other, ranging from youth and elders to union members and neighbors. This also sheds light on a major issue facing the Detroit community today: the attack on immigrant rights and ICE-led terrorism at home.
Article: “DIA workers say museum’s Diego Rivera murals inspired them to form a union”
A direct example of how art inspire workers, hence how art can galvanize a community.