The Fall 2016 R&D Season: DEMOCRACY reflects on the potential redemption of a government “by the people for the people” in a moment when the urgency to build consensus may require the compromise of certain revolutionary principles. Operating across various presentational and pedagogical formats, the Season is anchored by a residency with My Barbarian (Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade), who return to the museum after eight years of touring to present the culmination of their Post-Living Ante-Action Theater (PoLAAT) project, a performative investigation employing tools that have historically been used in radical theater to press for political revolution. Other activities this Season include Scamming the Patriarchy: A Youth Summit, organized by a committee of artists and activists; the release of Public Servants, the latest edition in the New Museum’s celebrated anthology series; and an evening of interpretive readings of “GIF novels” by Dennis Cooper, whose inventive use of social media platforms has recently brought the intersection between Terms of Service and freedom of speech into stark relief. Here, DEMOCRACY and its outcomes are considered with respect to matters of representation, suppression, equivocation, Constitutional protection, political identity, activism, and the responsibilities we have to consider the needs of people other than ourselves.