ArtLeaks Gazette No. 3 “Artists Against Precarity and Violence” – Public Presentations and Discussions
We will be presenting our new gazette issue “Artists Against Precarity and Violence – Resistance Strategies, Unionizing, and Coalition Building in a Time of Global Conflict and Contradiction,” and would like to invite you to attend the events below. Some of the gazette’s editors and authors, together with other artists, activists and theorists will facilitate the discussions.
September 2nd – September 20th
A Real Work of Art – art ,work, and solidarity structures.
The exhibition is initiated and organized by Rena Rädle & Vladan Jeremic, with contribution from Corina L. Apostol ( ArtLeaks) Nikolay Oleynikov ( Chto Delat? ), Federico Geller, Iulia Toma, Fokus Grupa and others.
Read the catalogue of the exhibition here.
Friday, September 18th
King’s College London
Led by Aria Spinelli, Vlad Morariu and Stevphen Shukaitis. With Vladan Jeremic (Belgrade).This session is a combined presentation and discussion format based around histories of art strikes and artists unions. The presentation will introduce the history of the art strike through its multiple iterations and mutations, and union organizing by artists. These histories show how both the art strike and artists union expand from a focus on art institutions to the role of the artist, and then more generally to interrupting the role of the arts and artistic labour in the cultural economy and creative city. Both the art strike and artists unions provide ways to ferment new antagonistic subjectivities. This will be used to introduce a series of questions for discussion and reflection. What is the use and value of art strikes and artists unions for rethinking and reworking the relationship between art and labour today? How is it possible to ‘down tools’ for cultural and artistic labour when such tools are compromised by critical portions of our ability to think, communicate and relate? If you went out on an art strike, what would your art strike be? If you wanted to unionize your artistic labours, what form would this take?
Full program here.
Sunday, September 20th
11:00 -19:00
Corina L. Apostol and Brett A. Bloom will be presenting the gazette at the 10th New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1. Look for us in the Friendly Fire section, at the Half Letter Press/ Temporary Services booth.
September 24th – November 22nd
Mestna Galerija Ljubljana
Inside Out – Not So White Cube
The general aim of the Inside Out project is to analyze the existing theoretical and critical art practices proposed by artists, art collectives, researchers, or institutions from Central and South-Eastern Europe that focus on critiquing the existing models of institutions, their programs, and the work conditions in art production.
ArtLeaks will take part in the project with the ArtLeaks Wall Newspaper, a format made for print and online distribution. We invite institutions and artist organizations to share it widely. The first issue of the ALWN brings together a collection of texts related to the censorship, distraction of artworks and structural racism against artist Marika Schmiedt, and her struggle to fight these problems. In the dire situation refugees face today at the hands of neo-fascist forces in Hungary and Europe in general, we have to fight against all reactionary processes and forces- not only in the field of art and culture, but also in the society in Europe.
Friday, October 9th
Finnish Academy of Fine Arts and Theatre Academy
10:00-16:00
Corina L. Apostol will give a talk in the framework of the series Skills of Economy – Parasites curated by Jussi Koitela
Can the concept of social class be the basis of artistic practices that produce new agencies towards economic and social change? It has constantly been said that artists and other actors of the art field are model examples of perfect entrepreneurship and self-employment at the current phase of immaterial and cognitive capitalism. Supposedly, artists can efficiently control and capitalise their cultural properties. Are there models of counter-organisation and struggle based on the new understanding of social class? Can artistic and curatorial activities build up classed selves for subjects under the ultimate precarity and flexibility?
9-10th October
Former West: Art and Labour after the End of Work, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
Friday, October 9th
16.00–18.00:
Vladan Jeremic will take part in the public workshop:
Techniques of Labor Struggles in the Field of Art
This session takes the form of a public seminar with the aim to discuss the particular problems related to the conditions of labor in the field of art and the techniques of art-related activism.
Saturday, October 10th
12.00–14.30:
Corina L. Apostol will present on the panel:
Division of Labor and Class (Re)Composition in the Arts
Taking the Free/Slow University of Warsaw’s report,The Art Factory (2014), as a case study, this panel focuses on the notion of labor and distribution within the artworld from a number of perspectives, such as the organization of labor, and the politics of art and work. Looking at notions of affective and invisible labor—drawing upon the lessons of feminism, and also taking into consideration the structuring device of precarity itself, and its historical role within the arts—this session considers if these features provide a “political economy of the former West,” and following this, show how the ways of production and division of labor within the artworld can be said to be indicative of the proposed “former-ness” of the West and its institutions.
An excerpt of video documentation of the Techniques of Labor Struggles in the Field of Art at Former West Public Editorial Meeting at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2015. Vladan Jeremic presents ArtLeaks.
Corina L. Apostol speaking on the panel Division of Labor and Class (Re)composition in the Arts
ArtLeaks 