3rd ArtLeaks Working Assembly in Belgrade, August 31st 2012
3rd ArtLeaks Working Assembly – Belgrade
Friday, 31st of August, 7pm, 2012
Cultural Center REX, Jevrejska 16, Belgrade, Serbia
ArtLeaks is an international platform for cultural workers where instances of abuse, corruption and exploitation are exposed and submitted for public inquiry. ArtLeaks stresses the urgent need to seriously revise these workers’ relationship with institutions, networks and economies involved with the production and consumption of art and culture. Our goal is to create a space where one could engage directly with actual conditions of cultural work both locally and internationally – conditions that affect those working in cultural production as well as those from traditionally creative fields. Furthermore, ArtLeaks is developing in the direction of creating transversal alliances between local activist and cultural workers groups, through which we may collectively tackle situation of repression and inequality.
Through direct exposure, educational initiatives and a forthcoming on-line publication, we seek to empower like-minded people to stand together against the intense exploitation of cultural labor, all forms of repression, the enclosure of public space and the instrumentalization of radical culture under the umbrella of corporations. We strongly believe that issues of censorship and abuse cannot be divorced from specific politico-economic contexts and further, that they should be raised in connection with new forms of class consciousness in the artistic field in particular, and the cultural field more generally.
Building on our previous experience organizing an ArtLeaks Working Assemblies in Berlin in June 2012 and Moscow in July 2012, we would like to invite you to a similar working-group format that allows direct engagement with the public at the Cultural Center REX in Belgrade.
An outcome of our previous working assemblies was the establishment of alliances with international groups such W.A.G.E.(NYC) , Occupy Museums (NYC), Arts & Labor(NYC), Haben und Brauchen(Berlin), the Precarious Workers Brigade(London), The May Congress of Creative Workers(Moscow), groups whose mission is to formulate direct actions and raise awareness in relation to the above mentioned urgencies and problems. It is our strong belief is that only such internationally coordinated alliances could not only denounce exploitation and censorship in contemporary art and culture, but also collectively imagine new types of organizational articulations which would respond to the needs and desires of political subjects constituted at the crossing points of the current economic, politic and cultural shifts.
For our Belgrade assembly, our goals for further developments are :
(1) To reach new constituencies from the cultural, social, and political milieu of Belgrade, and invite them to join our struggles
(2)To research the local socio-political context in which cultural workers are exploited in Belgrade, Serbia in particular and the Balkans generally; to find out about local cases of abuse, corruption and exploitation
(3)To receive critique regarding the manners in which ArtLeaks is currently functioning and may be improved further
(4) To collectively formulate concrete working methodologies and actions that our cultural workers’ alliances may incorporate into their development.
As for working topics for our assembly, we suggest: formulating narratives of exposure, drafting ethical guidelines, developing terminology to address abuse and exploitation, strategies of constituting alliances.
The Second ArtLeaks Working Assembly in Moscow will be facilitated by Corina Apostol, The Bureau of Melodramatic Research, Stefan Tiron, Vladan Jeremić & Rena Rädle, and other members of the cultural community in Belgrade. (to be announced soon)
Report of ArtLeaks’ Second Public Assembly, Moscow, July 15th 2012
https://art-leaks.org/2012/07/27/report-of-artleaks-second-public-assembly-moscow-july-15th-2012/
Report of ArtLeaks’ First Public Assembly and Workshop, Berlin Jun 3-4th 2012
ArtLeaks 