work types: collaboration

While humans are paused in a frenzied standstill, they become militant: electro-ants cause short circuits in factories. It is high time to make contact in order to make common cause against fossil fuel-dependent catastrophe capitalism: two species, one …

Continue reading “Global Swarming: Science of the Ants”

Debtfair New Mexico is a project of Occupy Museums.

What does commencement mean for artists in the billionaire feeding frenzy of the Trump era? Commencement symbolizes the entry of studied, curious individuals into a world that they have been prepared to influence and impact. But what is this world into which graduates are entering today, and what impact can they have amid a reactionary crackdown on art and cultural difference, saddled with backbreaking amounts of debt?

Debtfair was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. In 2012, Occupy Museums launched Debtfair, an exhibition and organizing platform that groups artists and artworks by their debts and other financial realities. The system reveals the relationships binding individuals to the banks holding their loans as a hidden but highly consequential layer underneath the surface of American art. For the Whitney Biennial iteration of Debtfair, Occupy Museums announced a national call for American artists to answer questions relative to their economic realities for inclusion on debtfair. org.

Occupy Museum’s project Debtfair will be included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. The first stage is a national open call to collect profiles on art and debt. We will then sift through the data and create a platform of artwork “bundles” to be installed in the museum and presented online in March 2017. DEBTFAIR OPEN CALL

Dear Friends, we need art now more than ever. Artworks are”real answers to the puzzle externally posed to them” as Adorno wrote. And what a puzzle! And what better form than theater? Ritualistic life-acting. Experiments for potential revolutions.

Like art markets and financial markets, Bank of NO isn’t confined by national borders. It conducts business in austerity-bound Cyprus and now the city of Leipzig. Bank of NO crosses over the waters of the Mediterranean and it also crosses the waters of history. In Leipzig it will now re-open Bankhaus Meyer & Co, the last private bank in the GDR whose owners became refugees from Nazi Germany in an earlier chapter of history. This makes a circular migration through time with people now crossing the Mediterranean in hopes of reaching Germany.

Does art speak in commands when a museum is run like a dictatorship? This question initiated our project. We are artists who are critical of the abuse of labor as modus operandi. From preliminary research it seemed that such a situation existed at the Wroclaw Contemporary Museum (MWW). Abuse of power is a fitting theme because the particular museum in question is situated in a former Nazi bunker.

“Last night, in a visually dazzling act of public protest, the artist-activist groups Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.) and the Illuminator turned the spiral facade of the Guggenheim Museum into a projection screen.

A People’s Monument to Anti-Displacement Organizing by BETTY YU AND NOAH FISCHER

Bank of No: Event Program: February 1, 2016 7:30 PM, at Leventis Gallery: Lecture and discussion about new artistic practices related to politics and activism from the streets to art galleries. 10:00 PM, at Point Centre for Contemporary Art Dance Party …

Continue reading “Bank of No: Nicosia”

Debtfair is an ongoing artistic campaign dedicated to exploring the relationship between economic inequality in the art market and artists’ increasing debt burdens. Debtfair at Art League Houston is organized by Noah Fischer and Kenneth Pietrobono with Tal Beery, Imani Jacqueline Brown and Arthur Polendo: Occupy Museums members. Occupy Museums is a direct action art group that grew out of the Occupy Wall Street Movement in 2011.www.debtfair.org debtfair@gmail.com

As a member of Global Ultra Luxury Faction/ Gulf Labor participating in the 56th Venice Biennale, I worked with S.a.L.E Docks to stage an occupation of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice following the May 1 action in New York. Together with Marco Baravalle of S.a.L.E, I organized much of the action and designed flags and other graphics.

A video for the first song of Jascha Hoffman’s album The Afterneath. Each song on the album is inspired by an obituary. Lyrics: The Mercy Machine (Jack Kevorkian, 1928-2011)

Opening: May 11, 2014 (2:00 pm – 6:00 pm)

I joined with the Aaron Burr Society and Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely for an intervention/ celebration of Mother’s Day and blessing on the East River. “Queen Mother of Reality” is a monumental sculpture sited at Socrated Sculpture Park, mean as a symbol to protect all mothers from eviction.  It’s based on Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely- present community Mayor of Harlem and UN Goodwill Ambassador to Africa and currently fighting eviction from her own home.

Spring 2014, I joined forces with Gulf Labor and Tidal on a series of actions (ongoing) to pressure the Guggenheim Museum to adopt fair labor practices building its new museum in Abu Dhabi. New editions of the Lourvre, NYU Campus, and Guggeheim Museum are being build on a luxury island called Saadiyat (“Island of Happiness” on the backs of indebted migrant laborers.  

Each time the Guggenheim speaks, its approach to migrant labour issues on Saadiyat Island sounds more like that of a global corporation than that of an educational or art institution. We would like to remind the Guggenheim that it’s a museum, with a mission to “explore ideas across cultures through dynamic curatorial and educational initiatives.” Museums should help the public come to a greater understanding of the global complexities we all face.

Winter Holiday Camp is a next stage of Occupy Museums set in Poland- its an artistic experiment in institutional democracy, including every worker of CCA Ujazdowski Castle and its visiting public.

For the past 30 years former Catholic nun and Community mayor or Harlem, Queen Mother, has been an advocate for women’s rights. Currently she is struggling against predatory lenders to stay in her house at 477 West 142nd Street. During Occupy Wall Street, she housed many occupiers in this house and joined Occupy Museums and other groups in many actions.

A journey from South Brooklyn to New York’s Halloween Parade  bearing an effigy of Queen Mother.  Collaboration with Pawel Althamer, Roman Stańczak and the Aaron Burr Society.  http://www.artforum.com/video/id=44186

Occupy Museums hosts a Discussion #2 of Occupy Your BFF: 7 Billion Bloombergs at Momenta Art http://www.momentaart.org/ As we stand in the face of an escalating coup of the public sector by private interests, Occupy Museums asks the following questions of New York City’s art workers:

http://artfcity.com/2012/10/03/the-big-trouble-with-bloomberg-at-momenta-art/

In late June, I participated in a project oranized by Jerusalem- based artist Guy Briller called Going up: Jerusalem.

On Monday, January 23rd, Noah Fischer joined Jim Costanzo of the Aaron Burr Society to perform a distribution of stamped dollar bills and smashed pennies for the opening of a show titled “It’s the Political Economy Stupid.” The show is curated by Gregory Sholette.http://davidplakke.us/client/ACF_Political_24Jan2012/content/ACF_193_large.html

“Today, September 22nd, 2011 is the last day of Summer.  And tomorrow is the beginning of the Fall…of the Empire of Greed. These coins, though insignificant in value, are the seeds of change for a new nation built on equality and justice” With these words, spoken before the New York Stock Exchange, the seven performances of the Summer of Change conclude.  We distributed each American numismatic currency from the dollar to the penny at the feet of the Gods of Wall Street in a bid to break through the mythology of Free Markets.

Saturday September 17, 2011 a peaceful movement inspired by Tahrir Square in Egypt, Puerta del Sol in Madrid, and the worldwide rage against an out-of-control financial system blossomed in New York City just as the Summer of Change turns to Fall. Protesters who had hoped to occupy Wall Street were not suprised to find the pedestrian mall completely shut down by the NYPD. However, The protest went on anyway in other locations of the Financial District and it continues as of this writing. The Summer of Change project is taking part in

Midnight on Wall Street. Alexander Hamilton appears on a red carpet, saunters past the Stock Exchange, and approaches the Federal Building steps.  In the center of the square is a cardboard box inhabited by The Common Man. “Who is here that distrurbs my slumber?” “It is I who have some to see/if there is anything I can do for thee…”And thus ensues a performance in rhyme, a modern day Faust which, like Goethe’s great story, tells the tale of ambition, wealth, and ultimately, folly, and chilling horror.

High Noon on Thursday, the Father of our Nation shall dialog with the Common Man on the Federal Hall Steps of Wall Street. They will then distribute 400 US Quarter-Dollars to the Commonwealth for the latest numismatic offering of the Summer of Change. This is a joint venture of Noah Fischer and the Aaron Burr Society.

July 15th, Please Join us on Wall Street at 4:00 PM for the second event in the Summer of Change: A distribution of 200 50-cent pieces.  At 4:30 we will march in procession to the Irish Hunger Memorial (map) where Ed Kimball will screen archival 8mm footage on JFK (whose visage adorns the 50-cent piece).The whole event runs from 4-7 PM.This performance is dedicated to the memory of Maria Soledad Loya 1940-2011 

Coins, those age-old metallic discs struck with the symbols of national mythology,  just might unlock reason & light in the fourth year of the Dire Global Recession, an economic state whose laws do not apply within the stones of Wall Street; whose invisible great wall is impregnable to marauding justice, equality, and change.  So we present the Summer of Change; a series of numismatic ritual offerings to our nation’s bankers; those citizens worthy of prizes and honors; which we as artists are honored to bestow in public. Standing on The Street safely w

“The ability to construct symbolic objects attains its greatest triumph in money.  For money represents abstraction at its purest form; it makes comprehensible the most abstract concept …thus money is the adequate expression of the relationship of man to the world which can only be grasped in single and concrete instances yet only really conceived when the singular becomes the embodiment of living mental process which interweaves all singularities and in this fashion creates reality.” -Georg Simmel,  The Philosophy of Money

Random Randal: Made in Kerala is an installation and performance by New York artist Noah Fischer in collaboration with Elisa Soliven, Anil Dayanand and the Students of RLV College in Kerala, India.  Fischer was invited to RLV College by adjunct professor Anil Dayanand along with dean Sidharthan Kunjan and professor Bipin Balachandran who also curated conceptual dimensions of the project.  In Malayalam the native tongue of Kerala, ‘Randal’ means lantern.

Electrical Forest: Made in Troy is a dense constellation of actual felled trees, surrogate trees, handmade leaves, leafy projections, found objects, and mobile sculptures and lanterns. A site-specific work, the Forest invites the contemplation of nature, art, and the sublime—conjuring the regional history of the 19th century Hudson River School. Additionally, Fischer’s method of construction draws more specifically on Troy’s industrial legacy. The piece begins with a week long “Factory Phase,” during which Fischer transforms the Arts Center into an industrial production line.

We write the year 50 according to the calculation of time by the cosmic comsomolzkis: In 1957 the Soviet Union managed to shoot a small ‘accompanist’ into orbit and thus gave the starting signal for space-travel. A sputnik-shock for the western world because finally it became obvious that the Soviet-Union was now able to reach America with rockets. From this zero-point TIME REPUBLIC takes off to tell another story of the 20th century about forgotten promises of a future past.

Revolutionary Timing is a performance by andcompany&Co., based on an improvisation at the first &Co.LAB in Amsterdam in May 2005 and performed in the lighting- and sculpture-setting of New York based artist Noah Fischer in the ground floor of the AT&T building in Manhattan in March 2006. The initial idea was to re-appropriate the revolutionary cutting technique of the filmmaker Sergej Eisenstein for the stage by the live-use of light and sound.