work types: workshop

https://publicseminar.org/2019/04/artist-as-debtor-debt-as-creator/ This article is part of a series of texts published on Public Seminar in the lead-up to the Digital/Debt/Empire symposium in Vancouver in late April 2019, convened by Benjamin Anderson, Enda Brophy and Max Haiven.

The School of Everything is a project of longtime collaborator Joulia Strauss. Curator of the Symposion is Sotirios Bahtsetzis. Its a platform organized by AthenSYN in documenta 14 Kassel”We build an educational system which consists of politically motivated and artistic initiatives for sharing knowledge, and of proposals by thinkers who see education as decisive for social change.”

On #J20- the day of Trump’s inauguration ceremony in Washington DC, I co-organized a speakout with  artists, poets, and activists responding to the following questions at the Whitney Museum.

We live in an era of unprecedented profits from contemporary art sales and massive debts incurred by art students. Are these phenomena related? Is it a coincidence that in an age in which art can be made from nothing, the price attached to an art degree is staggeringly high?

Please join us for the 3rd annual May Day Free University in New York City!We will create a space where everyone who cares about grassroots urban social justice can come together, learn about each others’ initiatives, and share old wisdom and new developments in radical politics.

I will co-facilitate an activist;s summit at ZKM museum along with artist Joulia Strauss and curator Linnea Semmerling

“Mask of Money” an artwork/artifact from the 2011 Occupy Movement positioned on a pyramidal display structure was included in the exhibition, and in January an “Activist Summit” provided means to “unfreeze the frame” of the exhibition by holding an assemby which ended in an action to intervene in the curatorial text and exhibition walls.

The No-Eyes Viewing Wall at Brooklyn Zen Center presents seven large collaborative mindfulness drawings created by members of the Awake Youth program in collaboration with artist Noah Fischer.

The spread of digital technologies has given new opportunities to activists around the world. At the same time they can also be the cause of new threats to activists and people using digital media for political communication or mobilization. Successful campaigning and political action requires knowledge of digital technologies and social media, as well as skills in communication strategies and creative forms to express a message. 

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://blog.frieze-magazin.de//truth-was-concrete/Raimar Stange over the week-long marathon of Camp Truth is concrete steirischer herbst 2012th

Occupy Museums (OWS) participated in the 7th Berlin Biennial from June 1-14th.  We saw this as an opportunity to share ideas, resources, tactics, challenges, and solutions with our international partners in a world struggle for economic justice.  It was as a risky experiment between activists, governments, and cultural institutions which could possibly offer unique exposure and international connectivity. The risk was co-optation of our movement’s grassroots power. We hope that the relationships we build will open lasting lines of communication for this global- movement.

Atmospheres of ProtestSymposium on Sustainability and Contemporary ArtCentral European University Budapest, 11 May 2012

I will be speaking on this panel along with other members of  Occupy Museums: The Occupy Wall Street movement (OWS) has altered conceptions of the international socio-political environment on the left, and has accordingly sent shock-waves throughout the realm of art and culture.

A Lively Experiment  an art installation in Roger Williams National Memorial which will be part of Providence’s 375th Celebration,.  A Lively Experiment aims to connect Providence residents to each other and to the city’s history through creative garden design..

“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