OK’s Disclaimer Gallery comrade Jin is in town from Hawaii and updates us on the situation in Maui, their community care work, and the Be Easy Stay Safe zine made for and by sex workers. Please follow and support Jin’s work on their Instagram. Content warning: we discuss experiences of transphobic and racist discrimination, as well as harassment and assault at work. We also discuss fun stuff like art and care and love!!!
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Fan favorite Sam Lefebvre’s newest work, the three-part series “A Generous Grift” for San Francisco-based community art space The Lab, is finally all here! We here at A+L felt the spacetime ripple from the upload and bolted awake in a cold sweat. Taking a magnifying glass to some particularly local, incredibly bold, and somehow publicly available fuckery from Oakland to Houston, Sam’s work expands past the typical conversation we have around how the art world perpetuates wealth for the wealthy, into direct examples of how museums uphold the real estate industry that causes our displacement and upholds the carceral state. All roads lead to tenant organizing, and any road after that you’re gonna have to figure out with your neighbors, in person. Shhhhhhhh🤫
148 - Pivot to Metaverse w/ David Turner and Liz Ryerson
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Welcome to the Garden of Theory and Praxis, the Graveyard of the Vibes, the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth, it’s Art and Labor! Joined by champions of the pod David Turner of Penny Fractions and Liz Ryerson of The Blood Zone, we reckon with teleology and how it occupies space (almost…as if…it were…a body??), learn a little about how the music and games industries are dealing with the nightmare of NFTs being forced down our throats as the new financial model (watch this space for the Art and Labor stolen jpeg of the Campbell’s soup can, but don’t worry we’re only doing it ironically), and round table on the new Matrix, mostly guided by the reactionary we haven’t killed in our head yet.
Well pholks, know that we tried this week- a hot and fresh Art and Labor from our minds to yours! OK tries to “read” (personally never heard the term) an article to Lucia and Sarah about the Metaverse, and since this is as spoiler-free space, let’s say we might get to that. Total y2k vibes from this episode include our proprietary newgrounds flash game, a /cgl/ easter egg (well, ok, I wish. Maybe it’s more of a “joke that’s just a reference to something”, but that is very post-9/11 vibes too), the generational divide on Seth Rogan, and I think there’s something in there eventually about Basel. This episode is dedicated to the brave Coca farmers of Bolivia, who keep our little art world community going <3
138 - Organizing Art Worker Power w/ Jessalyn Aaland
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The gang is joined by former SFMOMAunion bargaining committee member, and current artist and educator Jessalyn Aaland! We have a lovely discussion around her beautiful and informative risographed booklet series Organizing Power (contents available for free to institution and nonprofit workers interested in unionizing their workplaces!!). You wanna hear STRATEGY? We have OPINIONS. Get the zines and learn all about how different art institutions have been organizing all over the country, and how artists can help build solidarity. If you like the podcast and want more, please consider supporting us: https://www.patreon.com/artandlabor. Follow us on twitter and instagram. You can contact Art & Labor atartandlaborpodcast@gmail.com. Please reach out to join the discord for Lucia school “Constructing the Real” Also! Write us a review on Apple podcasts or whatever other platforms!!
Art and Labor is joined by members of the union-to-be of Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum, the Walters Workers United! OK and Lucia interview Ruby, Garrett, and Allison (who we unfortunately lost connection with!) about their path towards worker organization- from your standard total mismanagement of COVID in 2020 to toxic fumes passing staff out; dealing with the Walter’s particularly unique private/public state of matter, and what that means for accountability (xXx spoiler alert xXx: there’s a lack of it). The bright side of the bullshit? Secret slacks, not realizing you had a coworker ready for your trust fall, and as always, teachers’ unions!
You can check out the work the WWU is doing, a form letter to email, and information about how to get involved yourself at: https://waltersworkersunited.org
Alison Garret and Ruby also wanted to shout out to the Baltimore DSA in addition to the teachers union: https://baltimoredsa.org/
Lucia, Sarah and OK finally succumb to their greatest foe: internet monopolies and 1/4” of rain. Dana Kopel of @153local, and formerly @newmuseum_union, returns! Dana’s new piece in the Nation, a review of Laura Raicovich’s Culture Strike with the extremely metal title “Is it Time to Abolish Museums?” (Editors, folks, am I rite?) pokes at the soft spots in art world people’s heads that let them doublethink their way into the Barcelona chairs of institutional power. We talk about our eternal will they/won’t they Strike MOMA, the limits of culture, the limits of strikes, and add a layer to the Art and Labor lost media iceberg simply titled “super donuts”
BONUS – Hannah on William Morris: Revolutionary Art Class Session
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Hannah Brookman from Looky Here art space in Greenfield Massachusetts schools us on the history of William Morris and the utopian ideals of the Arts & Crafts movement. Hannah is also teaching new course for Constructing the Real on Art Communes which centers around reading the book Art and Labor by Eileen Boris, and watching documentaries on a new collective every week. Should be a great crash course for anyone considering ditching capitalism for that sexy utopia that is living with all your friends in a bucky ball. Course enrollment is open now, so I hope to see y’all around for some learning. Let’s have fun!!
Episode 117 - The Museum Union Wave Dossier w/ Maxwell Paparella
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After a lot of laughs and a few boners, all 4 elemental stones have been carefully nested onto their pedestals, and now we’re emitting lasers onto Leeloo to bring about that wacky 5th element, the Art and Labor podcast! We chat with Maxwell Paparella on his new (enormous) work in Art Papers, a dossier on the ongoing unionization struggle for museum workers in 18 different institutions. Through valiant effort and rhetorical wizardry, we do in fact find good news on planet Earth! Paparella keys us in on some victories for the movement (we love you Nan), and the unique hiccups that come with organizing artists (aka, having to be both inside/outside the gala/protest, although you know, with a quote from Byung-Chul Han that’d be a fantastic start to an artist statement for a show in a humid 9’x6′ room on the fourth floor of a chinatown walkup. Do you see our problem?) If you like the podcast and want more, please consider supporting us: https://www.patreon.com/artandlabor. Follow us on twitter and instagram. You can contact Art & Labor atartandlaborpodcast@gmail.com. Please reach out to join the discord for Lucia school “Constructing the Real” Also! Write us a review on Apple podcasts or whatever other platforms!!
Episode 110 - Work Won't Love You Back w/ Sarah Jaffe
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Incredible labor journalist Sarah Jaffe (@sarahjaffe) wrote a new book, and we’re in it! Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone is collection of labor struggles in fields often overlooked, underpaid, or misunderstood. The book is an excellent overview of the type of issues we discuss on this show! Including art jobs, internships, the NGO industrial complex, big tech, retail, gig workers, education, and sports. All through a Marxist feminist lens we vibed with very hard lol. We discuss strategy, the big “was is to be done?” How can we take consciousness raising away from liberal awareness campaigns, pinpoint sites of struggle/support, and heighten contradictions to build a world where love can flourish uninhibited by capitalist extraction. If you like the podcast and want more, please consider supporting us: https://www.patreon.com/artandlabor. Follow us on twitter and instagram. You can contact Art & Labor at artandlaborpodcast@gmail.com. Please reach out to join the discord for Lucia’s school “Constructing the Real” Please write us a review on Apple podcasts or whatever other platforms!!
