OurGoods

Art Work Discussion

Despite the snow storm, Trade School was full for a discussion about art, labor, and economics. Chris Kennedy presented an overview of the Art Work newspaper (download the presentation below) and Cassie Thornton led a group articulation of terms: trade, barter, exchange, quid pro quo, gift, donation, mutual credit, credit league, time bank, non-profit, market, community, commons, public good, trust, currency, funders, supporters, value, economy, cultural producers, creative workforce, creative class, artist, designer, organizer, leader, founder, volunteer, participant.

We all vocalized concerns about our personal economy, the economy of art and art education, and ended with a list of resources and hopes that motivate us:

Hopes: more artists will work with local communities, go to community board meetings, be more generous with peers, work across genres, collaborate or apprentice with youth and the elderly, and/or share access to equipment and information.

Project Management Resources: clocking hours- Harvest , invoices- invoicemachine.com , freelancers union ,”things” for mac,

Access: Get an artist’s membership at MoMA for $25 if you show 3 announcements from shows you’ve been in, Volunteer at museums to get a discount or museum pass, most museum book collections are open to the public (you may need to make an appointment), and say you’re a small business at the Apple Store and receive 10, 1 hour tutorials with a ‘genius’ for $100 (usually only good if you buy a new computer).

Information: Transarts.nl for residencies, TED talks, tutvid.org (tutorials),

Health care: the worker cooperative called Third Root for holistic health, barter with health workers in the Rock Dove Collective, and bartering art classes for health services at Woodhull Hospital in Bushwick (here’s the form).

Here’s the list of groups/projects Chris went over from the Art Work newspaper: The Art Workers Coalition of the 1960s, OurGoods.org, Lize Mogel’s cartography, The Artist Union of the 1930s with the WPA, the artist-run Back Story Cafe in Chicago, Incubate’s mico grant system called Sunday Soup (a pre-cursor to FEAST), The Baltimore Development Co-op’s farming projects, The Institute for Applied Aesthetics research stations, The Community Arts Network’s research portal, Just Seeds large printing collective, Impractical Labor’s union, The Creative Class critique, W.A.G.E’s demands for artist payment, The Center for Urban Pedagogy’s visualization and educaiton tactics, The Teaching Artist’s Union, and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest issue #7 on money.