16 Beaver Teach-Ins, Sunday 11/20/11

Sunday - 11.20.11 -- Two Events -- Two Teach-Ins -- One Horizon

Event I -- Demystifying the Economic Crisis

What: Teach-in / Discussion with Paul Mattick

When: 4pm
Where: moved to 90 5th Avenue
Who: Free and open to all
For details please visit: http://allcitystudentoccupation.com

Some friends will be convening a series of analyses around the economic crisis. This, first in the series, Demystifying the Economic Crisis, will be with Paul Mattick (Adelphi, Philosophy) - author of Business as Usual: The Economic Crisis and the Failure of Capitalism (2011)

To what do we owe the misery and economic hardship currently sweeping the globe, giving birth to a number of social movements including that of Occupy Wall Street? Reckless banks? Human greed? Amoral politicians? Financial speculation? Partial answers at best, bourgeois obscurities at worst. Come join in a discussion which seeks to expand the discourse circulating throughout the current US occupation movement.

Event II -- Art, Work, and Occupation

What: Teach-in / Discussion with Greg Sholette
When: Sunday, 11.20.11 at 7:00PM
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
Who: Free and open to all

The evening's event will be a teach-in and discussion with artist, critic, and educator Gregory Sholette concerning the history of artistic
engagements with the politics of work since the 1960s. While focused on past traditions and initiatives, the presentation will open onto a group discussion of more recent artistic, theoretical and political developments related to concepts such as precarity, post-Fordism, immaterial labor, the cognitariat, and what Greg himself has called "dark matter." This
discussion will consider how these histories and concepts might be (re)activated relative to the Occupy movement, including but not limited to that of New York City as it enters a "post-Zuccotti" phase following the eviction of November 15th. Report-backs and reflections from November 17th actions are more than welcome following Greg's presentation.

Here are some points and questions devised in collaboration between Greg and 16 Beaver for possible discussion following his presentation:

1. What does the phrase "art worker" mean today, and how does it relate to the broader field of cultural labor that is so crucial to driving the uneven geographical development of cities such as New York?

2. In what ways have art and cultural workers more broadly contributed to the discourse and practice of occupation over the past two months? How have they been involved with the framing, staging, and messaging of the overall movement, on the one hand, while also beginning to organize themselves qua workers under the umbrella of "the 99%"?

3. How has the advent of the Occupy movement challenged art workers to recalibrate their relationship to the networks, economies, organizations, and institutions involved with the production and consumption of art and culture in some form of another?

4. What would it mean to "occupy the art world"? Does this question make any sense without a moment of self-recognition in which we see ourselves as a kind of culturally-redundant surplus to the very system that stamps out the professional passport for "artist" in first place? Are these very designations not complicated by the structural dynamics of precarious labor itself, in which many artists simultaneously work as art handlers, assistants, interns, janitors, students, adjuncts, parents, and beyond? How might an interrogation of the identity-card "artist" open up new possibilities of alliance and coalition with workers and activists in extra-artistic fields?

5. What is the ultimate goal of organizing art workers? Is it just about making things more fair by redistributing the art world's "real estate"? or should it not also address a deeper set of questions concerning time, labor, and value relative to the disciplinary imperatives of
neoliberalism? How do we negotiate in ideological and organizational terms the fact that the entrepreneurial models of subjectivity mandated by neoliberalism often appeal to an image of artistic flexibility, autonomy, and ingenuity, as exemplified by Richard Florida's infamous paradigm of the "creative class"? What if any new forms of class consciousness might the Occupy movements entail for workers in the artistic field in
particular and the cultural field more generally?

6. If the work of artists today somehow embodies and models the flexible, precarious, socially cooperative yet competitive, professional, cognitive, immaterial, relational, affective dimensions of the post-fordist worker; then what might an inquiry into the specific conditions or qualities of such a work imply or reveal for contemporary political struggles?

More information about these events: http://www.16beavergroup.org/11.20.11.htm