<nettime> Breaking the Silence on the Art World: ArtLeaks Gazette Launch @ Brecht Forum (May 4th, NYC)

["Corina L. Apostol" <corina.lucia.apostol@gmail.com>]

ArtLeaks members would like to initiate an open discussion at the Brecht
Forum in NYC on May 4th from 7 PM <http://brechtforum.org/>, around our
upcoming ArtLeaks Gazette, focused on establishing a politics of truth by
breaking the silence on the art world. This will be the official public
launch of our gazette, which will be available online and in print at the
beginning of May 2013, and will be followed by a series of debates in the
near future.

Artleaks was founded in 2011 as an international platform for cultural
workers where instances of abuse, corruption and exploitation are exposed
and submitted for public inquiry. After almost two years of activity, some
members of ArtLeaks felt an urgent need to establish a regular on-line
publication as a tool for empowerment, reflection and solidarity. (More
about us here: http://art-leaks.org/about)

Recently, this spectrum of urgencies and the necessity to address them has
come sharply into the focus of fundamental discussions in communities
involved in cultural production and leftist activist initiatives. Among
these, we share the concerns of groups such as the Radical Education
Collective (Ljubljana), Precarious Workers? Brigade (PWB)
(London), W.A.G.E. (NYC), Arts &Labor (NYC), the May Congress of Creative
Workers (Moscow), Critical Practice (London) and others.

Eager to share our accumulated knowledge and facilitate a critical
examination of the current conditions of the cultural field from a global
perspective, we are equally interested in questioning, with the help of the
participants in the event, the particular context of New York City with its
cultural institutions, scenes and markets.

The event will be divided in two parts. In the first, we will announce and
present the forthcoming ArtLeaks Gazette. Focusing on the theme ?Breaking
the Silence ? Towards Justice, Solidarity and Mobilization?, the structure
of the publication comprises six major sections: A. Critique of cultural
dominance apparatuses; B. Forms of organization and history of struggles;
C. The struggle of narrations; D. Glossary of terms; E. Education and its
discontents; F. Best practices and useful resources (More here
http://art-leaks.org/artleaks-gazette). This publication gathers
contributions from different parts of the globe, highlighting both
historical initiatives and emerging movements that engage issues related to
cultural workers rights, censorship, repression and systemic exploitation
under conditions of neoliberal capitalism.

This also becomes an opportunity to bring up for discussion a series of
questions that have defined ArtLeaks? activity and that we would like to
tackle anew in conjunction with local cultural producers in the second part
of the event: What are the conditions of the possibility of leaking
information concerning institutional exploitation, censorship, and
corruption in the art world? What does it mean to speak the truth in the
art field and to whom may it be addressed? What analogies and what models
can we use in order to describe and operate within the conditions in which
cultural workers pursue their activities? We aim to bestow a greater level
of concreteness to these questions by inviting the participants to share
its own concerns and experiences related to inequality of chances,
structural injustice and forced self-censorship within the context of their
work. We are also interested in discussing current collaborations and
future alliances and projects that unite common struggles across
international locales. Visual and scriptural material which documents the
evening will be uploaded on the ArtLeaks platform.

Facilitators of the event: *Corina Apostol*, art historian and curator
&* Dmitry
Vilensky*(member of Chto Delat? <http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/>), artist
& writer


*The Brecht Forum has a  donation sliding scale of 6 to 15 $. We recommend
registering for this event in advance
here<https://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/register?id=12473&reset=1>.
Even if you are unable to make a donation, we still encourage you to come ?
we will not turn away anyone that wishes to participate in the discussions.*


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