Lise Soskolne (W.A.G.E.)
This lecture is part of the seminar "Labor in Art Economies", financially supported by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and co-organized by Önder Özengi and Ruth Sonderegger, Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies. (In Englisch)
Join Link: https://zoom.us/j/8985167679?pwd=cFhTaE1GWHZacjIvQlQwNmpBc0Nxdz09
Meeting ID: 898 516 7679
Passcode: DHdF2k
W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) is an activist organization founded in 2008 by a group of visual and performing artists and independent curators who came together to address the non-remuneration of artists’ contribution to cultural institutions in the U.S. Since then, W.A.G.E. has facilitated many campaigns, seminars, public discussions, forums, and surveys, all organized around a single achievable goal: the regulated payment of artist fees by the nonprofit institutions that contract the labor of artists. W.A.G.E. currently operates two connected programs, W.A.G.E. Certification and WAGENCY , and is developing a series of contracts for non-unionized freelance workers whose labor facilitates the conception, fabrication, production, exhibition and circulation of art.
Lise Soskolne's lecture will elaborate on the practice of W.A.G.E. and the challenges and contradictions they faced on their way to build a counter-economic model for cultural institutions.
Lise Soskolne is an artist and core organizer of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.). A co-founder of W.A.G.E. and its core organizer since 2012, she began working in arts presenting and development at downtown New York City non-profits in the late 1990s. Venues have included Anthology Film Archives, Artists Space, Diapason Gallery for Sound, Meredith Monk/The House Foundation for the Arts, Participant Inc, and Roulette Intermedium.