ZERO…, Via Carlo Boncompagni 44, 20139 Milan
On invitation of and in collaboration with Dutch Art Institute (DAI), sonsbeek20→24 and Archive Sites present sonsbeek Council#4: A Blues For The Tired, Salty, Essential Worker.
“wonder how i ever had fuel for those past travels / i rest / and i rise / and listen to the body that’s carried me here as it whispers the way forward” —Camisha L. Jones
“If you see us in the alley please don’t give us a hard time by honking at us because we have a job to do.” —Paul Jamar
Which side are you on? A question that is slowly unfolding over a 100-year period of time, written in 1931 by union organizer and non-musician Florence Reece to address the societal inequalities that fueled this labor anthem in the United States. A question that echoes into the present, weaves in the living past and demands of privileged and marginalized workers to acknowledge, engage with and negotiate solidarities in the ruins of capitalism and an ongoing global pandemic that exposes the existing wounds and persisting societal inequalities that are cemented into fortress Europe. We wonder what wounds the pandemic produced, and we immediately think of the notion of essential labor. Echoing Dionne Brand’s poignant question; “Could one even dare to think life was possible in the presence of so much historical and contemporary dying?”
A Blues For The Tired, Salty, Essential Worker returns to the start of the pandemic, when frontline workers of all kinds were lauded as essential to keep society going in what seemed a prolonged moment of crisis. Simultaneously, the status of essential work was denied to many others—domestic workers, sex workers, unhoused, cultural or legalized workers, with little or no compensation in place. Paradoxically, those who have been named “essential” still happen to be some of the least remunerated and historically most exploited workers in our societies. Despite its acknowledgment of essentiality, the claim remains unsubstantiated; the essential worker remains the exploited worker, still. If dismantling labor injustices is an active rather than passive process, how is it implemented, what purposes does it serve, and what are the intended and unintended implications for fortress Europe?
With this daylong program, we envision together with artists, activists, neighbors, organizers and students what it means to complicate the notion of essentiality in relation to marginalized, gendered and racialized laborers and what it means to show up for workers of all kinds.
Coop Summit 2022
August 26–28, 2022
Teaming up with BACO (Base Arte Contemporanea Odierna) in Bergamo and Archive Sites in Milano, DAI presents polymorphic in- and outdoor gatherings around the collaborative outcomes of the year-long enquiry by 6 COOP study groups, to the public in Bergamo and Milano:
Coop: Soil is an Inscribed Body: on Agropoetics, Land Struggles and the Aesthetics of Sovereignty presents Water Seeks Its Own Level
Coop: You fed me when I was hungry: Food Commons and Ecology of Belonging presents don’t forget that gut feeling
Coop: Curating Positions: Nostalgia for the light*: Struggles’ Reverberations in Cinema presents reprise, revise: (re)frame
Coop: A Blues For Essential Workers presents IN VOICE
Coop: The Covent of the Care-full presents Watering, Wandering: An Anthology of Echoes
Coop: On Tradition—Future Ancestors 2: Rurality and Law presents Dima’s Bracelet. Songs, Prayers, Stories and Spells
The COOPs were commissioned by DAI and convened by befriended institutions, respectively: SAVVY Contemporary, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Bulegoa z/b, sonsbeek20→24, State of Concept and If I Can’t Dance I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution.
A Blues For The Tired, Salty, Essential Worker is conceived as a sovereign happening interwoven in the constellation of Coop Summit 2022.
The alliance between DAI and sonsbeek20→24 (Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Amal Alhaag, Zippora Elders, Aude Christel Mgba and Krista Jantowski) radiates outwards in multiple efforts, culminating into a joint program.
