What would you do at the Met if you could do anything?

A group of artists and scientists spent eight hours in the Roman Sculpture Court at the Met to explore our democratic origin myth through discussion, movement, sketching, and play.

Was a Best Praxis project (Tal Beery  and  Eugenia Jane Manwelyan), organized with Panagiotis Alexiou, and the amazing folks who came on the journey with us: Diana Drogaris, DeNeile Cooper, Kylin O'Brien, Brian Fernandes-Halloran, Omar Salam, Dana Nehdaran, Julianne Skinner, Kikuko Tanaka, and Marisa Clementi. 

Action at the #NewWhitney: Inauguration of the Fracked Gas Line Museum (with Occupy Museums, Sane Energy Project, and Guerrilla Girls)

This action represents a collaboration among international groups focused on culture and climate activism.  As artists who care about the integrity of art museums, we are building a grassroots translocal platform which recognizes the role that cultural institutions beholden to corporations can have in creating a reality where economic and climate injustice are tolerated.  As human beings, we are fighting for a fossil fuel-free future.

Occupy the Pipeline have been fighting the Spectra pipeline bringing fracked gas into NYC since 2011. When they heard that the Whitney Museum was to be placed on the site of the pipeline’s main vault,  they initiated a collaboration with Occupy Museums (friends from Liberty Park and frequent collaborators).  Occupy Museums reached out to London-based  Liberate Tate who has staged spectacular actions at the Tate since 2010 calling on the museum to divest from fossil fuels. Other groups are now joining the call for transparency in the Whitney’s siting over the controversial pipeline. Read the solidarity letter from Liberate Tate.

The time for status quo on climate change has ended.

- See more at: http://whitneypipeline.org

Orev Exodus (with Kvutzat Orev)

Kvutzat Orev (a group of 6 people who built a communal Jewish life, rooted in Hashomer Hatzair, together in Israel and Brooklyn over 5 years) got together to experiment with the form in which we celebrate Passover. During a group seminar last Spring we decided to start building a new, Jewish, and public Passover ritual. We spent the year researching our history and tradition, and developing a common language around goals and values. As we looked for answers through collective culture we felt that the themes of Passover - freedom, justice, exile, and oppression - are too important today, our challenges so dire, that Passover should no longer be an invitation to dinner - it should be a call to action. We wanted to bring form and content together through physical engagement. Our aim was to be embodied in the learning and action. We wanted to be in it, not just thinking about it. In it, we wanted to recognize our own ongoing oppression as we connected ourselves to the world and oppressions around us.

Ritual Rebranding of the David H. Koch Plaza on the Day of its Dedication (with Occupy Museums)

From Hyperallergic:
Occupy Museums, which has previously staged and participated in protests at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and Lincoln Center, among other events and venues, envisioned Tuesday evening’s protest as a “ritual rebranding of the David H. Koch plaza on the day of its dedication.”  More info here.

Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.) at Guggenheim
​(with Occupy Museums)

Occupy Museums joins Gulf Labor, MTL, students from NYU, and others to form Global Ultra Luxury Faction (GULF), highlighting Migrant Labor Debt Bondage involved in the construction of new Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. More here.

Winter Holiday Camp:
Movement to Democratically Transform Art Institutions

At Center for Contemporary Art (CCA), Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw  |  Full Website
Inspired by the implementation of institutional horizontality within the Berlin Biennale 7, Pawel Althamer made the critical decision to open this project to collaborative practice. He invited Artur Zmijewski, who in turn invited Occupy Museums member Noah Fischer, leading to the formation of a "working group" of artists and activists from Poland, as well as from New York City, New Orleans, Berlin, Mexico City, Madrid, Budapest and Buenos Aires, united in Warsaw to share full authorship over the project and offer participation to CCA staff. (A first document of shared authorship between CCA and the working group, which shares all copyright with CCA workers, can be viewed at http://winterholidaycamp.org). The current Working Group of Winter Holiday Camp includes members Paweł Althamer, Tal Beery, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Maureen Connor, Gabriella Csoszó, Noah Fischer, Federico Geller, Zuzanna Ratajczyk, Dorota Sajewska, Igor Stokfiszewski, Joulia Strauss, Paula Strugińska, Zofia Waślicka, Katarzyna Wąs and Artur Żmijewski.
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Image Credit: Gabriella Csoszó

DebtFair

Full Website
Decentralized, on- and off-line, crossing institutional hierarchies in both public and private spaces, artists contextualize their work within the narratives of their actual economic lives. Collectors receive artwork in exchange for checks directly to the artist’s loaning banks.

In DebtFair, Art = Liberation

We are calling on all artists and art lovers affected by the debt crisis or passionate to support a sustainable arts future to get involved in DebtFair. Sign up to share your story, exhibit your art, and help build it from the ground up. 

Occupy Your BFF:  Seven Billion Bloombergs at Momenta Art

Momenta Art invited Occupy Museums (Occupy Wall Street) to use their resources to activate critical dialogue about the relationship between art and the market. More Here.

Occupy Museums at the 7th Berlin Biennale

Our groundbreaking experiment horizontalizing a major arts institution in Berlin. More here.
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Image Credit: Max Liboiron

Occupy Deutsche Bank: International Targets Round 1

The crisis of global capitalism requires a global response. We will now act against its leading institutions one by one. Transnational banks are central to this crisis and profit from the suffering of the people everywhere. Our first target will be Deutsche Bank.

Deutsche Bank is active in over 70 countries in the world, creating complex local crisis in various regions. For example, Deutsche Bank is speculating on the lives of people in Southen Europe, using economic and political mechanisms to ensure the payment of odious debts. In the United States, Deutsche Bank is known as the "foreclosure king" for driving millions of people from their homes.

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Occupy Pergamon Museum

Ceremony at the Pergamon Altar for
Restitution of Art and Culture to the Commons!

There is a famous treasure in Berlin known as the Pergamon Altar. This giant relief sculpture from Ancient Greece depicts the battle between the Giants and the Olympian gods known as the Gigantomachy. It was originally hewn from stone by workers from a culture that celebrated victory and ethics.  In the late 19th century, the Pergamon Altar was displaced from its original site in present-day Turkey and brought to Museum Island in Berlin. Since then it has been used and abused as a symbol- a representation of power by both Germany and the USSR.  The Pergamon Alter has come to symbolize the displacement and occupation of culture by the powerful elite.  A call has been issued for its return to Turkey.

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Image Credit: Max Liboiron

May Day Radical Arts

With Arts & Labor's Radical Arts Group, we put together an impressive amount of material for the May Day 2012 Solidarity March.

Un-Freize

On May 6th,  2012, Occupy Museums held our second Free Art for Fair Exchange-- a creative refusal of the gross financialization of our culture. This time, we brought our protest to Frieze Art Fair on Randall's Island-- public land rented out to the 1% for a private island art speculation getaway. Frieze Art Fair, one of countless "Wal-Marts for art" creeping up around the world, enables the hoarding of art and culture, moving it out of sight of the 99% and into the storage units of the 1%.

"Art / Work" at Postcrypt Art Gallery, Columbia University

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Image credit: Erik McGregor
Breath Sculpture Performance and Video
February 24, 2012
Breath sculptures are a series of stoneware portraits made in the span of a single breath. The process of creating the works is performative, and includes holding the breath while creating the work, and timing the process with a stopwatch. Each piece is catalogued with a unique  number as well as the amount of time it took to create. The portraits can later be fired or left unfired. They are installed on the floor or on a low surface, beneath a projection of the “Breath Sculpture Video.” Juxtaposing the sculptures with the video adds a dramatic dimension that helps create narrative and clarifies the process.
Additional Photographs

Fair Art Fair: Breath Brokerage 

As part of Occupy Museums' Fair Art Fair (Free Art for Fair Exchange), held outside of the Armory Show in New York City, the Breath Brokerage mobile art booth allowed visitors to purchase art using their own breath as currency. In the words of Julia Halperin of ArtInfo, the booth "was offering small clay sculptures he had created while holding his breath in exchange for any creative product a fairgoer could make in a single breath. (This reporter wrote him a one-sentence article.)" And also available at the booth: "Visitors would blow a given number of breaths into a balloon in exchange for a balloon filled with one fewer breaths. Though the reference to various economic bubbles was clear, the performance also related nicely to the commerce going on inside. 'Obviously, you have to give me one more breath than I have,' the demonstrator said with a wink. 'I have to make a profit.'" Link to full article here.

Choreography for Blackboards by Michael Kliën with Steve Valk

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Performer in a show featured in PS122's Coil Festival at the Invisible Dog Art Space in Brooklyn, NY. More Here.

Reviews:
New York Times
Culturebot

Occupy MoMA

#1

“In the face of so much suffering, if art insists on being a luxury, it will also be a lie.”
~ Albert Camus

With the whole world asking "what's next?" for Occupy Wall Street, OWS activists concerned with economic justice in the arts and in labor have announced plans to visit the Museum of Modern Art this Friday, where they will take advantage of the museum's waved $25 admission fee. "I tried going on Wednesday, but I couldn't afford it," said activist and art enthusiast Tim Gately. Although free nights at MoMA are now sponsored by the retail giant Target, the tradition was introduced in the 1970s as the direct result of grassroots activism by the Artist Workers Coalition. 

This action coalesces around a number of issues, from the cult of 1% luxury and celebrity promoted at MoMA to the museum’s close relationship with union busting Sotheby's. Come and experience a unique and lively evening. Everyone is invited to experience the museum as a true public forum.

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#2

Occupy Museums with Teamsters Local 814 Art Handler’s at MoMa - January 27, 2012

Two weeks have passed since our January 13th action, in which we stood in solidarity with Teamsters Local 814 Art Handler’s Union in its struggle to end the lockout of the union by the billion-dollar auction-house Sotheby's. In light of the numerous ties between MoMA and Sotheby's, we demanded that the museum call for an end to the lockout by its corporate affiliate.

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Occupy Satyagraha at Lincoln Center

Occupy Museums to protest the anti-democratic policies of Lincoln Center and Bloomberg on the last performance of Satyagraha Thursday December 1, 2011 at 10:30PM.

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More actions, videos, articles, and press at www.occupymuseums.org
Action & Perform
Met Action
Fracked Gas Museum
Orev Exodus
Rebrand Koch
GULF at Guggenheim
Winter Holiday Camp
DebtFair
Occupy Your BFF
Occupy Biennale
Occupy Deutsche Bank
Occupy Pergamon
May Day Rad Arts
Art/Work
Un-Frieze
Fair Art Fair
Blackboards
Occupy MoMA 2
Occupy MoMA 1
Occupy Lincoln Center

More Information
Occupy Museums
DebtFair
WInter Holiday Camp