DIE BALKONE
Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg windows
and balconies
Arts of the Working Class
3 YEARS OF AWC, 2021
Utopia is not a promise but a joint venture. Join us this Saturday at the park!
On the occasion of its third anniversary, coinciding with these times of social scarcity, Arts of the Working Class (AWC) celebrates the achievement of 15 issues on the streets of Prenzlauerberg, with a soft gesture of gratitude – and challenge.
For Die Balkone, the current bastion of local art exhibition practice, members of AWC will deliver – in a kiez-wide guerrilla-action-maniera – a gift: A guide to a new decentralized unionizing work wrapping the AWC housing issue (no. 14), titled “The Landlord is Coming”.
On the verge of the housing crisis aggravated by rent abuses, AWC overarches the 3 years of collective thinking, collaborative work and insurgent aesthetics, with a new determination to keep redistributing resources and knowledge, building an infrastructure of mutual care: L’Union des Refusés.
Now it is more urgent than ever to reunite those who are refused by systems of privilege and to collectively rethink a new paradigm of labour within and without the so-called art world – a mission which must be passed from hand to hand.
The guide wrapping AWC offers to potential new members of L’Union des Refusés a platform of discussion for invisible, creative, cultural, social, sentimental, care work to be turned into a sustainable form.
Be festive with us on Saturday May 1st, May Day, Labour Day, in Teutoburger Platz, Prenzlauer Berg from 12h to 19h. We invite you to regroup and exchange some thoughts and practices on the process of unionizing, privilege, tears and joy of work.
We welcome all potential members of L’Union des Refusés to
Organize with us!
In the not so improbable case of rain we will be sheltered under a couple of umbrellas,
with all Covid-19 safety measurements in mind.
xoxo
2021
Arts of the Working Class
is a bimonthly international street newspaper based in Berlin, Germany, and distributed globally. Its name reacts to the erosion of class identity and class consciousness in contemporary society, specifically within the arts. Founded in 2018, it moves in the spirit of three tenets: Pointing to the economic gap between different actors in the system of art, the street newspaper aims to redistribute wealth and generate an income for the many, not the few. Undermining the dictates of the attention economy by featuring underrepresented/underfunded projects and authors next to more popular or celebrated ones; questioning the representation of internationality in the identitarian-political symbolic economy, it is published multilingually in order to engage with different communities and acknowledging that not every piece of writing can be adapted to the standards of hegemonic English.
Arts of the Working Class also commemorates the many artworks and artists that problematize the values of incessant self-promotion, virtuosity of independence, and distinctive competition. After more than 15 issues of our street newspaper, the publishers Pawel Sochacki, María Inés Plaza Lazo, Alina Kolar—and the team of Hans Löffler, Chris Paxton, Sebastjan Brank, Dalia Maini, and Faye Campbell—are hopeful about the many encounters they have already had with authors and artists, as well as about the encounters on the street.