Launch Weekend 2020

After running our first three cycles of our Intro to Anticapitalism course, we announced our expansion into a sustained community with a launch weekend of discussions, panels, and teach-ins over the weekend of March 19-21, 2020. Much like everything else we do, these events were all free and open to the general artist public. The event was created with the support of Beehive Dramaturgy Studio.

How to get capitalism out of art?

(Plenary/Community Discussion)

In this welcome event, we introduce our theme for the weekend: getting capitalism out of art. As artists, we believe that capitalism has no place in our world yet we find ourselves constrained by capitalism and all its byproducts at every turn. In this community discussion and workshop, we discuss the challenges facing artists within capitalism and workshop original ideas for what we as artists can do to free art from capitalism.

Organizing Artists Today

What does it tangibly mean to be organized as an artist and why is it essential? What history can we draw on in order to build power and sustain pressure toward the promise of emancipation? In order to meet the responsibilities of making a better world, we must move beyond mobilization against issues-of-the-day into sustained organization against their systemic origins. This teach-in event is designed to provide attendees with a number of ways to get started on the practical side of change.

This event features special guests from the Workers Arts Project, Hollywood Labor, as well as Clara Takarabe (Shred Magazine).

A Conversation with Boots Riley

Filmmaker, musician, and organizer Boots Riley talks with the A4A team and community about the role of artistry in revolution, de-classed racial politics, making anticapitalist art within capitalism, and more, in this special conversation during the Anticapitalism for Artists Launch Weekend.

Worker Co-operatives, What are they and how could they work in art?

A worker co-operative is a workplace that is owned and self-managed by the workers themselves. In this short teach-in, we speak with a co-operative expert to discuss what worker co-operatives are, how they work, and why there aren't more in America, followed by discussion on how such structures could exist amongst artists and why art is or is not a suitable world to build these sorts of institutions. This event features special guest Leah "Lei" Angela Sahagun (L.A. Co-op Lab)