H.E.N.S.
Gallery/Nail Salon/Solidarity Center

Corner of 3rd Ave. and Bergen, Brooklyn, NY

Hours: Wednesday – Sunday

12:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Alternative Pedagogy and Left Daycare: Part-Time Opportunities for Artists
featuring
Danna Vajda: WorkingtitleforArtwork
January 29th – March 3

Elective Cocktail Party, Spring 2012
5-7 pm, Wednesday – Sunday
Jan. 29 th – March 2nd

This cocktail party addresses working conditions in the field of contemporary art, and the discourses, hierarchies and traditions which shape them. It will equally examine spatial environments and the notion of a “humane workplace”, including examples in the Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan vicinity. The mixer will be structured in 27 two-hour sessions, loosely mirroring Splendid Isolation, a 2 credit elective course at the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, taught by Tirdad Zolghadr. Participants are encouraged to become unmoored from their psychic coordinates, the modalities of which can be discussed on an individual or collective basis. Each session may or may not include cocktails, a brief introductory lecture, case studies, student presentations, a group discussion addressing working environments, foot massage, emotional blackmail, haircuts, consultations with the H.E.N.S. legal team, German accents, strategic planning in opposition to the SPURA development plan, workplace organizing and other activities such as screenings or guest interventions via skype.

The cocktail party spans the residency of Danna Vajda at H.E.N.S. (Jan. 29th – March 3rd), which features WorkingtitleforArtwork (see below), an exhibition of new paintings culminating in a benefit auction for the H.E.N.S. strike fund.

Keywords: class / deskilling / reskilling / denegation / exodus / postfordism / neofordism / flexicurity / work / labor / disco naps / internships / assistantships / gendered divisions of labor / international divisions of labor / champagne socialism / Occupy Wall Street

 

 

The press release is not ready.  We have been working on it.  And the install.  And the programing. And the and the and the.  We thought it would be ready now.  We have the draft, I will email it to you shortly.  We can’t keep up, with all of the events and their relation to our own activities, with the pace of changing cultural terrain, with relevant publications, with the emails, with our bills, with our hours, with our loved ones, with ourselves with work.  We thought we could manage our time and energy better and then it might all work out.  We thought we could do enough yoga to move these mountains.  But, it is not ready, it is in the works.  These mountains are still here, and instead of self-improvement, time management and omega-3 fatty acids we will chain smoke, or caffinate, or drink, drink, drink till the job is done.

I have fire in my lungs. Forgetting that the factory is this computer, forgetting that the favor for a friend is  for the self, forgetting that tomorrow is always a day away…. I still have a fire in my lungs. The coal fires are burning, and i will do my best to articulate the artistic production. The artworks are being worked upon, I have outsourced most of them, actually it is a collaboration. Actually the collaboration is outsourced. While we wait we can invite people who work to tell you what is happening everywhere all the time to sit in an exhibition and speak about the working conditions of the environment that provided the never ending story of new discursive topics. We won’t have these information workers tell the world, it is too early for that, it would too easily turn into a book with glossy essays and forego the moment of looking one another in the face and seeing that we all happen to be wearing the same polish to cover the grime of exhaustion.  Elsewhere curators will show you what the artwork could look like.  Hopefully an artist elsewhere will be able to strike and not show you what this looks like. They will strike on the funds procured from liquor, tobacco and paintings and discussion. In the meantime we will quit evening yoga to drink drink drink until the mirror classroom leaks out into the wild mountains.

About WorkingtitlesforArtwork

For the exhibition at Hans Eisler Nail Salon, the artist has asked curators to write hypothetical press releases for exhibitions of artist(s) working with labour. During the course of the exhibition these press releases will become the material for a new series of paintings WorkingtitlesforArtworks which will then be available and auctioned off for a strike fund, along with booze and loose cigarettes.  The strike fund will allow another artist to not make work about radicalism but instead be paid to resist and agitate against the systems which perpetuate resistance as a topic instead of an activity.

 

Learn more about our manicures, affiliated groomers and recommended polish distributors.  Watch our agitprop activities through the Display and Intensification link.  Learn about our legion of collaborators at the Amorous Conflict link. Learn more about organizations advocating for reform of NYC labor and immigration laws through our Polish-distributors and Grooming link. Find our mailing and Email addresses under Mutual Regard. Engage in a broad manicuring of important issues of art, labor, gender, class and race with our Thinking the New Manicure link.  View our salon furnishings under Furnishings for the Agonistic Community.   Enable us by making a tax-deductible contribution via our production partners Moving Theater and your name will be added to our prestigious donors’ circle.

H.E.N.S. is a project administered in association with Moving Theater, a nonprofit organization founded in 2003 by artists Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly to support discipline-defying, frontier-crossing projects in the performing and visual arts