Third public assembly organized by the ART for UBI (Manifesto) an initiative born within the framework of the activities of The School of Mutation by the Institute of Radical Imagination. The Pandemic of Covid19 has been correctly defined as a syndemic. The term clearly shows how pre-existing conditions of social, race, gender and environmental asymmetries, influenced the impact of Covid19, exposing to serious consequences poor and precarious workers, women and lgbtqia+ subjectivities, racialized and indigenous people and those living in areas more subjected to pollution and extractivism. In Europe (and elsewhere) thousands of billions of Euros are allocated to respond to the crisis. Unfortunately, at least from European perspective, it looks like the vast majority of these funds will go to the supply side, in the vain hope that financing private companies will have an overall positive impact on society. The result will be a further polarization of global richness, and the progressive impoverishment of millions of people. Contrary to this option, It is time to support the implementation of forms of universal, basic and unconditional income. We believe UBI is a struggle of primary importance in order to finally achieve a fair remuneration for the value freely extracted from our lives on a daily basis (for example through platform capitalism and through the still invisible care work performed mainly by women). We believe UBI will have a radical impact on social life, not only in terms of reducing poverty and precarity, but also freeing time and energies to build worlds where care, mutual aid and the commons become priorities.

Using the ART FOR UBI [Art for Universal Basic Income] Manifesto as its starting point, the IRI has been proposing discussions on the role that art and the world of cultural production should play in the fight for financial redistribution based on mutualism, methods of self-management of resources, access to the means of production and other solidarity practices. This activity begins in the Museum’s Sabatini Garden, with a “performative round table” based on the proposal of the artist Anna Rispoli, who regularly works on topics such as remuneration, income and the UBI (universal basic income), mixing performance, social research and conducting real experiments on how to share assets and financial resources.

PROFILES

Andy Abbot is an artist, musician and cultural activator. He has exhibited and performed as a solo artist and in various collaborations, including the Black Dogs art collective. He participates in different projects as a musician, both solo and in groups, and composes music for film, performance and installations. In 2012 he obtained his PhD from the University of Leeds with his thesis “Art, self-organized cultural activity and the production of post-capitalist subjectivity”.

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Marco Baravalle is a member of S.a.L.E. Docks, a collective and an independent space for visual arts, activism, and experimental theater located in what had been an abandoned salt-storage facility in Dorsoduro, Venice. Founded in 2007, its programming includes activist-group meetings, formal exhibitions, screenings, and actions. In addition to managing the diverse programming at S.a.L.E. Docks, Baravalle is currently a research fellow at INCOMMON (IUAV University of Venice). His fields of research include the relationship between art, theatre and activism, creative labor, gentrification, and the positioning of art within neoliberal economics.

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Emanuele Braga co-founder of Macao center, an artist, researcher and activist. In addition to his work at Macao, he co-founded the dance and theatre company Balletto Civile (2003), the contemporary art project Rhaze (2011), as well as Landscape Choreography (2012), an art platform questioning the role of the body under capitalism. His research focuses on models of cultural production, processes of social transformation, political economy, labor rights and the institution of the commons.

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Anna Cerdà Callís is a manager and cultural activist. She has been working in the MACBA Department of Exhibitions since 2005, a task that she combines with the field of music. She co-directed the popArb festival (2005-2015) and since 2017 she is involved in the design and organization of Acció Cultura Viva. She is also part of the governing council of La Murga, and participates in MIM (Women of the Music Industry) and the board of the Xàfec association of small festivals.

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Ilenia Caleo is performer and researcher in queer studies and feminist epistemologies at the IUAV University of Venice. She is among the co-founders of Campo Innocente, a network founded after the pandemic outbreak to defend art workers rights and to promote UBI.

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Érik Bordeleau is a researcher at the SenseLab of the Université Concordia de Montreal and the Center for Arts, Business and Culture of the Stockholm School of Economics, which he combines with his activity as a fugitive financial designer at the Economic Space Agency (ECSA). His work is articulated at the intersection of political philosophy, media and financial theory, contemporary art, and film studies. He is currently working on creating a Master’s program in Cryptoeconomics at the Global Center for Advanced Studies (GCAS) with campuses in Dublin and New York.