New Day New Standard — A public art project and nanny hotline: 646 699 3989.

New Day New Standard is a public art project and interactive hotline that informs nannies, housekeepers, eldercaregivers, and their employers about the landmark Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, passed in New York State in November 2010.

Built on an open source framework, New Day New Standard is a hybrid application that combines regular touchtone phones, Internet-based telephony, and performance art to create an interactive Spanish/ English know-your-rights audio campaign for domestic workers and their employers in New York State.

But this is no drab and dry reading of the law. When you call the New Day New Standard hotline number, you hear what sounds like a radio talk show, ‘hosted’ by Christine Lewis, a real nanny in New York whose charisma as a social justice organizer landed her a guest spot on The Colbert Report. Continue reading

The $100bn Facebook question: Will capitalism survive ‘value abundance’? by Michel Bauwens, Aljazeera: […] Open-source software, shared innovation and crowd-sourced manufacturing threaten capitalism as we know it. Not only is the world faced with a global resource crisis, it is also facing a crisis of intensive development, because value creators are increasingly income-less. The knowledge economy turns out to be a pipe dream, because what is abundant cannot sustain market dynamics.

Thus we have an exponential rise in the creation of use value, but only a linear increase in the creation of monetary value. Continue reading

Nicholas O’Brien wrote: “Andrew Norman Wilson and I had a chance to flesh out some of the strategies that he employs in a webinar video conference that spanned several weeks of intensive workshopping on ideas circulating around digital/ virtual labor, how to stabilize and exist in permanent transience, and how to make actual the metaphoric states that usually occur in online environments. Through our conversation and networking session, we highlighted some key issues concerning how one works within network space can reveal variable points of access and distribution to creative cultural practices.” More here.

[Journal of Journal Performance Studies by Nicholas Knouf] [nettime] Some More Nuanced Thoughts on Publishing, Editing, Reading, Using by Gary Hall:

Keith was asking for references to research on academic journals. In addition to those already mentioned, one piece I’ve found helpful is Ted Striphas’s (2010) ‘Acknowledged Goods: Cultural Studies and the Politics of Academic Journal Publishing’, Communication and Cultural/ Critical Studies, 7 (1), 3-25. There’s an ‘open’ pre-print version here.

I’m singling this piece out in this context because it’s particularly interesting with regard to some Taylor & Francis/ Informa’s geo-political connections. For instance, writing in 2008, Striphas details how: Continue reading

e-flux journal / Sternberg Press presents: Are You Working Too Much? Post-Fordism, Precarity, and the Labor of Art — Book launch with Hito Steyerl :: July 19, 2011; 8:30 pm :: Pro qm, Almstadtstr. 48-50, Berlin.

Let’s be clear about something: it is infuriating that most interesting artists are perfectly capable of functioning in at least two or three professions that are, unlike art, respected by society in terms of compensation and general usefulness. When the flexibility, certainty, and freedom promised by being part of a critical outside are revealed as extensions of recent advances in economic exploitation, does the field of art become the uncritical, complicit inside of something far more interesting? Continue reading

The Workers: Precarity, Invisibility, Mobility :: May 29, 2011 – March 15, 2012 :: MASS MoCA, 1040 MASS MoCA WAY, North Adams, Massachusetts.

We all know what Rosie the Riveter looked like, and what she stood for. Ford-era production line labor — and the rise of powerful unions — left us indelible portraits of work in mid 20th century America. Before that, Dickens created searing portraits of labor in the proto-industrial era, as Millet and his followers recorded a vivid picture of agrarian labor in mid 19th century Europe. But what does work look like today in a global economy marked by outsourcing, rapid migration, disruptive economies, and a state of labor that seems fractured, precarious, and almost invisible? Continue reading

The Heard and the Unheard – Soundscape Taiwan: Hong-Kai Wang — Yu-Hsien Su
Curator Amy Cheng :: June 4 – November 27, 2011 :: Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Palazzo delle Prigioni.

The Taipei Fine Arts Museum of Taiwan is pleased to announce that Hong-Kai Wang and Yu-Hsien Su will represent Taiwan at the 54th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The Taiwan Pavilion, at the Palazzo delle Prigioni, will host a two-part exhibition, The Heard and the Unheard – Soundscape Taiwan, curated by Amy Cheng. Continue reading

e-flux journal: Issue 24: “So why should so many talented and hyper-qualified artists submit themselves willingly to a field of work (that is, in art) that offers so little in return for such an huge amount of unremunerated labor?”

Let’s be clear about something: it is infuriating that most interesting artists are perfectly capable of functioning in at least two or three professions that are, unlike art, respected by society in terms of compensation and general usefulness. And compensation — which is money — is not only for feeding lavish lifestyles or taking spontaneous beach vacations. Ask anyone who has children or sick relatives in a country without good health care — which could now be almost any country as the administration of life is deferred more and more to the private sphere of personal finance. Continue reading

The Precession by Mark Jeffery and Judd Morrissey — An 80 Foot Long Internet Art Performance Poem :: until March 20, 2011 :: Events: Goat Island Dance Film Screening and Talk: February 22; 6:00 – 8:00 pm :: Performances: March 4 & 5, 7:30 pm; March 6, 6:30 pm :: The Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery, Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell, Chicago, IL.

Inspired by history, astronomy and new media sources, The Precession combines digital images, text and performance art into a monumental exploration of labor and the night sky. The concept was developed after the artists visited the Hoover Dam and saw the Oskar J.W. Hansen sculpture, ‘The Winged Figures of the Republic’ and the celestial floor map that is a part of the public art work. Continue reading