Workbench Session: A conversation with W.A.G.E.

Assembly for the Arts will host a session with Working Artists and the Greater Economy. WAGE is a New York-based activist organization founded in 2008 to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract their labor, and to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy.

Bio

Lise Soskolne is an artist with over 15 years of work experience in arts presenting, administration and development at downtown New York City nonprofits. Since the late 1990s these have included Anthology Film Archives, Artists Space, Diapason Gallery for Sound, Meredith Monk/The House Foundation for the Arts, Participant Inc, and Roulette Intermedium. Along with many others, she is a co-founder of W.A.G.E. and has been its core organizer since 2012.

Presentation description

Since 2008, W.A.G.E.’s work has developed in service of a single achievable goal – regulating artist compensation in the nonprofit sector. In the context of an increasingly privatized and elite field in which class stratification and competition have become significant obstacles to building solidarities between artists, Lise Soskolne will present W.A.G.E.’s efforts to organize artists and institutions, and soon art workers, around a shared politics of labor. 

W.A.G.E. Certified institutions in OH

Wave Pool, Cincinnati, OH

FRONT International, Cleveland, OH

Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, OH

Zoom-automated live transcriptions will be available. For additional requests, questions, or accomodations, please email info@assemblycle.org.