Democracy At Work has commissioned a participatory art piece by a New York arts collective, Animus. The piece is called “500 pieces” which will be created by the guests at Economist Richard Wolff’s speaking engagements on Sept 7th in Palo Alto and on Sept 13th in Berekely.
Each guest will receive a piece of wood with a notch in each side which they can place where ever they would like to create the artwork.
Spectators became participants, taking a few pieces and connecting them to the structure. In doing do, they are being presented with different levels of creative control – collaborative and individual. Individually they will be given markers to decorate the notched squares. Collaboratively they will work together to assemble a single sculpture from those same notched squares. The artist, David Ort, will be on hand to guide people in building the piece.
The piece will be created by guests a third time in New York at Richard Wolff’s book launch for Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism at the Brecht Forum on October 9th.
“The concepts and themes explored in the work: community and collaboration, decision and action.” – David Ort
About Democracy At Work
Democracy at Work is a project, begun in 2010, that aims to build a social movement. The movement’s goal is transition to a new society whose productive enterprises (offices, factories, and stores) will mostly be WSDE’s, a true economic democracy. The WSDEs would partner equally with similarly organized residential communities they interact with at the local, regional, and national levels (and hopefully international as well). That partnership would form the basis of genuine participatory democracy. Utilizing media, from short video clips that go viral to our already well-established weekly and increasingly syndicated “Economic Update” radio program (WBAI, 99.5 FM, New York) and from podcasts to articles to blogs, this interactive website reaches and engages a fast growing audience. democracyatwork.info
About Animus
Animus Arts Collective creates bold, elegant, wildly expressive multimedia and participatory artworks. From thought provoking public installations to towering climbable sculptures, each project transcends passivity to engage communities, cities, and festivals. Animus has presented its diverse and distinct portfolio of high impact art with NYC Department of Transportation, at Electric Daisy Carnival, Escape2NY, All Points West, Burning Man and Figment.
About Richard D. Wolff
Richard D. Wolff is a Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University in New York In 2010, Wolff published Capitalism Hits the Fan: The Global Economic Meltdown and What to Do About It, also released as a DVD. He will release three new books in 2012: Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, with David Barsamian (San Francisco: City Lights Books), Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, with Stephen Resnick (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT University Press), and Democracy at Work (Chicago: Haymarket Books). The New York Times Magazine named him “America’s most prominent Marxist economist.” His work can be accessed at rdwolff.com.
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