Re-works
This is a research studio focused on fixing what’s broken in cultural systems. We study how power and money shape who gets seen, paid, and preserved in the arts, and we seek out or co-create alternative models rooted in justice, care, and collective ownership.
As a grassroots group without an operating budget, we can’t give funding yet. Instead, we hope to share what we learn about how cultural economies work, highlight under-recognized projects that are leading with justice, and protype new models to address the problems. If you’re interested in co-creating this project, reach out.
why
We love art with our whole hearts. It has literally saved some of our team’s lives and given us reasons to fight through darkness. We are far from alone; countless studies show glimmers of its priceless value for our collective health, happiness, and civic participation.
But many of these studies don’t discuss exactly who is benefiting and what the longer term, systemic implications are for who benefits and who doesn't.
As an artist-led program, here is what we know from experience. Beneath the surface are broken systems in which wealth & power are intertwined. This is a norm of financial markets, but cultural assets operate in an upside down world of money laundering, wash trading, asset theft, appropriation, unstable incomes, no health benefits, wage theft, and other consequences of a gig workforce.
Wealth obviously affects who has access to art, who gets to create, and the materials creators use. But a little less obvious is the fact that people in close proximity to wealth, like art buyers & agents, have disproportionate power in the curation and valuation of cultural assets, from paintings to film. How cultural institutions run, what they show, and how artwork is valued reflects their taste, stereotypes, and preferred narratives.
And these buyers and producers are overwhelmingly white. They are also the reason why museum leadership is overwhelmingly white, as are artists in museum collections.
This is one of the ways that racially biased narratives find their way into mainstream culture, a world in which TV exposure predicts a decrease in self-esteem for all girls and for Black boys, but an increase in self-esteem for white boys. It affects us when we're subliminally barraged by messages that people from our cultures, ancestries, and ethnicities are the anti-hero, sidekick, or extra. We’re being told from a young age that our ideas are evil, less smart, or don't count.
Given that art shapes happiness and civic engagement, we can’t ignore that cultural injustice correlates to health and political injustice. If we're constantly told that our voices don't matter, isn't voting an act of resistance? Isn't joy an act of resistance when systems try to diminish our worth?
System problems need system solutions. We need to share, blueprint, and embody justice in everything, including cultural ecosystems. Here, we listen, learn, find our kin, and nourish alternatives that we hope can one day flourish into independent projects.