[ image credit: Erased Slogans by Kiri Dalena ]

The Forum on Equitable, Sustainable Communitarian Organization for Art and Culture

2021 online event Philippines / USA / Italy

Role: Co-host with Neferti Tadiar (Colombia University) and the Alfredo F. Tadiar Library, Jonathan Beller (Pratt Institute), and Marco Sachy (Joint Research Centre, European Commission)

The Forum on Equitable, Sustainable Communitarian Organization for Art and Culture brought together progressive Filipino, American and European cultural practitioners in a conversation about the potential for creating a network of sustainable self-financing arts and culture collectives.

It asked:

What are the economic and social challenges faced by cultural workers committed to working with and serving their communities in the Philippines?

What are some of the basic requirements, as yet unmet, for doing sustainable cultural work that supports underserved, oppressed communities and addresses social inequalities and injustice?

Can we use artistic and cultural practices that are traditional, indigenous, contemporary and/or of our own invention to remake economy itself?

The program took form in three online sessions:

Orientation recognized and maped the social and economic challenges that the participants and their communities face.

Speculation opened space for a collective reflection around a people-led, sustainable, self-financing economic network for these communities.

Application explored hands-on tools to design real-world monetary vehicles for economic ecologies, and considers pathways on.