What does Bertolt Brecht have to do with workers’ rights in Abu Dhabi? Although politically engaged art and theater takes many forms, the recent Precarious Workers Pageant at the Venice Biennale took a Brechtian approach as it pointed out the solidification of global capital in architecture in Abu Dhabi and the precarious state of migrant workers who are building these future cultural sites. The pageant’s street performance offered a new public commons fabricated out of the deconstructed architecture of the avant-garde museum. Join artists, scholars, and activists Jim Costanzo, Andrew Ross, Gregory Sholette, Andrew Hemingway, Marco Baravalle, Barrie Cline, Setare Arashloo including members of Social Practice Queens, Aaron Burr Society, Workers Art Coalition, G.U.L.F. and Gulf Labor Coalition for an evening of conversation as part of the Social Choreography seminar at the Center for the Humanities and in tandem with the exhibition by Zoe Beloff at the James Gallery, “A World Redrawn: Eisenstein and Brecht in Hollywood.” Following the Precarious Workers Pageant video premier will be another New York premier: a presentation of The Gulf: High Culture/Hard Labor, edited by A. Ross and published by OR Books, with contributions by Sholette and other members of Gulf Labor. 

Read more about the Precarious Workers Pageant on a-n Artists Information Company, Hyperallergic, tumblr, and Gregory Sholette's blog. 

External Link »