______________enacting fugitive collectivity with every use______________

Thrilled to be a part of the Debt Positive show for the month of June at Flux Factory in NYC*! [*Long Island City in Queens, to be exact, but – same dif.]

Debt Positive brings together artists making work in response to our shared, irrational, financialized realities. From the curators’ statement: “Through an evolving exhibition, performances, and workshops, Debt Positive beckons people to re-envision debt, sublimate it, and consider possibilities for eliminating its wasteful implementations.”

I have, almost gleefully, gone into more credit card debt, myself, in order to get more “Debtor” pins made [by a business in Florida, manufactured by factory workers in China, shipped to NYC]. These pins will, in the instance of this show, be given away for free. But you have to show up to experience the rest of the show in order to get one.

I’m really looking forward to meeting the other artists working through this quagmire.

In the last year, I’ve been most compelled by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s chapter on “Debt & Study” in their book The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. They have, awesomely and almost unbelievably, made their whole book available for free, online, as a pdf. That’s what I’ve linked to, above. The whole thing is complex and amazing, requiring many moments of re-reading just to comprehend it, or comprehend it differently, the interview at the back is transcendant, and the chapter I’m speaking of is pg 61-68. Throughout the book, the way they frame social debt as positive debt, the kind that is unrepayable and borne by us all, the kind that keeps each of us afloat – debt as the social fabric of kindness and favors done with the expectation only of its acknowledgment, never as a thing to be paid back – and especially this kind of living as a way (and sometimes the only way) of surviving in a world where you and your people might have very little or very inconsistent access to capital in all its forms – has profoundly affected me. There’s so much else to recommend this book – please do yourself a favor and read it. And let me know what you think!

If you’re in NYC, stop by the gallery at Flux Factory between June 3-24 (open Weds-Sat, 12-6) – schedule of events for the duration is here.

My sincere thanks to Caitlin Foley and Misha Rabinowitz for inviting me to be a part of their show. Honored and gladdened, and can’t wait to be there!

Thanks again to the Women’s Center for Creative Work for inviting me to their pop-up residency at the LA Art Book Fair in February!

This was the first time I’d gotten to play “nurse” with this project. Actually applying the (underinsured) and (uninsured) tattoos to people’s bodies – people who very much wanted to name their precarity publically, at a time when “everyone” is supposed to be insured – felt like a symbolic manifestation of nursing inside a broken system. My actions were obviously merely palliative, applying band-aids to breaks, but the moments of connection and discussion with strangers were funny, poignant, and sometimes, strangely, mutually triumphant. People talked to me and to each other, to whoever was around, to whoever would listen, about not having health insurance, about going broke or staying hurt because of high deductibles.

Hoping these tattoos spurred further conversations. “Universal Coverage” still means safety for so very few of us. We keep naming our conditions ’til they change…

It’s clearly been awhile since I’ve updated this site – who goes to individual project websites anymore? – but for the sake of historical thoroughness/site specificity, I will say here and now that I’m pleased to be activating SWAG sales this coming Saturday, February 13, 2016, from 1-4pm, at Printed Matter’s Los Angeles Art Book Fair at the Geffen Contemporary!

The Women’s Center for Creative Work – fast becoming an essential community institution for experimental, open arts programming in Los Angeles – is hosting 10 artist mini-residencies over the course of the fair at their table. Called Together In Real Life, their pop-up community marketplace will “investigate the nature of person to person attraction and persuasion in the marketplace. We are there to sell and buy; how do we complete these exchanges in meaningful, intimate and non-coercive ways?”

Find me at the WCCW table, and come out of the fugitive woodwork to declare your body and its properties (uninsur)able!! No bodily site will be off-limits for tattoo application and display…

Several items in the SWAG for Hard Times collection will be sold at the WCCW table for the duration of the LAABF (or until they sell out), so if you’re running low on Debtor pins and Debtor charm necklaces, you know where to get ’em.

Can’t wait for the crush of human art book nerdery and the discussions we’ll start/continue!

This article (found on The Daily Kos, but originally posted at James 321) leads one to wonder what, precisely, remains to recommend a fee-for-service model for the provision of health care.

Fascinating article on recent research regarding the neurobiological effects of financial stress – long-term implications included.