Defense Strategies

Defense Strategies

Wages For Wages Against (WFWA) is an activist collective initiated in 2017 by Ramaya Tegegne and a campaign for the remuneration of artists in Switzerland and elsewhere. It acts towards an alternative and fairer economy of the arts and questions the ideological underpinnings of the current situation. WFWA aims to raise awareness on precarious, exploitative and discriminatory working conditions in the art field through public and collective debates and actions. More broadly, the project acts as an agent of change, raising public awareness on issues of society and equal opportunity in order to give access to an art practice to people who cannot afford to work for free. 

This three-day Pool CH, organized by Tiphanie Blanc and Ramaya Tegegne—members of WFWA—, will be an opportunity to include students in a reflection process on their own context of work in post-covid time. We wish to address the consequences of the current health crisis, acting as a strong revealer of systemic inequalities, where artists and students are as well hardly impacted. Based on collective knowledge and shared experiences, we will explore strategies to confront the unaccountability of institutions, for example the contradiction between public discourse and practices, considering codes of conduct, fair wages, unions and other existing tools that can ensure ethical working practices for all. 

BIO: 

Tiphanie Blanc is an independent art critic working between Brussel and Geneva. Since 2017 she’s a member of the activist collective Wages For Wages Against and lecturer in seminars about precarity and neo-liberal cultural labor conditions across Europe (CCS, Paris, Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam, Post-Diploma ENSBA Lyon, Erg Brussel, Sint Lucas Antwerpen). She taught Art Theory at Geneva’s Art School of Art and Design between 2012 and 2018. Since 2007, she curated several exhibitions such as Hotel Abisso (CAC, Geneva, 2013), Fun Palace, (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2010), IAO: Exploration of Psychedelia in France (CAPC, Bordeaux, 2008). Between 2010 and 2012 she ran Forde, a contemporary art space in Geneva. In 2013 she founded Oraibi Books, now La Dispersion, a bookshop in Geneva with a focus on art publications and radical thinking.

Ramaya Tegegne is an artist and cultural organizer. Her work addresses the processes by which the field of art is constituted by investigating its dominant and structural mechanisms. She examines the power relations, narratives, selection and production conditions of art and culture in the current context. She works to revalue collective practices and conversations to act in favor of a more caring art field. She has presented solo exhibitions at Ludlow 38 in New York, Istituto Svizzero in Milan, Kevin Space in Vienna, First Continent in Baltimore, Fri Art Kunsthalle in Fribourg. Her performances have been presented at TU – Théâtre de l’Usine in Geneva, KW in Berlin, Kunsthalle Basel, Kunsthalle Bern, Gasworks in London, and the Swiss Institute in New York amongst others. She co-directed the art space Forde between 2014 and 2016. In 2017, she launched the campaign Wages For Wages Against. She is currently co-running the art and critical theory bookshop La Dispersion in Geneva.

http://www.wagesforwagesagainst.org/