« S.W.E.A.T. » (Sex/uality. Work. Extraction. Art. Theatr/ics): with María Inés Plaza Lazo #23

María Inés Plaza Lazo founded in 2018, together with Paul Sochacki, the multilingual streetnewspaper for art and society, wealth and poverty called Arts of the Working Class. Since then, she writes for the paper and allied publications, edits pieces individually and collectively, sells advertisement spots according to each issue's topics and interests, talks constantly with vendors, contributors and potential collaborators, curates exhibitions related to the overarching concerns shared in AWC, gives lectures in different universities and academies such as The New Centre, brings stacks of AWC to different cities such as LA, New York, Quito or Barcelona, and takes care of the project and the people around it as a publisher. She currently lives in and works from Düsseldorf, preferably in trains.

We all sweat as we provide care, as we labour, as we perform our work, as we fuck, as we survive and as we sacrifice one choice for the other. How exactly do we define our work and how does that work entangle and circumscribe our sexual identities, our racialized bodies, our creative lives and the ways in which we provide care? How do we perform both tasks and identities within the framework of that which we consider work? These conversations are a means to speak between intersectionalities by anchoring through our (always, already, and ever pervasive) sexualized and racialized bodies, our working bodies, our artistic bodies and our performative bodies. I hope that they contribute to dialogues which normalize sex work as work, and all work as deserving of respect, healthy conditions, and a living wage.

You can find out more https://www.alfabus.us/s-w-e-a-t/

Mad Kate (they/them) is an electronic producer, sound designer, performance artist and writer who began working the Berlin performance and club scene in 2004, expanding their unique identity-queering, genderfcking and sexpositive performative work throughout music, theatre and film. Their explorations of borders between/within bodies, audibility, consent, proximity, and touch as political practice have brought them to theaters, communes, technomansions, prisons, dungeons, squats and galleries around the world.

Tracks Played:

Stolen Moments by Anoushka Shankar Makhafi by Jantra This is The Age of Self, a song by Robert Wyat, sung in Basque by EKIDA arte ekimen sozialista Proxy War by Andrew Bird

A few things mentioned:

https://artsoftheworkingclass.org/about https://www.instagram.com/arts_of_the_working_class/ https://www.neueauftraggeber.de/en/ https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/562184/art-workers-summit/