Post 022: Post-Labor
Pre-Labor Day Reflections
This month, I was a part of the first events organized by Positive Deviance, a “community of cultural innovators who are living intentionally and designing a collective vision for the future” through “mask-positive experiences at the intersection of art, culture, and public health.” The first, on my birthday, featured CRASHprez, Ivy Sole, and Drew Empire. The second, I was the DJ/Emcee for a stellar lineup of singer-songwriters: Sunday Comes Afterwards, Saint Wilson, and Cleo Reed.
Most often, I am in a production role for an event—it’s what I do for my full-time (union) job and what I do beyond that in ever-present side projects1. I know how intricate this labor is, how it blurs the creative and logistical, and how it can be easily undervalued or unnoticed. I believe in the work (as much as I can under obscene capitalism) because I how much of a difference that labor can make the experience of artists, audience members, and collaborators. I know that at its best, it is radical care, it is safety, and it is sacred, even.
As such, when I find myself in the performer role, I notice that very production labor I am intimately familiar with. The organizers, producers, and staff of Positive Deviance and the venue Abrons Arts Center made me felt very well taken care of. This involved many of the things that seem obvious (but that we know are not necessarily standards, especially in the creative field)—knowledge of my artistic practice/POV, fair compensation for labor, clear and thorough communication (frankly one of the best onboarding/contracting processes I’ve seen), and day-of attention.
Beyond that, however, the team at Positive Deviance, reflected an understanding of our shared reality, specifically in which COVID is a continued threat to all and that most institutions (from the fascist Federal Government to liberal institutions in liberal cities) have, for the most part, gaslit and left behind workers who refuse to reject the facts.2 The choices of the organizers for these events specifically made it so that the performers and audience could gather around music in a way that did not require compromising safety, especially during an especially high summer surge.
What did this look like? Like most things, labor! It looked like the labor of securing PlusLife testing3 for all performers, it looked like air purification and Far-UVC, it looked like providing high-quality masks for those that need it, it looked like a high-quality Livestream option. As is often the case, it is worth emphasizing the combination here of intention (one needs to think about the necessity of having these elements at an event) and resources (one needs to have the funds or the connections to buy or borrow these elements)—both connected to labor!
I spell these things out in a gesture of praise and gratitude for spaces like Positive Deviance, but also to hopefully counter invisibilizing of this, or any kind of labor. Noting of course that for the folks attending and these choices were quite visible, quite noticed, and quite appreciated. Yes, realist, joyful spaces are still possible, yes, they take hard work and resources, and yes, there are still folks working together to do that hard work and obtain (and share!) those resources4.
Zooming out, the stakes are high: our most basic infrastructures (medical, transportation, food) are continuing to crumble under both old and recent inequities. Arts and artists are impacted by these conditions, atop which we face our own systemic challenges worsened by our current government and pandemic. We have normalized risking our safety and livelihood—even ability to make art. Most people are validating the eugenic, ableist, racist, genocidal agenda of capitalism with every day choices denying reality and what the present requires of all of us.
At the first Positive Deviance party, one of the organizers noted, looking into the sold-out masked crowd, that this felt like the future. The second party was titled “What Comes After?” and I’ve been thinking about that question both generally through this Substack about the post-, and specifically at this current moment of not just rising cases, but threats on all sides around reporting and vaccines5. There isn’t an after pandemic, but there is an after-delusion we can get to once we realize that layered and collective safety practices can be not what prevents us from being (and dancing!) together, but what makes it possible.
Upcoming
I’m thrilled to be opening at FACESTRAPPED, an Access-Centered Rave curated by Cuéntame at Judson Memorial Church this Thursday, September 5th:
Tickets + Access information here! See you there?
Quick exquisites note, while I have you: we just launched our fifth anthology (we’ll make it available on our website soon) and will be taking a fall hiatus before returning this January for virtual workshops and this Spring bi-coastally. Also, put November 15th on your calendars now for Outer Listening Volume 2 at Come Forever (announcement soon, but an exclusive you-heard-it-here-first for reading the footnotes)!
See COVID Is A Labor Issue Zine, for one.
A 30-40 minute COVID Test with PCR-like accuracy that’s increasingly hard to secure. And yet! Organizers like Positive Deviance and collectives like Mask4Mask—who partners with Nonbinarian Bookstore in Brooklyn to provide them on Saturday afternoons—recognize it as a mitigation tool more reliable than rapids and critical than ever since PCRs have become less and less available.
I’ve plugged them before, but A.I.R Collective continues to lend purifiers for events big and small. Their form opens tomorrow (9/1) with priority booking through the first week of the month.
Spoiler: The Government and RFK are continuing to threaten COVID data collection, making vaccines harder to get, and reducing funding for medical research. (See The People’s CDC Dr. Lucky Tran etc.)