Is Street Works art?

Yes. Street Work is in itself a social practice project by social practice artists. It is not an “arts presenter.”

Today, well-funded arts nonprofits look structurally similar to commercial arts. Artists receive unstable income, no benefits, and low pay, while management staff with little to no lived experience in the arts have the highest pay, the stable incomes, and most of the power. Institutions center the cultural assets, and wealth, not the makers. (Take, for example, the performing arts.)

We started Street Works as a form of social practice for 2 reasons.

First, we believe that art infrastructures should be part of mutual aid, and arts institutions should advance justice. We need platforms built to center artists and communities — not the products of artists’ labor, viewer numbers, and those in closest proximity to wealth. Alongside the role of wealth in memory-making, we see the emphasis on such outputs as byproducts of the museum’s colonial roots. As artists, we know need to re-work the cultural asset ecosystem with the same imaginative thinking we social practice artists put into our practices. Who better to do it than us? 

And second, we believe systems can be works of art. They are performances, games, architectures, and aesthetically meaningful. We are embracing this frontier as artists committed to justice.