Impossible Reader 2020
How to Work together
How to Work together is the second edition of the Impossible Reader – a biennial publication project of Museum of Impossible Forms.
Currently in Production, this edition of the Reader focuses on Creating Models of Solidarity and Working In Alliance.
"Many of us, whether separately or collectively, have confided, shared or spoken out about the difficult and precarious conditions in which most of us as artists and cultural workers continue to work – working conditions exacerbated rather than relieved by the conditions of competition that frame the ecologies of our art and cultural fields, whether competitions of resources, attention, spaces to exhibit, or grants. Existing across visual, literary, music and sound, cinematic, conceptual/ contemporary and other forms of arts, as well as within social, political and activism based workings; these conditions tie us together as fellow-competitors, despite our collective wish to work together as friends, collaborators, and like-minded individuals.
In our work since 2019 and guided by our curatorial framework, An Atlas of Lost Beliefs: For Insurgents, Citizens, and Untitled Bodies, the Museum of Impossible Forms have laid primary emphasis on collaborative working, either in sharing resources or simply offering the M{if} space. In 2019, 35% of the events conducted were such collaborations or simply events that were hosted. Placing ourselves under these ‘counter-conditions’ not only allowed us to learn more, but it also allowed us to learn more diversely.
It created for us the conditions to create new series of ongoing events in directions we could not have anticipated. The Museum led us in directions of knowledges we didn’t know we needed to ask.
– Ali Akbar Mehta, 2020