31. Maintenance Art Manifesto
The video Maintenance Art Manifesto is a re-enactment by the Macao community of the historic ‘Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!’ by Mierle Laderman Ukeles, set in the backdrop of the Macao community cleaning up after an event in 2016. Mierle Laderman Ukeles declares ‘I am an artist. I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother. (Random order) I do a hell of a lot of washing, cleaning, cooking, renewing, supporting, preserving, etc. Also, (up to now separately) I “do” Art. Now I will simply do these everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art… My working will be my Art!’Macao’s re-enactment of the piece serves to underline the neglect of the importance and remuneration of care work in society from a feminist and social point of view, and is an attempt to ensure that care work is elevated to the highest level of contribution for any new society.
MACAO - Nuovo Centro per le Arti, la Cultura e la Ricerca is an independent centre for art, culture, and research that tries to face repressive dynamics directly. They support emancipatory practices working with marginal and oppressed subjectivities. Both from a human and political point of view, they challenge any exclusive attitude. Avoiding the creative industry paradigm, and trying to innovate the old idea of cultural institutions, they started to consider art production as a viable process for rethinking social change, elaborating independent political critique, and as a space for innovative governance and production models. Their research concerns the labour conditions in the creative industry and cultural sector, the right to the city, and new forms of organisation and technological solutions for cultural production. Until 2021, Macao was based in a former slaughterhouse in the middle of a huge abandoned area not so far from the centre of Milan. It was coordinated by an open assembly of artists and activists.and had a cross-sectorial programme hosting performing arts, cinema, visual arts, design, photography, literature, new media, hacking, and meetings of citizens’ committees.