Last Updated
April 24, 2020
Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Caroline Woolard. [Live show recorded: April 22, 2020.]
Guest: Caroline Woolard
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guest
CAROLINE WOOLARD employs sculpture, immersive installation, and online networks to imagine and enact systems of collaboration and mutual aid. Her work has been commissioned by and exhibited in major national and international museums, including MoMA, the Whitney Museum, and Creative Time. Recent scholarly writing on her work has been published in The Brooklyn Rail (2018); Artforum (2016); Art in America (2016); The New York Times (2016); and South Atlantic Quarterly (2015). Woolard’s work has been featured twice on New York Close Up (2014, 2016), a digital film series produced by Art21 and broadcast on PBS. She is the 2018–20 inaugural Walentas Fellow at Moore College of Art and Design and the inaugural 2019–20 Artist in Residence for INDEX, a new initiative at the Rose Museum.
Woolard co-founded barter networks OurGoods.org and TradeSchool.coop (2008-2015), the Study Center for Group Work (since 2016), BFAMFAPhD.com (since 2014), and the NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative (since 2016). Recent commissions include The Meeting, with a rolling premiere at The New School, Brandeis University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia, PA (2019); WOUND, Cooper Union, New York, NY (2016); and Capitoline Wolves, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY (2016), and Exchange Café, MoMA, New York, NY (2014). She is the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships including at Moore College of Art and Design (2019), Pilchuck (2018), the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2016), the Queens Museum (2014), Eyebeam (2013), Rockefeller Cultural Innovation Fund (2010), Watermill (2011), and the MacDowell Colony (2009). Caroline Woolard is Assistant Professor at the University of Hartford, and the Nomad/9 Interdisciplinary MFA program. Making and Being, her book about interdisciplinary collaboration, co-authored with Susan Jahoda, was published in the fall of 2019.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova, and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show.
Tim Cynova:
On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Caroline Woolard. Caroline employs sculpture, immersive installation, and online networks to imagine and enact systems of collaboration and mutual aid. Her work and writing has been featured in a number of amazing places. She is the 2018-2020 inaugural Walentas Fellow at Moore College of Art & Design, and the inaugural 2019-2020 Artist-in-Residence for INDEX, a new initiative at the Rose Museum. Following the economic collapse of 2007 and 2008, she cofounded barter networks OurGoods and TradeSchool.coop. Caroline is assistant professor at the University of Hartford in the Nomad/9 Interdisciplinary MFA Program, and Making and Being, her book about interdisciplinary collaboration coauthored with Susan Jahoda, was published in the fall of 2019. And, fun fact: she used to run track in the Junior Olympics. Without further ado, Caroline, welcome to the show!
Caroline Woolard:
Hey. Good to be here. I have to-
Lauren Ruffin:
It's so good to see your face.
Caroline Woolard:
It's good to see you.
Lauren Ruffin:
I feel like we're fortunate, because we've spoken twice in the last three weeks or so, so I'm getting periodic updates on how life is. But how are you doing? And how are all the folks that you're interacting with on a regular basis doing right now during the pandemic?
Caroline Woolard:
I'm okay. I have the privilege of having a job, I have a tenure-track teaching job, and I'm healthy. So I'm here with my partner and I feel pretty safe. I have access to wi-fi, as you can see here. But yeah, in terms of my community, I guess I think about community in terms of identity and work and geography. In terms of queer, art, New York-based communities that I'm thinking of, I think it's a combination of full-on survival and a lot of loss and grieving. I was just talking to Gonzalo Casals, and he made this good point that queer leadership is collective leadership, and that that's really hard to do right now. Because so many people don't have access to gathering and are not well, and it's hard to do all of this by phone or Zoom nonstop. So I think it's a time of longing and loss, but also, as always in moments like this, increased mutual aid and increased dreaming. So it's both, yeah, a real struggle and a reminder of the power of self-determination and community.
Lauren Ruffin:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I agree with all that, and especially that piece around self-determination. Can you talk a little bit more about that? I'm supposed to ask you another question, but that really drew my attention, and you know I'm distracted by shiny things. Can you just give me some more on that?
Caroline Woolard:
What comes to mind immediately when I think about self-determination is so many communities that have been marginalized through structural policy and structural violence. For example, when I think about self-determination, I think about Weeksville in New York City, this free black community and the legacy that people drew upon, thinking about Weeksville, in making community land trusts both in New York City and in Georgia or beyond. And the idea that, despite every single odd, where all so-called public structures were trying to kill and erase communities of color, black people in particular, but also queer people, women... So many people, with a real emphasis on anti-black racism. Despite all of that, you can see a flourishing business, school, housing community in Weeksville, in the first community land trust in Georgia much later, and in so many places.
Caroline Woolard:
If you look at... Even in my building in New York City, which is a low-income co-op, the ways that people are coming together to solve basic things, like "How are we going to get food to older people?" This is drawing on a long legacy of knowing that we can do it ourselves and do it together despite every single odd and structure and policy that has said "You shouldn't survive. You shouldn't be here. You don't have a right to this." And obviously it has a different flavor because I'm a cis white woman, but I can also be in solidarity with the long-term organizing of artists of color, people of color, in New York and beyond.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's dope. So, Tim gave you an introduction. Obviously, given just that conversation we just had, there's a lot of other things that you are thinking about and doing. How are you introducing yourself, or how are you thinking about your work right now?
Caroline Woolard:
Yeah, this question of how to introduce yourself when you're interdisciplinary and you work in groups! And a lot of the time, it's based on what has to happen, rather than a job or an official title or a salary. It's hard for me to say, "Oh, I'm the director of X, Y, and Z," or "I do this one thing." So I was thinking about how to say this, and I guess the most common thing I say across the board is: I'm an artist who believes in economic justice. And what that means specifically is that I have skills with graphic design and new media and sculpture, and I can contribute that to existing work for workplace dignity, for example, worker cooperatives; affordable housing, for example, community land trusts; or any mutual aid network that needs a way to think about visibility, nuance, and speaking without words, visually. I can support that.
Tim Cynova:
One of the things that's on your bio... And for those who are listening or watching, just to capture... The bio's so rich. I think I just pulled random sentences from your bio, so apologies for what I used-
Caroline Woolard:
It's a long one.
Tim Cynova:
It's amazing. I was, in particular, drawn to the work you're doing right now focused on conflict transformation in groups. Because you talk about... Your work asks questions around, "Can an object interrupt the unavoidable antagonisms of working together? How do workers without bosses transform workplace conflict?" And when we mentioned this in the green room, you had some things you had brought along with you, which seem fascinating. What is this work, how are you thinking about it, why do you have objects that are cool and unusual for video meetings?
Caroline Woolard:
For example... So, I agree that work shouldn't suck. I like the title of this thing, and one way that work needs to stop sucking is with how boring our meetings are. I was just talking to Andrew Nurkin, who works at the Free Library of Philadelphia, and he said it's always Blursday and Zoom o'clock in the pandemic. And I was like, "That's about right." So even before we were all in our Zoom-a-thon, I was making these objects, very strange objects. This is if you talk too much, you're going to get this from me.
Lauren Ruffin:
The tongue?
Caroline Woolard:
"Stop talking." Yeah, all kinds of things. I have weird... So many objects here that I could show you. Got a little card game here. So in this question of what an artist can do, when we're thinking about economic justice and you're in an interdisciplinary group, for better or worse, you're going to have a lot of meetings. And they often suck, like work, because there are no trainings around facilitation, especially equitable facilitation. And for better or worse, people need to collectively metabolize a concept and an idea before you can take action with that idea. And that takes a long time. I'm sure you all know, and have been in these meetings where you think, "Oh, we finally all agree on this thing!" And then you get to the next meeting, and you're like, "What?" And they just say the same thing they were saying before, or you say the same thing you were saying before, because your brain is still just your brain. It's not the collective brain. And so-
Lauren Ruffin:
That happened to us this morning.
Caroline Woolard:
Oof! Yeah, it's so bad.
Lauren Ruffin:
I didn't know what meetings... I had no idea where I was supposed to be later on, and apparently they said it like six times, and I was like, "Where am I going? What am I doing?"
Caroline Woolard:
So it's like this patience and this reality of the collective metabolism, and one way to enjoy the slow pace of that collective learning is to bring in weird objects. So as an artist, I love making objects, and at one point I realized, "Oh, I just spent a decade of my life in meetings." Like, sure, I helped create barter networks and self-organized learning spaces, but in reality it was like this. Maybe on Zoom, maybe in person. So how can I bring tactility to those spaces?
Caroline Woolard:
And I started working with Esteban Kelly, who is the director of the U.S. Federation of Worker Co-ops. So yeah, it's a technical assistance organization that helps people who don't have bosses, who are in ownership of their business, figure out how to run the business and how to talk to each other better. And he was like, "Absolutely, let's bring in objects." So I've been able to see how he does things like facilitate a workshop on conflict with this amazing object that people talk to. And he's an unusual person, because he is not in the arts officially, but he thinks visually and he teaches visually and loves that playful approach that not all facilitators would want to do at all.
Tim Cynova:
So for people that will just listen to this, the first item that you brought out, that you just showed, was a giant head that looks like it's made of plaster.
Caroline Woolard:
It's actually made out of mycelium, which is a whole other thing we could talk about, the rhizome-
Lauren Ruffin:
Mushrooms?
Caroline Woolard:
Yeah, it's made out of a mushroom, which is a sustainable material.
Lauren Ruffin:
I only know that because of Star Trek Discovery.
Caroline Woolard:
Okay, continue. You can describe it. You could put this in your yard and compost it when you're done with it. It's not toxic.
Tim Cynova:
That's amazing. So yeah, there's a giant head, is the first item. The second item was, like, a cast of a large tongue. Great. And I missed exactly what the third item was that you showed earlier on.
Caroline Woolard:
This is a eye, that... This part, you fill it with water. It's made out of porcelain. It's 3-D printed. You could order it online for not much. And then it has a little hole, the pupil. So this sinks, and that tells you when a moment has passed. Either you've spoken too long or the ritual is over, whatever. It's a kind of alternative timekeeping device.
Tim Cynova:
About how much time do you get before the pupil sinks? Which is a sentence I never thought I'd put together.
Caroline Woolard:
I guess I'd say around three minutes. So it's not that short.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's a long time to talk, even directly.
Caroline Woolard:
Oh, yeah. I would rather do a moment of silence or some kind of activity, unless you have a very small group like the three of us.
Tim Cynova:
I'm also imagining, like... Someone has a bag of pupils that they have throughout meetings, and then they just have to keep replacing them as you go through the meeting.
Caroline Woolard:
Totally.
Tim Cynova:
Those are fascinating objects. If you're listening to this and you're able, the video on YouTube will make those objects far more vivid than my explanation, and now you're very confused, I'm sure, about what this pupil eye dish looks like.
Lauren Ruffin:
I can't wait to read the transcript for this.
Tim Cynova:
It's true, I can't... Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
It's going to be amazing.
Tim Cynova:
Where do you purchase that 3-D eye dish? You said you could buy it?
Caroline Woolard:
Yeah. Right now you should just email me, but I'm working to make a huge project with the Free Library of Philadelphia, and with them it's going to be freely accessible for any library patrons to check out. They're doing curbside pickup soon, so you can just call them or look online and then ask for it from the collection, and they'll bring it to the curb.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's really awesome. I didn't know that you knew and were working with Esteban, but that makes so much sense.
Caroline Woolard:
We've known each other for so long, way back from AORTA days, this Anti-Oppression Resource Training Alliance group that does a lot of great facilitation work. So maybe 10 years ago we met, and then I got this money to do a project with Moore College, and I was like, "Philly. Esteban."
Lauren Ruffin:
I just met him last fall, in Oakland.
Caroline Woolard:
Cool.
Lauren Ruffin:
But we were on a panel together, and I think there was... I feel like there might've been someone else on the panel, but I don't know. It was just he and I being ridiculous together.
Lauren Ruffin:
So I did want to make sure that we made some time to talk about two things. One was your work with worker co-ops, and ownership of those, and I was hoping you could spend some time speaking to us about that. And I really love the phrase "worker dignity." We talk a lot about people-centered organizations, and I feel like they're adjacent but also very different. So if you could sort of dig into that a little bit for us, I think it'd be great for our audience.
Caroline Woolard:
So I guess, especially now, people are seeing the reality of the professed mission of an organization or a business and the reality of their practice under stress. And I think this is where the truth of our values comes out. So you can see so many institutions having to make the hard decision about which aspects of their organization or business they're going to keep. And it turns out, most of the time it's not the people. So I know if you're a leader and you have to make these decisions right now, it is not easy. It's incredibly challenging. The whole thing might be going under. But what I mean by "worker dignity," and what's possible in a worker cooperative, is a collective conversation about how to place people before profit, and also potentially before some of the infrastructure that tends to take precedent over people's livelihoods.
Caroline Woolard:
So for example, in a situation that would be about the dignity of workers, you would think about what healthcare and healing needs everyone in your workplace needs right now, maybe before you'd go on to the next program, to the next online translation of an in-person experience. In a worker cooperative, because every worker has a vote or a say in the decisions that are made, at different levels, depending on the cooperative structure, you could have a very frank conversation about this. And a lot of co-ops are doing that right now, especially because there's decreased revenue.
Lauren Ruffin:
No, thank you for that.
Caroline Woolard:
And then, why... Should I say why we need this in the arts?
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, absolutely.
Caroline Woolard:
So yeah, for me, because a lot of artists get into this work, connecting to community and speaking without words... We all get into this work, I'd say, on some level, because we believe that we should be in control of our labor, that we want to determine when we're clocking in and when we're clocking out. Which, as a caveat, I'd say is true of all people, but it gets to be romanticized and projected as a sense of subjectivity or way of being for artists. So anyway, let's say the artist gets to claim when they work. And if this is the case, then the artist should imagine that they could pool their resources with other artists in order to determine when they work and also to create a livelihood together.
Caroline Woolard:
So, for example, good friends of mine in New York run a filmmaking collective and cooperative called Meerkat Media. It's Meerkat, M-E-E-R-K-A-T, like the animal, Media. And what it means is that they're able to work together as really great filmmakers, and not have their day job on the one hand, which doesn't respect them, and their artistic career on the other hand, which maybe happens late at night. They get to be together all day producing films for groups that are aligned with their values, and the surplus money they make goes into a collective pool that they can use for their independent projects. And they're able to do things like buy $50,000 cameras together, have a health insurance fund, think about maternity leave, and really be clear with one another about what happens at scale when you work together.
Caroline Woolard:
So artists often want to have all of their time in their studio or determine their work alone, but actually that is not possible, and it's a far worse life at the scale of one person, I would say, than if you can find a livelihood in collectivity with other arts workers. Now, of course, not every field will allow that, but in filmmaking it's possible. In new media it's possible. And you can be creative about what's possible in this context we're in right now. And that's what you're doing, Lauren!
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm doing my best. Doing my best.
Tim Cynova:
We have a viewer question. Also a "Great to see you," Caroline. "Do you imagine or hope for a workers' movement arising out of this moment? Artists, plus so many others, tech, teachers, service industry, et cetera?" Thanks for the question.
Caroline Woolard:
Yeah. Hey, Diane. I think that is always a goal, and it is possible. I think that we're seeing it at a small scale now, at different levels, around the rent that a lot of artists have to pay as small businesses in their individual buildings, working together to think what's feasible. But yeah, I think, look at W.A.G.E., Working Artists and the Greater Economy. A number of initiatives that Springboard for the Arts is doing. There is a sense of collectivity, but I think moving across art and tech is still a very difficult thing to do, which we could all talk about. Like, who still has a job? That's what I'm trying to say.
Lauren Ruffin:
You're so very right. And speaking of jobs, I know you spend a lot of time thinking about what the future of work looks like, and what the future of preparing learners for a workforce and for sustainability. And I'm having a lot of conversations right now about what is higher ed going to look like, and being very closely associated. Both my wife and my father are in education administration at the K-through-12 level, and they're having the... We seem to be operating on the assumption that, at all levels, K through postsecondary, that schools are wanting to open back up in the fall.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, exactly. "Ha ha ha ha ha, silly humans!" I would love... Because I know you're doing really great thinking on this, and I know some folks are listening who are dying to hear what your predictions are, and... The fragility of our entire American educational system, I think, is about to be exposed. So I'd just love to hear you talk about that.
Caroline Woolard:
Yeah, thank you. Hmm. Let me think where to begin. I guess one thing to start with is a realization that it's not because of this pandemic that a lot of schools are facing financial hardship. We can see that, if you look... Especially, there's a field now called critical university studies, so you can look at what a lot of scholars are saying there. But they all agree that the height of progressive public education at the postsecondary college level in the humanities, especially the visual arts, peaked in the late 1950s and continued through the 1970s. So that's when we see things like the Free University of California system, Free CUNY, this is when so many moments like African American studies, women's studies, ethnic studies, all emerge.
Caroline Woolard:
And after that, with increasing financialization in the '70s, we have seen a real decline in access to affordable public education at the college level. So a lot of the things you hear now about schools needing bailouts, I think it's important to look at the larger picture, over the past hundred years, even. And in terms of what we're going to do now, I think this is an amazing moment to rethink what people actually need. If what we want is artists to be able to enter the so-called workforce, or create the workforce of their dreams when they exit some kind of training program, whether it's accredited or not, there are a lot of things that we can learn from this moment.
Caroline Woolard:
I think, for example, if you look at the work of disability justice movement leaders, there will be a lot of understanding around how to access events, why they all need to be in-person... And also if you look at transformative justice organizing, consent around touch is now going to be understood more broadly. So I think if you talk to leaders like the artist and choreographer-dancer, Alice Sheppard, who you might know, if you talk to groups like Generative Somatics and Alta Starr, they do a lot with transformative justice and somatic healing. I think that will lead the way, in terms of access and consent.
Caroline Woolard:
And then in terms of specific forms, there are so many things I'm excited about. I mean, we can see a return of self-organized learning spaces, like... I don't know if you knew the Utopia Neighborhood House of the 1920s in Harlem. Steffani Jemison, an artist who's great, who just got a Guggenheim, did a project about Utopia Neighborhood House. I think, for me, it would be exciting to have, in New York City, retired arts faculty and older artists get support in terms of space to mentor younger artists. They have something called SCORE, which is the small business mentorship model in New York City, where you can go for free and get your Wall Street grandpa to help you, if that's supportive. So we could see more cities supporting mentorship that's intergenerational for free.
Caroline Woolard:
I think we can also see really robust online platforms that allow the kind of one-to-one connection that really builds social-cultural capital and intellectual growth. I don't know why someone hasn't jumped on that. The moment this hit, I was like, where's the critique platform of the future? But we can be hyper-local and be involved in our mutual aid networks and our communities here in all the ways that we need to be for our own sense of safety and community and belonging, but we can have more intergenerational and international conversations that, so far, have been very limited in art schools.
Tim Cynova:
There's a question that came up... You've touched on this, around, what are some tools or resources out there for solidarity organizing? But I want to put the question into this space, if there's other things specific to this that you think are useful to highlight.
Caroline Woolard:
Oh, it's Brad. Hey! He's in Baltimore. Baltimore people! Well, I would look at things like what the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives just put out. There's also, if you're in the Bay Area, the SELC... What is that? The Sustainable Economies-
Lauren Ruffin:
-Economies Law Center.
Caroline Woolard:
-Law Center? Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. They're great.
Caroline Woolard:
They just put out a great list of resources, if you're there. The New Economy Coalition is often putting out a lot of great resources, and I imagine in the show notes we could link to a bunch. But I would start there. I'd also look at the People's Forum in New York City. And personally I've been involved in the cooperative Economics Alliance of New York, CEANYC. So we can put them all in there, but in general I'd say, find your local worker cooperative. Just Google "worker cooperative" in your neighborhood, and then see who's running it and contact them, either through social media or phone, and find out who supports them. Because usually there's a credit union that supports them, there's a land trust, there's affordable housing, and all of these things are networked together. It just takes a few people to introduce you to the larger network that is supporting the effort.
Tim Cynova:
Great. Probably two more questions. This is so much... I mean, there's so many links that I'm going to find and post in the description. We're covering such amazing ground, Caroline. Thank you so much for offering this. Lauren, do you have another question before we go for the Land the Plane one?
Lauren Ruffin:
Yes. But it's not fully formed yet, so we should probably just let Caroline talk, and I'm sure something will tickle my brain. Are there things that you're thinking about, or conversations you're having that we haven't touched on yet that you think are really important to our audience?
Caroline Woolard:
I think the hardest thing in this moment is to find other people who can talk to you about what to do beyond crisis management, whether that means healing yourself or the person you care about or saving your business or organization. And I think if each of us can find a moment to really step back and do enough healing practices to recognize if we have the privilege of health and connection right now, to think holistically so that we go way beyond just getting through and returning to normal, whatever that was.
Caroline Woolard:
And finding other people to talk to, like this conversation, where we can brainstorm a future that we actually want despite all of the enormous structural violence and challenges that we see ahead. This is a moment where things can be invented, and especially if you're 18 or 22, this is your generational moment. Build that platform. And also contact me! Contact Lauren! This is the time for that mentorship. I got that mentorship when I got out of the 2007 crisis, and that's our job also, to mentor those people who are building this for their generation and ours.
Lauren Ruffin:
That piece around mentorship... I was talking to my wife yesterday and she was like, "This is wild," and I'm like, "Our entire adulthood has been wild. Like, what's more wild than two planes flying into the World Trade Center, or a sniper randomly shooting people around the beltway, or..." And I went through this whole list of things, and she was like, "Oh, you're right." And I was like, "The last 20 years have been wild." I have a theory about alternate timelines that I won't leave here, but I think you're so right, and I love that phrase, "a future we actually want." Oh-
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, most definitely.
Lauren Ruffin:
Always, Caroline-
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Wonderful.
Lauren Ruffin:
A sermon. A whole sermon.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah.
Caroline Woolard:
Well, I love talking to both of you, and I'm glad you're making space for these conversations.
Tim Cynova:
Thank you so much for being on the show today.
Caroline Woolard:
Yeah, thank you.
Tim Cynova:
Continue the Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE adventure with us on our next episode, when we're joined by Jamie Gahlon and Vijay Mathew, cofounders of HowlRound Theater Commons. Miss us in the meantime? You can download more Work. Shouldn't. Suck. episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice and rewatch Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co.
Tim Cynova:
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