The Imaginative Labor Union

May 2011

Kansas City, Missouri

An ongoing collaborative project initiated by Julia Cole & Sean Starowitz for the Open Engagement Conference in May 2011. The Imaginative Labor Union (ILU) supports artists in acts of surplus imaginative labor. The ILU slogan encourages artists everywhere to “make work at work!”. Surplus imaginative labor actions associated with the project involve multiple artists in the Kansas City region and beyond, and the project is still developing. The focus here is on artists who work in fields commonly known as relational or social practice, but the reasoning could just as easily be applied to artists in any area who wish to align their creative labor with alternative economic models. Since the ILU is in its infancy and aims to represent its constituency, your participation is not only welcome but also essential.