If we know the price of everything and the value of nothing – as Oscar Wilde quipped of economists – what is your currency of choice? What do you attach value to? Whether connected to capital accumulation or spiritual doctrines, value is not fixed. Value shifts in time and can be collectively negotiated. As a street newspaper, we set out from the value we create through knowledge production and distribution in today’s precarious conditions. We see the possibility of interrogating and refining the role of culture as a means to shape a different form of currency in the ongoing fight against scarcity, exploitation, and fascism.
In 2025, Arts of the Working Class (AWC) invites you to join us in this inquiry through our editorial program, exploring themes that inspire collective reflection. Through four open calls, we will explore the concepts of Experience, Transfiguration, Choreography, and Relationships. Each call serves as a foundation for contributions that engage these themes in diverse and personal ways. We invite you to share your insights and creative responses to these pressing issues.
We aim to publish up to 10 submissions per issue and will select additional works for our online editions. Given our underfunded editorial labor, we ask for intellectual solidarity in exchange for exposure and the editorial guidance we offer in the publishing process. Our long-term goal is to ensure full compensation for all contributors, but we currently don’t have the means to achieve this. We are committed to providing feedback for all submissions, acknowledging the time and effort involved.
Guidelines for All 4 Issues:
- Length: 1,000 words (maximum)
- Language: Contributions may be in any language
- Format: Submit as a PDF and/or as images in a folder, with each file titled in the following format: [Your Name]_[OpenCallTopic]
- For submissions, and inquiries contact: Dalia Maini, dm@artsoftheworkingclass.org
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Fig.1
Open Call No. 1: Experience
To ask for help, to arrive, to beg, to carry, to embrace, to steal, to survive, to care, to scream, to fight, to grieve.
– Highlights from the unequal nature of our lived experiences.
Deadline for Entries: April 1, 2025
AWC’s Anniversary Issue examines common experiences of commodification, and how identity, race, gender, and class shape our realities, emphasizing acts of resistance, resilience, and imagination in response to systemic oppression, and the harnessing of personal experience as a weapon to use in the so-called culture wars.
We welcome submissions that critically engage with personal narratives, social commentaries, and art discourses. We seek works that not only reflect on the specificities of individual experience but also create a link to broader systems – e.g., economic, political, and/or social – that shape the context of experience.
Contributions may be reflective, analytical, or poetic, but they should always be grounded in tangible experience. We are interested in the actions, strategies, and solidarity forms that enable individuals and communities to confront, navigate, and resist oppressive forces that devalue their experiences.
Sample Topics:
- Cultural Tokenism and the Instrumentalization of Art:
The experience of being selected for projects or positions solely based on one’s cultural identity, without the opportunity to fully express or realize that identity.
- Censorship and Exclusion:
Navigating exclusion or censorship in cultural spaces, workplaces, or social circles based on personal beliefs, identity, or experiences.
- Precarization and Discrimination:
Stories of systemic precarization and discrimination in the workplace, including how race, gender, and class impact job security, wages, and opportunities.
- Medical Neglect and Discrimination:
Reflections on how access to healthcare is shaped by race, gender, class, and ability, and the impacts of healthcare systems that ignore or mistreat people.
- Structural Barriers in Housing & Education:
Experiences of confronting discriminatory legal or bureaucratic systems in accessing basic rights such as housing, education, or citizenship.
- Survival in Crisis:
Personal narratives of survival in the face of social, economic, or political crises – whether local or global.
- Body, Violence, and Resistance:
The body as a site of vulnerability and resilience – stories of bodily autonomy, survival, and healing in contexts of systemic oppression.
- Transitory Spaces and Perceptions:
Experiences of being in-between spaces, whether physical, cultural, or emotional, and how these shape one’s sense of belonging and identity.
Formats:
- Personal Narratives:
Stories that weave lived experiences with reflections on broader social structures.
- Interviews or Conversations:
Conversations or interviews with individuals or groups who have shared experiences related to systemic oppression.
- Critical Essays or Reports:
Investigative or analytical texts that explore the dynamics of power and oppression within specific contexts.
- Poetry or Performative Writing:
Submissions that experiment with poetic forms to express personal experiences, incorporating elements of performance or theater.
- Visual Contributions:
Photographs or multimedia works that depict personal experiences and struggles within systems of power.
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Fig.2
Open Call no. 2: Transfiguration
To alchemize, to rebirth, to metamorphose, to hide the subject,
– On behalf of…; In the words of…; In memory of…; In the spirit of…; In the name of…
Deadline for Entries: May 15, 2025
Belief systems – religious, ideological, or capitalist – shape our understanding of reality and the values that we hold. Value attachment is central to transfiguration. It determines what we cherish, what we relinquish, what we pray to, and what we transform into new forms of meaning. While capitalist commodification has displaced spiritual and collective practices, attachments to alternative beliefs, rituals, and ways of being continue to emerge in the cracks of this system, resisting imposed hierarchies of worth.
This issue seeks to explore how transfiguration happens through belief, from spiritual practices to radical ideologies, delving into the mystical, the transformative, and the unexpected, interrogating the role of beliefs and rituals in shaping personal and collective transformation. And how capitalist society is built on the ranking of beliefs and how this legitimizes forms of marginalization and oppression.
We are looking for works that inspire wonder and contemplation, and that engage with the act of transformation – both individual and collective, that explore the multiple meanings of the term across different disciplines – e.g., religion, philosophy, art, politics, and/or social theory.
Topics:
- Miracles and Apparitions:
The mystical, unexplained, or seemingly miraculous experiences that challenge dominant narratives of rationality and truth.
- Rituals of the Everyday:
How rituals, ranging from personal habits to public ceremonies, offer moments of resistance and transformation in secular or capitalist contexts.
- Faith in Crisis:
Reflections on how faith and spirituality have shifted in response to political, environmental, or cultural crises.
- Alternative Spiritual Practices:
The rise of non-institutional spiritual practices that resist the commodification of belief and provide collective meaning-making opportunities.
- Ideological Transformation:
Narratives of personal or collective transformation through shifts in belief systems, whether through activism, education, or spiritual awakening.
- Reclaiming the Sacred, the Ecstatic:
How marginalized communities are reclaiming sacredness in art, activism, and daily life in the face of secularization?
- Icons and Beliefs:
Personal stories about the figures, mentors, or icons who have transformed your beliefs and understanding of the world.
- Capitalism as Religion:
Analyzing capitalism as a belief system that structures lives and societies, and exploring acts of spiritual or ideological resistance to it.
Formats:
- Manifestos or Open Letters:
Written declarations of belief, asserting a particular perspective on faith, resistance, or transformation in the current dystopia.
- Dream Logs or Diaries:
Creative submissions documenting dreams, visions, or subconscious insights into belief systems.
- Letters or Prayers:
Written forms of communication that address higher powers, ancestors, or the community, offering reflections on faith and transformation.
- Mythic or Symbolic Narratives:
Fictionalized accounts of beliefs, icons, or experiences, incorporating myth, fantasy, or allegory.
- Visual Contributions or Glossaries:
Diagrams, cards, artworks, or lists of definitions that explore the intangible, sacred, or transformative elements of belief and spirituality.
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Fig. 3
Open Call no.3: Choreography
To elevate, to flow, to convert – Rituals, Ceremonies, Celebrations, Commemorations, Chants, Recipes, Conundrums
Deadline for Entries: July 1, 2025
This open call invites contributions that explore the choral nature of life and how it can unfold beyond choreographies of power. How do we move together when rhythms are imposed, fractured, or disrupted? What steps do we follow when the familiar patterns of movement reinforce asymmetries rather than transformation?
We are interested in the tensions between constraint and improvisation, repetition, and rupture – those habits, behaviors, and mentalities that persist even as we attempt to forge new constellations and dynamics. This fall, we reflect on the complex movements of bodies and goods within nature-cultural environments, tracing the shifting rhythms that shape our relationships and collective actions beyond the fluxes and trends of capital extraction and consumption.
In this process, we examine how attachment to certain values – whether inherited, imposed, or chosen – choreograph our movements through change, synchronizing solidarities or disrupting patterns of co-optation. We seek a range of formats that explore these questions from embodied, analytical, and historical perspectives.
Topics:
- Borders and Bodies in Motion:
The movement of people across borders as a reflection of power, migration, and resistance – looking at how bodies navigate shifting political landscapes.
- Collective Decision-Making Rituals:
Exploring the choreographed nature of decision-making in collectives, and how power and agency are shared or contested in these spaces.
- Rituals of Resistance:
The embodied practices, from protests to ceremonies, that serve as acts of resistance to the forces of power and oppression.
- Embodied Activism:
How activism is embodied – through performance art, protests, or everyday acts of political agency.
- Collective Movement and Solidarity:
Exploring how people move together in solidarity, whether in large-scale political movements or intimate, local efforts.
- Rehearsing for a New World:
Reflecting on the behaviors, mentalities, and habits that persist even in efforts to create change, and how we can unlearn these patterns.
- Ceremonial Choreography:
The ways ceremonies and public rituals serve as political or cultural choreography, shaping collective memory and resistance.
- Intergenerational Choreographies:
The passing down of political, cultural, and activist rituals between generations – what do such choreographies look like across time?
Formats:
- Manifestos or Protocols:
A declaration or set of guidelines for collective action, focusing on the embodied and choreographed nature of resistance.
- Scores or Scripts:
Written or visual representations of choreographed actions, whether in protest, ritual, or collective action.
- Speculative Fiction:
Submissions that imagine new forms of choreography for a future world–how will collective bodies move in a radically different political reality?
- Critical Reflections on Art and Activism:
Essays that analyze specific movements or artistic practices that have changed the way we “do” politics together.
- Visual Contributions:
Photographs, performance documentation, or hybrid documentation of political, activist, or artistic performances that focus on the embodied aspects of social change.
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Fig. 4
Open Call No. 4: Relationships
To love and be loved
– On Ancestry, Chains of Thought, Affinities, Kinships, Camaraderie, Values
Deadline for Entries: October 1, 2025
This call invites contributions that explore the frictions and synergies of belonging – belonging, no matter how enduring or how intensely. We aim to move beyond static identities and fixed categories, viewing relationships as active, ever-evolving processes, between solidifying and melting into air.
Relationships are not goods to be accumulated to assess our value in life, or to nest in the face of fabricated scarcity. We, therefore, plead for confrontation instead of ghosting: how can we otherwise dismantle the structures of class, race, and gender that are embedded in relationships without ruining dinner? What practices of kinship can help us imagine new ways of relating to each other beyond vertical hierarchies? Is friend-zoning simply another name for interdependency, as we have yet to learn the labor of compenetration? Are you lonely, or do you just want to be alone?
To close the year, we turn inward to examine the bonds that shape our lives and social worlds. Some connections may not survive times of upheaval, requiring us to form new ones, drawing on quantum physics, psychology, attachment theory, and affect theory all while delving into indigenous forms of relating and entangling.
Topics:
- Bumbling, Tindering, Swiping for Erotic Fiction:
Exploring the commodification of love, desire, and relationships in the era of the extreme self and how it shapes our emotional lives.
- Intimacy, Human and Non-human:
How intimacy is experienced in collective settings – whether in activism, solidarity movements, and/or community spaces.
- Romanticizing the System:
Critiquing how capitalist and heteronormative structures have influenced romanticized notions of love, marriage, and family.
- Solidarity as Care:
The practice of solidarity and mutual care looking at how relationships, whether romantic or platonic, can serve as sites of resistance.
- Political Love:
How do love, affection, and emotional connections play out within political movements – when do love and politics intertwine?
- Normativity Bending Relationships:
Exploring alternative relationship structures, from polyamory to non-romantic forms of affection and commitment, and how they resist conventional norms.
- Intergenerational Bonds, Family Trees:
The bonds and connections across generations – how do different age groups relate to one another in times of crisis or resistance?
- Criminalized Solidarities and Fugitive Kinships:
On tracing how relationships formed under conditions of state violence and surveillance defy legibility. Drawing from abolitionist and sanctuary movements to clandestine networks of care and protection.
Formats:
- Personal Letters or Chats:
Intimate reflections on relationships, love, and solidarity through letters or personal journals.
- Essays or Memoirs:
Analytical pieces and critical reflections explore the intersection of politics, love, and relationships in contemporary life.
- Poetry and Fiction:
Creative submissions that explore the nuances of love and connection in unconventional or political contexts.
- Visual Contributions:
Artworks that hold the complexities of relationships, whether in intimate or collective settings.
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This open call is illustrated by Julieta Aranda's Time Bank series.
Time banking is a tool that allows a group of people to create an alternative economic model in which they exchange their time and skills instead of buying goods and services with money or other state-backed currencies. This system is based on the principle that everyone can contribute something. By valuing all forms of labor equally, time banking connects unused resources with unmet needs, promoting a collaborative and inclusive economy. The origins of time-based currencies can be traced back to the American anarchist Josiah Warren and his Cincinnati Time Store (1827-1830) and the British industrialist and philanthropist Robert Owen, who founded the utopian community New Harmony in Indiana in 1824. Both initiatives attempted to develop economic systems based on cooperation rather than profit and to experiment with alternative forms of value exchange.
- Image Credits
Cover: Liam Gillick, Time Bank Currency, Courtesy of Julieta Aranda. © of the artists.
Fig.1 W.A.G.E, Time Bank Currency, Courtesy of Julieta Aranda. © of the artists.
Fig.2 Lawrence Weiner, Time Bank Currency, Courtesy of Julieta Aranda. © of the artists.
Fig.3 Sarah Morris, Time Bank Currency, Courtesy of Julieta Aranda. © of the artists.
Fig.4 Wilson: Anamaria, Time Bank Currency, Courtesy of Julieta Aranda. © of the artists.
