Before its first celebration back in September 1997, Chicago Labor Arts festival was planned based on some questions: What is Labor? What is Art? First of all, labor is broadly the group or class of people who work and do not own the means of making what they produce; who have worked but who have been “downsized” out of a job; who have no hope of ever holding a job that will provide their means of material and cultural sustenance.
This group of people works full time, part time and no time; it has permanent jobs, temporary jobs, pieces of jobs. It gets paid good wages, bad wages, welfare or no fare. It belongs to the AFL-CIO, the AARP, the Welfare Rights Union, and mostly to no union at all. By this definition, labor means better than 90% of the people in the U.S.A.
It certainly means better than 90% of all artists. The advent of art as a saleable item has meant at least these two things. First, the artist has become a special group of labor that earns its living by selling its ability to make art like commercial visual art, advertising, music, writing, etc. Second, those who cannot make a living at art become branded as non-artists, not creative. The defining factor is the marketplace of commodities.
Art, though, is not the special province of immensely talented individuals. Art emanates from the experience and action of each individual, taking different and surprising turns and forms, within a social and collective context. Turning art into a thing whose sole object is the procurement of the means of subsistence is part of a process which began with the introduction of commodities in general.
This festival seeks to celebrate the joys and struggles of working-class people and to celebrate the creative human spirit. Art is aimed to popularize what the history books have erased.