Reading Work

Reading Work began in 2022 with a generous gift from Agnes Gund’s Art for Justice Fund. In exchange for reading and creatively responding to one of five long form books, participants are compensated for their reading hours and creative labor. The result is a non linear digital video and web based project built by hundreds of inspired responses in the form of films, paintings, hand written notes, poetry, photography, theatrical monologues, sound, movement, sculpture and multimedia devices. 

This collaborative artwork is held on Reading Work’s website and on social media as daily creative offerings so that the labor of reading and the community formed through the project can be shared to a wider public. 

Reading Work’s outreach intentionally gathers together individuals from outside of typical “art world” or well worn creative locales. Thus far, the project has collaborated and engaged with; Intergenerational environmentalists from Florida, Financial reparative practitioners in Los Angeles, Huntsmen from rural Texas, Feminist lesbian accountants from Massachusetts, Prison abolitionists from across the country, Newly immigrated artists living in Arkansas, Unhoused community members from Texas, Rabbi’s from Philadelphia and Boston, White women’s book clubs from Illinois and Washington, Black, Queer and Trans community members living and working together in Birmingham, Alabama, Quaker community organizers in Vermont, Doctors from Kentucky and Boston, University educators in California, Urban nuns from Upstate, New York and many families living in South Dakota, Vermont, and New York who are currently impacted by the American carceral system. These are just a few of many collaborators inside of the project.   

We are now raising funds for Season Two of Reading Work and we would love your support. The formation of the artwork requires the continuation of the cycle: the call, contemplation, action and response. By sharing your resources with Reading Work, you are building on the project’s premise of books and reading as compensated labor, enriching a vast network of artists and nonartists who turn the labor and contemplation of reading into a collective wide reaching artwork. 

To continue this engagement into the next cycle, we are raising $400,000 to sustain the project over the next year. The funds raised will continue the cycle of book distribution and provide honoraria for our collaborators' reading and creative responses.