ABOUT THE WORK

Cellist, artist, and writer Ethan Philbrick joins an eclectic ensemble of singers to perform a new large-scale interdisciplinary choral work based on the anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin’s 1892 book The Conquest of Bread. Kropotkin is often credited with being the first writer to articulate a theory of mutual aid and The Conquest of Bread is his most widely read text, known for its critique of capitalism and its far-reaching vision of a world in which “all belongs to all.” Philbrick’s The Conquest of Bread will be performed by members of New York City’s socialist movement choir, Sing in Solidarity; a quartet of new music vocalists (Gelsey Bell, Catherine Brookman, Hai-Ting Chinn, and leiken); a trio of movement and performance artists (mayfield brooks, Jennifer Miller, and Anh Vo); and a group of surprise special guests.

RUN TIME

The Conquest of Bread is approximately 75 minutes.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ethan Philbrick is a cellist, performance artist, and writer. He holds a PhD in performance studies from New York University and has taught performance theory and practice at Pratt Institute, Muhlenberg College, New York University, Wesleyan College, Yale University, and The New School. He is currently performance curator at The Poetry Project. In 2023, Philbrick published Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence with Fordham University Press. He is part of the musical-theatrical project DAYS and has presented solo and collaborative performances in NYC and across the country. His musical performances have been called “overwhelmingly beautiful” and “extremely strange” in The Nation and his writing has been characterized as “rich and fascinating” in e-flux.  ethanphilbrick.com

ZINE FAIR

Come early for a pre- and post-show Zine Fair in the Skirball lobby featuring tables from Wendy’s Subway, Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Bilna’es, and Pinko.

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Bilna’es is a disciplinary platform that seeks to find new models for artists to redistribute resources and support one another in the production and circulation of work. It functions as a publishing space with releases ranging from music to video games, web projects, publications, performances, installations, and other yet-to-be-developed forms.
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Wendy’s Subway is a reading room, writing space, and independent publisher in Bushwick, Brooklyn. We support emerging artists and writers in making experimental, urgent work and create alternative modes for learning and thinking in community. Wendy’s Subway is dedicated to encouraging creative, critical, and discursive engagement with arts and literature. We prioritize collaboration and horizontal decision-making in our work towards being a responsive and sustainable organization.Our interdisciplinary program includes free readings, talks, performances, and reading groups, as well as sliding-scale writing workshops and intensives. We offer residencies designed to uplift artistic and scholarly research, archival and library projects, and independent publishing practices. Our multi-series publishing initiative includes artists’ books, poetic texts, and hybrid-genre works by time-based artists. Our non-circulating library holds a collection of over 3,000 titles, ranging from poetry and fiction, to criticism and art books.
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The collections that form the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, document the history of Labor and the Left and Labor. While the collections include records from the 18th century to the present, its core collections are from the late 19th and early 20th centuries to the contemporary day. Though its focus is primarily within the United States, and New York City more specifically, it is international in scope.Tamiment’s archival collections, manuscripts, oral histories, photographs, AV, books, serials, and pamphlets document the history of labor, socialism, communism, anarchism, utopian experiments, the New Left, and the post-New Left, and present-day activist and social movements as well as the social and cultural contexts in which these movements exist. In addition to collecting publications documenting the history of the organized left and labor movements, the Library acquires research materials describing the history of work and working people in all its varied dimensions with an emphasis on class, race, gender, ethnicity, immigration and migration history, the workplace, working people–in particular working class people, and labor market participation.The Tamiment, as part of NYU Special Collections, is open Mondays-Fridays, 10 AM-5 PM by appointment. More information on booking an appointment is available here: https://library.nyu.edu/about/collections/special-collections-and-archives/special-collections/
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Pinko is a collective for thinking gay communism together. We publish print issues, books, zines, and host essays, translations, and archival material on our website.

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