Arts + Literature Laboratory & Communication welcome filmmaker Charles de Agustin to screen and discuss his recent short film Mission Drift on Wednesday, January 24, 2024 at 7:00pm. Arts workers and their colleagues are invited to join us for a screening and an open discussion about current conditions for artmaking and nonprofit arts organizations. Mission Drift running time is 13 minutes, total event duration will be approximately 90 minutes. Free admission, suggested donation $5.

Mission Drift follows a nonprofit art gallery worker who tries to stay afloat when a sadomasochistic philanthropist infiltrates the organization. An experimental essay film tinged with noir and fantasy, the work is driven by research into the sparse history of federal US arts funding since the 1930s and more recent universal basic income trials. The film’s tragic narrative takes aim at how seductive philanthropy can be and points toward the need to constantly reinvent strategies against mechanisms of capture. Various formal strategies in the work also intend to explore the relationships between accessibility, complicity, precarity, and cinema.

* Please note that this event takes place at Arts + Literature Laboratory!