2MF is a series of community meetings – open and participatory experiences – organized by artists Sonya Derman and Maria Stabio, encouraging pro-emotive and ante-academic conversation among artists in New York City. Knockdown Center hosts it’s second 2MF meeting titled “The Office,” in collaboration with Sister Gallery:

“[management is] the art of getting things done through people” – Mary Parker Follett

As artists our professional and personal spheres have collapsed, our day jobs/incomes giving way to our more serious occupation: making the art, getting it shown and supporting our fellow impresarios. We do this work as solitary entrepreneurs or sometimes in small groups but we participate in a system that appears from a distance to share similarities with larger consolidated structures and seems to constitute our positions into a form of organized labor.

With this in mind it could be said that what is missing from this art world of object/idea producers, disseminators and aggregators is a quality middle management position: someone whose job it is to direct the flow of labor towards useful ends and serving as a communicative device between the various tiers.

In lieu of this we propose an employee skill-building exercise designed to facilitate group interaction that sharpens personal motivations while simultaneously considering the whole. Modeled on the popular game “Mafia”, “The Office” will be sure to unmask team players, weed out social climbers, reward clever deception, and bring stability and hierarchy to the nebulous world of artist-cum-laborers.

Pre-Meeting Reading:
Mark Panay, “5 Psychological Theories of Motivation to Increase Productivity”

About the Artists:
Sister Gallery consists of partners, Zuriel Waters and Jenny Lee. From 2014 to 2016, the gallery space held bi-monthly exhibitions in a window at 69 Irving Ave, in the heart of Bushwick. Waters and Lee met at Rhode Island School of Design, and moved to New York City in 2010. In addition to curatorial projects, Lee and Waters also write and paint.

About 2MF:
2MF, co-run by artists Sonya Derman and Maria Stabio, is a practice that encourages pro-emotive and ante-academic conversation among artists in New York City. Collaborating with selected facilitating thinkers, 2MF organizes periodic community meetings – open and participatory experiences – alongside post-meeting discussion aired and archived at Clocktower Radio. More information is available at 2manyfeelings.com.