Mission DriftThursday, July 20 at 7PMMaysles Cinema, 343 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, NY 10027Tickets: $15 General Admission/$7 Reduced Price
Mission Drift follows a nonprofit art gallery worker who tries to stay afloat when a horny 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. Mission Drift links the insufficiencies across commercial, nonprofit, academic, and DIY institutions to the broader American disdain for public services, with relevance far beyond the US. 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.
The medium of Mission Drift is described as “video and discussion:” the work may only be publicly presented if it is followed by a robust audience discussion on the issues at hand, structured in consultation with the artist if he is not already present. To this end, Mission Drift is not intended to be an airtight argument, but a series of prompts on how art is funded and circulated today.
The screening will be followed by an extended collective discussion led by Charles de Agustin and several Maysles staff members around the nonprofitization of social justice movements and labor in the arts/nonprofit sector.
Charles de Agustin is an artist based in Brooklyn who makes films, performances, and texts that scavenge in the ruins of critique and complicity. de Agustin earned a BFA in filmmaking and philosophy at Rutgers University and an MFA in studio art at the University of Oxford, where he received the Mansfield-Ruddock Art Prize in 2021. Presentations have included New Contemporaries, Kassel Dokfest, Rhode Island School of Design, Alternative Film/Video Belgrade, ISFF Nijmegen, Bodega Film Festival, Alliances & Commonalities Stockholm, Athens Film + Video Festival, and Brooklyn College. His work as an educator, curator, and gallery manager supports his practice, both financially and conceptually.