Former employees of New York arts organisation claim they were fired for supporting artists’ pro-Palestine statement – The Art Newspaper

Two former employees of Eyebeam, a non-profit art and technology centre in Brooklyn, New York, believe they were terminated for publicly supporting a statement in which ten artist fellows called on the organisation to endorse the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (Pacbi).

Artists in the Eyebeam Democracy Machine cohort installed a single-channel video displaying a statement of dissent during their final showcase on 28 September 2024 at the National Academy of Design in Manhattan.

The video statement came weeks after the artists chose to withdraw the individual projects they applied to the programme with from the fellowship’s showcase, and followed a statement they released last March urging Eyebeam to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and to endorse the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (Pacbi).

“We found ourselves at odds with the palace of language constructed to house us, having witnessed the failings of the ‘Democracy’s Machine’ in rising to the call for Palestinian liberation over the course of our Eyebeam fellowships,” the group’s video statement reads in part. Its display at the National Academy of Design comprised one screen fitted with two headsets playing an audio recording of one of the artists reading the text aloud for accessibility.

The statement was signed by Begoo Collective, Cielo Saucedo, elekhlekha, Mashinka Firunts Hakopian, Nat Decker, Neema G. Siphone, Sahej Rahal, Sam Rabiyah, Sammie Veeler and Xiaowei Wang. All but one member of the cohort withdrew from the showcase and endorsed the statement.

In an email to The Art Newspaper, the artist signatories said they witnessed a “culture of repression, silencing and unexplained staff terminations—specifically, related to Palestinian solidarity organising” throughout their remote six-month fellowship run by the non-profit.

Launched in 2020, the Democracy Machine is a six-month initiative that awards artists working between contemporary art, design and technology $20,000 in funding. The 2024 fellowship ran from 15 February to 15 August.

Staffing crisis

In March 2024, just weeks into the fellowship, the group released a statement calling on Eyebeam to join Pacbi that had been signed by nearly 100 people, half of whom said they were Eyebeam fellowship and residency alumni, former staff or affiliates. The artists say that three of the five Eyebeam staff signatories of the letter have since left the organisation—two were terminated and one resigned—an outcome many other signatories believe was retaliatory, according to a member of the Democracy Machine cohort who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for the group’s agreement to act as a collective.

The statement on view at the showcase also indicated that the cohort rerouted fellowship resources toward organising for Pacbi, which included hours spent drafting both statements, preparing the video work, corresponding with Eyebeam about Pacbi and discussing Pacbi (including excerpts from the boycott’s official guidelines) with Eyebeam’s executive leadership.

Sharsten Plenge, the former development manager at Eyebeam, was among the staff members who signed the letter in March and was subsequently terminated.

“As an organisation that claims to uphold a legacy of supporting artists who make ‘radical’ work with technology, I experienced Eyebeam in a state of perpetuating its own institutional polycrisis,” Plenge told The Art Newspaper via text message. “From attempts to censor and effectively silence the very artists it has a responsibility to materially respond to; to executive leadership, namely the director, gatekeeping discussions among staff and with the board.”

Before Plenge was terminated on 6 June, she and other staff members were required to undergo 360-degree employment assessments, which are meant to happen annually at Eyebeam but had not happened in three years. Even though she received a score of 3.8 out of 5, she was still terminated.

Kemi, a former employee who was supportive of the cohort’s intervention (and only shared her first name for fear of retribution), was terminated one week before Plenge. She had been told in April that her position would no longer be needed but that she would be given ample notice of her position’s end date and of future available positions. Instead, she was let go abruptly in June.

“This news devastated me because I had a deep connection with the artists,” Kemi told The Art Newspaper. She had helped develop the Democracy Machine programme. “I worked with artists to shape a narrative of what artist interventions into [institutional] funding for their projects could look like.”

The week after Kemi was terminated, another employee who had signed the cohort’s letter, Brent Bailey, announced his departure. “I stand with the artist fellows unequivocally,” Bailey wrote in an email to The Art Newspaper. “No organisation can call itself radical if it’s unwilling to speak out against an ongoing genocide.”

Roderick Schrock, the executive director at Eyebeam, left for a previously scheduled vacation shortly after Bailey’s resignation. Eyebeam’s executive leadership did not respond to The Art Newspaper’s requests for comment.

One-way conversation

“Our initial intervention as [a] cohort was an invitation to the organisation to enter into dialogue,” the members of the 2024 Democracy Machine cohort told The Art Newspaper in a collective statement. “Since the showcase, executive leadership has not publicly addressed our intervention or made any offer of repair.”

The artists have circulated stills of the video statement on social media. They have received messages of support and solidarity in response, including from the Indigenous (Wixárika) artist Edgar Fabián Frías and the author and curator Arushi Vats.

“The withdrawal of our work is also an invitation to the organisation—an invitation to reconsider engaging in meaningful dialogue in support of Palestinian liberation,” the 2024 Democracy Machine cohort artists added. “That withdrawal responds to widespread attempts to silence collective organising, and aims to bring visibility to global calls for boycott and divestment.”