Ask! is a group of cultural workers making alliances with (migrant) domestic workers in the Netherlands and elsewhere to research and address the conditions and demands of domestic work today. Ask! stands for Actie Schone Kunsten, a punning name using the traditional Dutch term for ‘fine arts’, which can also be read as ‘clean arts’. By organising public actions and experimenting with forms of visual representation and rhetorical strategies, Ask! challenges the gap between ‘real politics’ and the political, questioning the dominant economic systems that devalue our work and our rights for decent work and living. Presented here is documentation from their five-point thesis, Why We Work Together , and reverse graffiti campaigns in ‘dirty’ areas of Utrecht and London, using isotypes depicting an ‘army’ of domestic workers created by Berlin artist Andreas Siekmann. NB: In advance of the festive opening of GDR GOES ON – Ljubljana, on Friday 4 October, from 2 to 5pm, Ask! will perform a reverse graffiti action throughout Ljubljana in collaboration with Justice for Domestic Workers (London) and the local group Revolting Women Social Workers.
