Survival Strategies

Survival strategies refer to the individual and collective methods developed to sustain life and production under conditions of precarity, social exclusion, and structural inequality. This concept encompasses not only economic means of livelihood, but also practices of existing within heteronormative systems, political oppression, and a persistent sense of futurity being denied. Survival goes beyond maintaining the present moment; it involves preserving the capacity to imagine the future and collectively construct other ways of living. Especially in the field of art, solidarity networks, commons, and alternative forms of existence that emerge through invisible labor, political activism, and non-market modes of production form the basis of these strategies.

Suggested Readings:

Bellini, Andrea, and Göksu Kunak, eds. Artists’ Survival Kit. Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, 2023.

Guy Standing. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.

José Esteban Muñoz. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2009.