Born Again Labor Museum (BALM)
828 East Main Street (Suite E)
Carbondale, Illinois 62901
(618) 713-8132
Dear friends, neighbors, and comrades,
BALM needs your help to redeem the lost generations of labor.
We started BALM (Born Again Labor Museum) as an irrealist visual and conceptual art project in 2018; inspired by Walter Benjamin’s argument that a revolution could redeem all generations of the exploited and oppressed (past, present and future). BALM is irrealist because we reject the false rationalism of capitalist realism — the prevalent idea that nothing can be imagined that doesn’t fit into the cultural logic of capitalism. We conceive of BALM — in part — as an evolving mosaic or mural of visual and conceptual gestures; reflecting the fact that the working-class has a unified interest against capitalism but that each group of workers, each individual worker, is unique. BALM is our attempt to represent what we call a working-class multiverse.
Poster for BALM’s grand opening in March (2022).
We opened BALM to the public in Carbondale, Illinois in mid-March 2022. Since then we have offered BALM as a space for practical and impractical solidarity. By impractical solidarity we mean creating a space that is at least partly outside the enclosure of the social commons by capitalism — a place that isn’t trying to sell you or sell you something. By practical solidarity, we mean networking and collaborating with our fellow workers, socialists, anarchists, and others against our common enemy. We have started to collaborate with the Carbondale Tool Library (a local mutual aid project that lends out tools freely in the area that is now located within the BALM space), hosted workers who are unionizing their workplaces, held protest-sign making events for BLM, anti-debt, and abortion rights actions, and movie nights with both the Southern Illinois Democratic Socialists of America (SIDSA) and Southern Illinois Young Democratic Socialists of America (SIU YDSA) chapters.
The BALM project has been covered extensively in traditional and online media over the past several months. In the fall (2021), we were interviewed by Adam Ray Adkins on The Acid Left podcast. In December (2021), Kallie Cox wrote a cover story on BALM for The Southern Illinoisan. Articles followed on our Communist Manifesto Distribution Project and BALM’s relationship with Locust Review. We were even featured in a segment on Illinois Public Radio’s 21st Show. You can find other stories and links on the front page of the BALM website.
We encourage you to look around our site to see the many different BALM projects (former, current, and upcoming). Some are included in the gallery on this page. These projects include:
Wounded Tool Library — a collection of “wounded tools” that have taken on anthropomorphic and magical qualities.
Communist Manifesto Distribution Project — distributing Communist Manifestos free of charge throughout southern Illinois.
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project — a mapping of para-historical events outside of time throughout the area.
Common Task Agit-Prop Library — a collection of both practical and irrealist protest materials that will be available at BALM.
BALM Reading Library — a collection of radical, anarchist, socialist, and other books.
BALM Puppet Project — BALM ‘puppet shows’ and videos (coming soon).
BALM Sticker Library — a collection of free stickers available to all BALM visitors.
Cyber-Brechtian Collages/Paintings
BALM Artifacts
and more
As working-class people whose incomes took a hit during the pandemic, we need help to keep BALM going and to develop these projects. Renting an appropriate space in Carbondale costs more than $5000 a year. Many of you donated to our fund drive last year — and we are very grateful. Unfortunately, we fell a bit shy of our goal. So we are reaching out again to ask for your support.
There are two ways you can help us. You can support our Go Fund Me fundraiser. Or you can sign up for our Patreon page and support us on a monthly basis.
This is a large project for us; but it is a modest project in the overall effort to foster a working-class imaginary — and cultural and physical space — in opposition to capitalist realism. We cannot rely on funding from an overly-financialized and corrupt art world. So we are reaching out to you, our friends, comrades, and working-class siblings.
Sincerely,
Adam Turl + Tish Turl
Images from BALM — click for larger view
BALM grand opening — “Book Gallows Room” — in March (2022).
BALM storefront (May 2022)
Visitors picking stickers from BALM’s free sticker pile during our grand opening (2022).
BALM’s “main hall” and meeting area (May 2022).
Artist and professor Najjar Abdul-Mussawir at the BALM opening (2022).
BALM attacked by pixels in BALM Educational Video #2: How to Become a Possum (2020).
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project (2022)
BALM’s Communist Manifesto Distribution Project (2021)
Photograph from BALM by Richard Reilly (2022)
YDSA comrades working on BLM and anti-debt signs for protests in February (2022).
Detail of the “Slow Apocalypse Room” at BALM (2022).
Some of the Carbondale Starbucks union workers at BALM (May 2022)
Making abortion rights signs for emergency Roe protests (2022).
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project (2022)
Nick Shillingford and. Laura Ashley Lomax from Socialist News and Views visiting BALM on Easter (2022).
YDSA movie night at BALM (2022)
YDSA comrades working on BLM and anti-debt signs for protests in February (2022).
Cook-out during a sign-making event at BALM (2022)
From BALM’s Common Task Agit-Prop Library (2021)
Making abortion rights signs for emergency Roe protests (2022) at BALM.
BALM arfifact — Burger King Parking Lot’s Wife (2021)
Making abortion rights signs for emergency Roe protests (2022).
BALM’s Communist Manifesto Distribution Project (2021)
Nils Jacobsen and the labor historian James Barrett at BALM (2022).
Photograph from BALM by Richard Reilly (2022)
detail, Cicero’s Pawns Pwn Cicero (2020-2021). Mixed media on antique gaming table.
Making abortion rights signs for emergency Roe protests (2022) at BALM (2022).
Big Muddy Monster Atlas Project (2022)
BALM stickers (2022)
