Charles de Agustin, Sunset Seduction (video still), 2024. Courtesy the artist.

Join us on Wednesday 3rd December for a solo screening and open discussion of Sunset Seduction with artist and filmmaker Charles de Agustin.

Sunset Seduction follows a liberal philanthropist yearning for his next fling with radical politics. Made as the Palestine solidarity movement escalated in 2024, the film unfolds in essayistic fragments exploring ideas of freedom, violence, and the seductive capture of revolutionary ideology.

An evolving project, Sunset Seduction centres on a 45-minute film presented alongside site-specific contracts and discussions. Together, these elements aim to materialise the responsibilities of cultural workers in the global north. The work reflects on how nonprofit organisations—even those driven by equity, decolonisation, and abolition—remain tied to infrastructures that often drift toward establishment liberalism.

Influenced by Faye R. Gleisser’s notion of “risk work” and histories of the contract as artistic intervention, de Agustin has been developing bespoke agreements with each exhibiting institution. These contracts act as a “kill switch,” preventing elite institutions from presenting the work without committing to its ethos.

The discussion will explore the role of the contract in contemporary art, and how institutions can resist co-optation while confronting their own responsibilities within cultural infrastructures.

This event is free to attend and will be held at Auto Italia. To book, follow the link here or email info@artworkassociation.org

Charles de Agustin is an artist based in New York who primarily makes films through writing and speaking. Informed by experiences of collective study and organizing alongside jobs in arts admin and education, his current research revolves around necrophilanthropy.

Solo and group presentations through 2025 include Alternative Film/Video (Serbia), Auto Italia (UK), Badnam Film Festival (India), Gene Siskel Film Center (US), New Contemporaries (UK), Rupert (Lithuania), Saigon Experimental Film Festival (Vietnam), Spectacle (US), Vox Populi (US), and XINEMA (Canada).