Not An Alternative is a collective and non-profit organization that works at the intersection of art, activism and theory. It has a mission to affect popular understandings of events, symbols, institutions, and history. Through engaged critical research and design, the group curates and produces interventions on material and immaterial space, bringing together tools from art, architecture, exhibition design, and political organizing.
All these efforts are enacted with an eye towards social change and strategies for creative political intervention that involve creating points of entry for arts audiences and everyday citizens alike–not through a typical head-on (or head-butt) approach, but through the occupation and redeployment of popular vernacular, semiotics, and memes.
For more than a decade Not An Alternative hosted free lectures, screenings, panel discussions, workshops and artist presentations at their former studio in Brooklyn, NY. The space consisted of a production workshop, filming studio, video editing suite, and a coworking space for artists, activists, scholars, and cultural producers. The group’s members are now distributed across the U.S.
About Collaborators:
Beka Economopoulos (she/her) is an environmental justice organizer, cultural strategist, and Co-Founder/ Director of Not An Alternative, a nonprofit art and social justice collective. Since 2014, the group’s primary project has been “The Natural History Museum”, an award-winning initiative that leverages the power of history, monuments, museums and movements to support climate and environmental justice. The Natural History Museum collaborates with artists, activists, frontline communities, scientists, and scholars to develop exhibitions, films, public events, research and writing, and advocacy campaigns, with the goals of educating the public, measurably influencing public opinion, and inspiring collective action to protect natural and cultural heritage.
Beka is a member of the Association of Science Museum Directors, was a Board Member of the 2017 March for Science, a 2018 Roddenberry Fellow, 2020 recipient of a Creative Capital award, and was honored as one of Grist magazine’s top fifty environmental leaders of 2020. She has two decades of experience working as an organizing director and communications consultant, as Online Organizing Director at Greenpeace USA, and Director of Strategy at Fission Strategy, where her clients included the United Nations Foundation, Western Conservation Foundation, EarthJustice, and Amazon Watch.
Jason Jones (he/him) is the Creative Director of The Natural History Museum, with a background in visual strategy, exhibit design and video production. He is the co-founder of Not An Alternative, working as a curator, artist, and award-winning filmmaker. His work has been featured in museums around the world, and in the public sphere in the context of social movements. Jason is a graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.