Immaterial Labour & Post-work a lecture by artist Susan Kelly 11.30am FRIDAY 15th MARCH
Sallis Benney Theatre
everyone welcome
During the era of fordist production (1940s-1960s) becoming an artist was sometimes considered a way out of alienated factory labour or life as ‘salary man’. What happens when some of the key characteristics of artistic labour (flexibility, creativity, self-sufficiency, working with affect, and so on) become generalized in the post-fordist period? This second lecture on work, looks at categories of immaterial labour, precarity, reproductive labour and passion work, to interrogate how the relationship between art and work shifts from the 1970s onward. It explores experimental practices of withdrawal such as the Art Strike and the Human Strike, and how artists groups have fought together for fair payment for their work. The last part of the lecture charts the ways in which artist’s material struggles intersect with broader questions of free labour and post-work today, and debates around platform capitalism, platform cooperativism, mutualism and basic income.
Suggested reading;
Chapter 3: ‘Working Demands: From Wages for Housework to Basic Income’ in The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries – Kathi Weeks, 2011
Work: Documents in Contemporary Art – Friederike Sigler, 2017
Politics of Art: Contemporary Art and the Transition to Post-Democracy – Journal #21 December 2010 – e-flux – Hito Steyerl
Human Strike has Already Begun & Other Writings – Claire Fontaine (Artist collective), 2013
Wageless Life – Denning, Michael, Nov 2010
‘Art and Postfordism’ in Art and Value – Dave Beech
WAGE Just Released a Calculator That Tells Artists If They’re Getting Paid Fairly for Their Work | artnet News
Immaterial Labor – Maurizio Lazzarato
