Former West
Division of Labor and Class (Re)Composition in the Arts

"Art and Labor after the End of Work" - a collaborative project by BAK, basis voor actuele kunst in Utrecht; the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; and the Free/Slow University of Warsaw (F/SUW) - is a FORMER WEST Public Editorial Meeting that takes as its starting point F/SUW’s case study of labor relations in the arts, The Art Factory (Bęc Zmiana Foundation, Warsaw, 2014).

Taking the Free/Slow University of Warsaw’s report, "The Art Factory" (2014), as a case study, this panel focuses on the notion of labor and distribution within the artworld from a number of perspectives, such as the organization of labor, and the politics of art and work. Looking at notions of affective and invisible labor—drawing upon the lessons of feminism, and also taking into consideration the structuring device of precarity itself, and its historical role within the arts—this session considers if these features provide a “political economy of the former West,” and following this, show how the ways of production and division of labor within the artworld can be said to be indicative of the proposed “former-ness” of the West and its institutions.

Panelists: Free/Slow University of Warsaw (Warsaw); Corina L. Apostol (art historian, curator and artist, Bucharest/New York), Angela Dimitrakaki (writer and lecturer, Edinburgh/Athens); and Ewa Majewska (philosopher, Berlin/Warsaw). Moderated by Kuba Szreder (curator, writer, and an initiator of Free/Slow University of Warsaw, Warsaw/London).

More info about the conference on the event's website.

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