Occupational realism. Discussion with Julia Bryan-Wilson

In 2012 Julia Bryan-Wilson published the text “Occupational Realism” in which she proposed the eponymous term to describe the specifics of many contemporary (post)artistic practices. She played with the double meaning of the word “occupational”, referring both to “occupation” as profession and an activist practice. She wrote that “artists enact the normal, obligatory tasks of work under the highly elastic rubric of art. Here, the job becomes the art and the art becomes the job”. During the event we will discuss the notion of “occupational realism” in the context of works presented in The Impermanent show, as well as practices of other artists, such as Renzo Martens and Orla Barry, and programs that continue the tradition of Artist Placement Group.

Julia Bryan-Wilson is Professor of Contemporary Art and LGBTQ+ Studies at Columbia University and core faculty in the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender.  Her research interests include feminist and queer theory, theories of artistic labor, performance and dance, production/fabrication, craft histories, photography, video, visual culture of the nuclear age, and collaborative practices. Bryan-Wilson has been a curator-at-large at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo since 2019. She is the author of four books: Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (University of Californian Press, 2009); Art in the Making: Artists and Their Materials from the Studio to Crowdsourcing (with Glenn Adamson, Thames & Hudson, 2016); Fray: Art and Textile Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2017); and Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face (Yale, 2023).