bbk berlin as guest: Art Workers’Summit
A two day hybrid online and in-person initiative of Arts of the Working Class in cooperation with Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.
Who are the culture and art workers of today, what are they confronted with, and what do they represent? How do art and cultural workers imagine spaces of representation that enable interdependent practices? How can institutions support and be part of self-organization in the cultural field?
The connecting point between the exhibition Sieh Dir die Menschen an! - Das neusachliche Typenporträt in der Weimarer Zeit and the street newspaper Arts of the Working Class is the image of workers, in particular the transforming perception of culture and art workers. This summit is about exploring contemporary relationships to the means of production and to one's own (collective) body. AWC offers keynotes, workshops, and artistic interventions from a feminist and intersectional perspective.
While artistic work has diversified in many ways nowadays, the stereotype of the superior artist persists, while a large number of cultural workers continue to invisibly exist and participate in the production of a disunified, deregulated cultural field.
However, contrary to an individualistic perspective, an emerging artistic working class does not insist on its independence, but works explicitly collaboratively and in collectives, recognizing its socio-ecological, socio-cultural, and socio-economic interdependence, as well as the intertwining of infrastructural and organizational work with art production.
When it comes to representation and self-representation of culture and art workers, we have to consider them as two different categories. In the Art Workers' Summit, perspectives of visibility and political assertiveness will be discussed and, among other things, set in the museum context.
While artists of the Weimar Republic searched for the faces of workers, a more general audience today may have little concept of the contemporary faces of cultural practitioners who are actively engaged in organizing meaningful interaction and collaboration. In an era in which imagery has diversified and visual trends are ephemeral, the search for a representational face may appear to have been overcome, but the question remains as to how the above-mentioned practices and practitioners can become visible and identifiable.
Friday 13.10.2023 14.30-18:00, Online Zoom Link Code: Unions
Saturday 14.10.2023 14:00 - 19:30, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Reuchlinstraße 4B, 70178 Stuttgart, If you consider participating, please register at fuehrung@kunstmuseum-stuttgart.de
Art Workers’ Summit - Schedule
Freitag, 13. Oktober 2023, Keynotes, Online
- 14h30 Welcome by the cooperation partners
Arts of the Working Class, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Kulturamt Stuttgart, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart
- 15h Opening (in German and English language)
What remains of the activists' work, as exemplified by L'Union des Refusés, by the founders of Arts of the Working Class.
- 15h30-16h30 Keynote on the Solidarity Trinity (in Englischer Sprache)
Yin Aiwen will share the concept and theorization of The Solidarity Trinity, a research thread from her gamification-as-research project “The Alchemy of Commons” with educator and community activist Yiren ZHAO. The Solidarity Trinity suggests Labour, Relationship, and Space are integral to the making of solidarity in a collective environment. In the talk, Aiwen will share study examples in the cultural fields where the intended solidarity fails, offering analysis and action points to form resilient, diverse, and inclusive togetherness.
- 16h45 - 17h45 Keynote on the Organization of Art Workers within Museums (in Englischer Sprache)
Dana Kopel’s keynote is pushing against the common framing of art workers' labor as not labor at all. The input takes a look at the organizing efforts that have taken place in museums and art institutions in the past years and insists on a critique of the role of art and the art world within racial capitalism.
Samstag, 14. Oktober 2023, Gathering at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart
- 14h00-16h00 Workshop about the role of commissioners in cultural production (in German)
In his contribution, Alexander Koch talks about the New Commissioners [orig. die neuen Auftraggeber], a model that creates new relationships between artists, communities, and audiences. When local citizens' initiatives - accompanied by mediators - commission artists with works that change something locally, the usual roles of all participants also change. Ecosystems are created for a community-oriented art that can succeed in many ways but also faces great challenges.
- 17h00-18h30 Participatory Conversation (in English)
How can our tears shed over politics lead to actual structural change? What concrete measures need to be taken, and how? The tedious writing of contracts is often swept under the carpet and leads to invisible work. But struggles that are to be impactful in the long term must find a written form. How can this work emerge from obscurity and improve labor conditions in the arts? Two organizations run by cultural workers meet an allied institution. Zoë Claire Miller is an artist and one of the two spokespersons of the Artists Association Berufsverband Bildender künstler*innen Berlin, which has a long and turbulent history. Art Workers Italia, an autonomous and non-partisan association, was established recently and is represented for the occasion by artist Alice Pedroletti. Eric Golo Stone introduces an institutional perspective and the specific situation of the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. Among other shapes of exchange, the fundamental meaning of contract-making and policy work will take the form of an incantation as guided meditation.
- 19h00 Get together: Drinks and soup
Participative Performance by Dina El Kaisy Friemuth as collective Check-out
Artistic documentation
We have invited Artists/Documenters to the events, who will accompany the Summit and process their experiences into a contribution to the upcoming issue of Arts of the Working Class (Issue 29, Launch: Dec. 1, 2023):
- Naomi Rado (curator and writer, member of Synnika e.V.)
- Jeronimo Voss (artist and educator, member of Synnika e.V.)
- Marta Stanisława Sala (artist)
- Dina El Kaisy Friemuth (artist)
Accessibility
We strive to be accessible. We will have the individual program parts subtitled live with Otter.ai. For further inquiries regarding assistance, directions, or wheelchair accessibility please contact hey@artsoftheworkingclass.org.