THEY CALL IT CREATIVITY, WE CALL IT UNWAGED LABOR
THEY CALL IT CREATIVITY, WE CALL IT UNWAGED LABOR
A Lecture by Katja Praznik
Date&Time: 29th November 2021, 18 Uhr
Place: UDK Hardenbergstraße 33, 10623 Berlin, Hörsaal 158
Modus: 2 G
In English
REGISTER: Places in the room are limited (30); 2 G rules apply (update 11-22-21). To attend in person, please register by sending an email with the subject “in person @ K. Praznik” to k.leko@udk-berlin.de before November 28th, 10 p.m. In case the physical space is overbooked, you will receive a Webex link. [Ah,da: Ustvari slavimo Dan Republike /Yugos welcome.
Expounding on the feminist critique of unpaid reproductive labor and the legacy of Yugoslav socialism where art was treated as a form of work, Katja Praznik will invite the audience to rethink art as a site of exploitation but also as a potential site of radical labor-centered struggle. The lecture will discuss several recent cases of labor-centered collective initiatives of art workers that have achieved or successfully strive for fair payment and working conditions in the arts. // The past few years have witnessed an important rise in initiatives and campaigns for fair payment of artists' labor. Beyond the distress caused by the pandemic, art workers have become increasingly aware that the discourse of creativity, self-realization and autonomy are volatile if not perilous notions that hide the exploitative economic relations and labor involved in contemporary art and cultural production. But while the neoliberal policies and art institutions maintain to profit from dogmas about creativity and the church of believers is going strong, there are groups of art workers around the globe that no longer abide by the mystification of art work. They are no longer willing to afford unpaid labor and reproduce the cycle of exploitative working conditions in the arts.
Katja Praznik is the author of Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism (University of Toronto Press, 2021)) and Paradoks neplačanega umetniškega dela: avtonomija umetnosti, avantgarda in kulturna politika na prehodu v postsocializem (The Paradox of Unpaid Artistic Labor: Autonomy of Art, the Avant-Garde and Cultural Policy in the Transition to Post-Socialism) (Založba Sophia, 2016). She is Associate Professor in the Arts Management Program in the Department of Media Study at University at Buffalo where she teaches courses related to the political economy of the arts, cultural policy, and research in the field of arts management. Katja Praznik holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Ljubljana. Her research focuses on labor issues in the arts during the demise of the welfare-state regimes, and has been published in various peer-reviewed journals, such as Historical Materialism, Journal for the Critique of Science, and KPY Cultural Policy Yearbook as well as in edited volumes, among them in NSK From Kapital to Capital (MIT Press 2015), and Crisis and New Beginnings: Art in Slovenia 2005–2015 (Moderna galerija 2015). Before moving to the United States, she worked as a freelancer in the Slovenian independent art scene. She was the editor-in-chief of journal Maska and was engaged in the struggles for improving working conditions of art workers at Društvo Asociacija. Recently, she started an initiative Cultural Work Inspection.
Images: 1) Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism, Cover Design: Heng Wee Tan for University of Toronto Press, 2021. 2) Katja Praznik, privat archive.
