XClose

History of Art

Home
Menu

Untitled (Labour): Contemporary Art & Immaterial Production

Saturday 17 March 2012, 2-6pm

Tate Britain, Clore Auditorium

Untitled (Labour), image

Carey Young, Body Techniques (after A Line in Ireland, Richard Long, 1974), 2007, ©Carey Young. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

This half-day symposium invites audience members to engage with international artists and academics to investigate current conditions of artistic production in relation to new forms of labour in the emerging global economy. Presenting various perspectives on immaterial labour and its relationship to contemporary art, speakers will address questions around the impact of immaterial production on new aesthetic forms and uses of art, how artists both embody and contest the precarious working conditions of immaterial labour, and art's potential to serve as immanent critique of capitalism.

Speakers: Claire Bishop, Tania Bruguera, Pascal Gielen, Stefano Harney, Stewart Martin, Hito Steyerl, & Carey Young.

Organisers: TJ Demos, Nora Razian, & Lauren Rotenberg

Preliminary Questions

  • Given the theoretical elaborations of immaterial labour, and their critique, what possibilities of resistance remain for engaging 'immaterial labour' in relation to artistic practice? Can 'immaterial labour' conceptualize the radical and political potential of today's art forms? Can 'immaterial' artistic practice still be considered to operate as an immanent critique of capitalism, or rather merely an expression of its recent post-Fordist development? How might art offer strategies for harnessing what philosophers such as Michael Hardt and Toni Negri have termed new modes of biopower?
  • How does immaterial labour relate to precarity? Can precarity - a product of new employment structures based on short-term contracts, flexibility, insecurity, and fluidity of labour - be mobilized as a strategy of resistance, as a resource, and not simply figure as a sign of existential, social and economic vulnerability?
  • What forms of political solidarity remain for those in situations of precarious labour? How have recent social movements defined new approaches to the stakes, practice and experience of immaterial labour and precarity?
  • Where do art institutions figure in relation to precarity? Can artists operate critically and autonomously within the institutional sphere? What potential remains for institutional critique today, and what of the options to create new institutions or operate outside them?

Select Bibliography