BODIES AT WORK

Maja Bekan

Angela Serino

What is the future of the cultural worker? 

Is Art work or not? Do we work too much because life itself has become ‘occupied’ by constant activity, making obsolete the division between free time and work? Are we able to listen to the demands of our finite body in front of the infinite demands placed upon it? Do you also dream to retire in order to fully enjoy your life? 

Cognitive capitalism, immaterial labour and creative production are some of the recurrent terms used to describe today’s typology of work. What those words depict is the model of a worker who is available 24-7, is radically flexible, able to work under pressure, is multi-skilled and a multi-tasker, even though they are not paid for all the work they do and has no guarantee of any permanent position. This ideal worker is employed not only for their education and working experience but also for their personality and passions, for their private tastes and aspirations, and for their networks of personal relationships. In short, for their (total) identity. For modern businesses, it is the personal capacities of the worker that are increasingly considered essential to the production of economic value and to measure professional performance.

In this quest for the ideal worker, the artist, perceived as a creative capital, as a person who is capable of continuous reinvention, self-education and self-initiation, seems to have offered the best model of reference to corporate business for such new immaterial economy. But is the artist really the ‘champion’ of such an economic model? And what does it imply for every worker to be creative? 

Starting from these questions, artist Maja Bekan and curator Angela Serino will examine and voice what kind(s) of “work” it is that art and cultural workers do. What is their relationship to time and space, how and for whom they work, how they balance their private, social and professional life, and what are the advantages and pitfalls of such circumstances. The intention to activate such a process is to explore possible future scenarios for these professions, while at the same time questioning the language and the rhetoric used to describe the value of cultural work.  

Over several months, BODIES AT WORK took the shape of an office space for people in need of a work place ("The ultimate flexible work station") and of a series of semi-public conversations, based on selected texts and artists’ contributions (videos, films) hosted together with local participants.