Is It Really Working

Work, Unwork, Postwork and Labor in Capitalist
Realities

When we speak of work, we speak of a broad social
and material construct, crucial in shaping
experiences of reality and contouring the
production of subjectivity. This understanding is
rooted in a critical tradition that begins with
Marx's notion of estranged labor, and continues
through recent feminist critiques of the concept
of work ethics. These analyses place the
experience of work at the epicenter of our
existence, operating as an ideological mechanism
that promises perpetuation and legitimation of
the individual's life via routines of normative
and moralized tasks. This seminar attempts to
examine this notion of work and work ethics
alongside artistic practices who understand
cultural production to be enmeshed in a larger
system of labor relations, and inherently
connected to contemporary social and political
movements. Our analysis will consider different
working practices from a discoursive and
practical perspective through reading discussion,
workshops and field trips to diverse
materializations of 'workspaces'.