interventions

The Political Condition of the Young Cultural Proletariat, Workshop 22-24 June 2021

Raluca Voinea (curator, tranzit.ro/Bucharest)

An emerging localised New East

In 2021, still a year of pandemic, there exist cultural institutions in Western countries that organise events, symposia, workshops, funded from progressive sources, and taking place mostly online, benefiting thus from the outsourcing of a broader range of labourers and using this format to impose in fact longer hours, invasion of one’s private space, and more. What individualises these events from most of the cultural labour these days is when their topics address issues related to inequalities between the not-at-all-former West and the different Easts, to empire and capital, colonisation and precarisation, privatisation and exploitation, with such glorious terms invoking high expectations from the part of those invited to join in. Yet again, this would only be normal and admirable were it not addressed with the double standard and hypocrisy that these institutions have been practicing for years and managed to hide behind nice and welcoming dinners in the Western capitals (often served by invisible migrants), petty per diems and the illusion that we are all part of the same game, the emancipated cultural crowd who can cry on each other’s shoulders over the miseries of our current societies. Left without the possibility to offer such small tokens of hospitality, these institutions imagine that with all the work shifted online, their guests can actually perform without being paid, hours of free labour, with the purpose of revolutionising the old divisions and, why not, proposing manifestos for the new world. This is a rather sarcastic summary of a real case, however, I invite you to count how many times have you been invited to take part in cultural events (online or offline) for which there was no fee offered in exchange for the performed labour. Or how many other events you have heard of (especially if you are young) to which you had to pay a fee yourself in order to register or to participate. And how many of these and those were supported and legitimised by serious members of the intellectual elites, mostly because they are part of a neo-medieval academic system that rewards these participations with credits and power.

There is no general precariat, there are perverse forms of maintaining and reproducing a culture of privilege and status quo. If there is any New East emerging, it is a localised one, which is aware of its history of emancipation (easily erased in the frantic chase of the 90s towards “synchronisation” and catching-up [Buden] with the Western canons), of the counter-canons it has generated in the past 30 years, of its resources of creativity that are often sold too cheap.

My invitation is to talk about possibilities of connecting different localities in ways that are not extractive, that are not based on exploitative labour, that acknowledge the different conditions of (under)privilege each is invited to speak from.

Corina Oprea (curator, HDK-Valand, Gothenburg)

Thoughts on Precarity: Some Contributions from L’Internationale Online

Starting from recent content published on L’Internationale Online I will attempt to provoke a discussion on curating and precarity by focusing on commissioning, precarisation and participation. Commissioning represents a curatorial mode of inquiry and it is important to asks why we commission, how and what kind of thinking the curators engenders. To support this point I invite you to read, listen and see the e-pub what about support and what about struggle: https://www.internationaleonline.org/current-issue/ Precarity, as an economic embodiment, is often related to unpredictable, insecure and exploitative labour relations, in large part influenced by a political climate favoring excluding so-called marginal positions. For this point, I invite you to read an article by Gergely Nagy, available in Hungarian and English:

Finally, I would like to reflect with you on how precarisation and participation have been affected by the last year and a half when over-digitization and virtuality have accelerated the neoliberal perspective over production of knowledge. As support for this point, I invite you to read Aida Sanchez in Spanish or English: 

Cătălin Gheorghe (curator, Vector & UNAGE Iași)

Contestations and resolutions for a labour revolution  

Changes in the hegemonical discourse of EU cultural politics after the financial crisis of 2008 are emphasising the role of entrepreneurial culture in a new “creative economy” that should increase the chances for young people to secure a “privileged” place in a recovering/resilient society. In reality, at the factual level, more and more young people that followed study programmes in the cultural field are not only feeling alienated in relation with the economic use of the products or services of their work, but also are becoming conscious of their increasing precarization. A new proletarian class emerged from the contraction of state responsibility that gave up the public cultural sphere to private business sector that is interested to monetize each interaction with people seen as creative assets, work forces or hedonistic consumers. In such a situation,  as a reaction, a new literature emerged, trying to characterize the new compositions of post-contemporary society (with reinvocations of Roman proletarization, Late Middle Age feudalism, Modern slavery, 20th Century fascism etc.) from the perspective of contagious notions such as precariat (Standing, 2011), projectariat (Szreder, 2016), cognitariat (Berardi, 2009, and Newfield, 2010), and others. These conditions, that describe the precarization of the political positions of young cultural workers (also including an important segment of the ”creative economy”, that can be called a “creative subclass”), could inform clarifications for opening new motivated possibilities for a reconsideration of the values of cultural labour.

Rena Raedle & Vladan Jeremic (artists, Belgrade)

Culture of Censorship and Possibilities of Organizing
The thesis we will discuss in our talk is that the “culture of censorship” is one of the important factors that determine the working conditions of cultural practitioners and art workers at the periphery of the EU. In societies where democratic principles are formally or informally suspended, as for example in Serbia or Hungary, the last few years have seen the endangerment of fundamental freedoms of speech and artistic expression. In Serbia, critical voices are pushed out of state institutions, while independent cultural activities are violently attacked by right-wing extremist groups. “Unwanted persons” are targeted and threatened in the media that is supported by state or para-state structures. The right-wing government has centralized cultural politics and established censorship in the field of culture as means of political control. How to deal with censorship in culture? What are the economic and social consequences for practitioners? We will tackle present struggles in the region and discuss examples of organizing.

Vladimir Us (artist and curator, Kishinev) 

Public enough? (preliminary title)

The presentation aims to familiarize the participants with the political and economic context of social and urban transformations that both, Republic of Moldova and its capital city of Chisinau (eng. Kishinev), were going through during the last few decades. Next to it we will examine the evolving educational opportunities and working conditions faced by the artists and culture workers with whom I have been collaborating over a decade or so as a curator and artist. Based on the existing documentation of several projects of culture activism carried out under the umbrella of Oberliht Association, we will learn about their political stakes as well will become aware of the creative ambitions of the participants in our programs, by getting acquainted more in detail with their works and with the issues they raise. Finally, we will try to answer on the question of how to position ourselves today as artists and culture workers, having as reference the notion of ”public”, while searching for the (local) answers to the ongoing (global) transformations and identifying sustainable solutions.

Vasyl Cherepanyn (curator, Head of the Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv)

Between Revolution and War: Art and Politics in Contemporary Ukraine

In his lecture, Vasyl Cherepanyn will analyse the cultural and political context in Ukraine during the situation of war and conflict, where radical attitudes and hostility have continued to grow and the degree of hate speech has increased both on a national and international level. The talk focuses on the functioning of cultural institutions in the revolutionary situation under the conditions of war and occupation, as well as on the connections between symbolic and real violence and its influence on cultural processes in Ukrainian society before and after the Maidan uprising. This talk shows how artistic, academic and political antagonisms have developed, seen specifically from the perspective of an engaged cultural institution and art that has become a political subject. Instead of speculating about what art and culture can bring to politics, it’s the artists themselves who must proclaim – where art fails, only politics can help?

Mick Wilson with Šárka Zahálková and Krisztián Gábor Török (HDK-Valand)

Teaching, Studying, Practicing and Enabling Precarity: Different perspectives from different sites

In this presentation the relationship between (a) contemporary art education and research, and (b) processes of precarity, are discussed from different perspectives (that include those of full-time educator; independent cultural worker; and continuing education and research student.) Different international collaborations and networks at Hdk-Valand will be discussed (PARSE, OPEN UP, Public Art and Art & Politics distance courses) in terms of the tensions of differential power positions in international networking. Through, constellating different perspectives in one presentation, there is a wish to access some of the contradictions and tensions within the practice and the critical discussion of precarity.

Viviana Checchia (curator, HDK-Valand)

From Transmission to Market Gallery: Artist-run space models

Creative Scotland investigated what is the best way to sustain artist-run and collectively organised activity in Scotland with a £400,000 pilot programme involving five of Scotland’s artist-led spaces. Embassy and Rhubaba in Edinburgh, Generator Projects in Dundee, and Transmission and Market Gallery in Glasgow were invited to participate in the project by the arts funding body. But has this scheme really provided us an answer?