From Artists As Workers To Workers As Artists (And Back)

Sociologist Katja Praznik, author of Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism, and artist Ina Wudtke will discuss their views on the relationships between art and work, and artists and workers in a talk moderated by philosopher Dieter Lesage, which will be preceded by a screening of Wudtke’s video, A Portrait of the Artist as a Worker (RMX) (2006). Using the case study of the professionalization of artistic labor under the Yugoslav socialistic model of culture, Praznik’s book counters the Western understanding of art—as a passion for self-expression and an activity done out of love, without any concern for its financial aspects—and instead builds a case for understanding art as a form of invisible labor. Praznik helps elucidate the contradiction at the heart of artistic production and the origins of the mystification of art as labor.

In her acclaimed video, Wudtke performs the text, Portrait of the Artist as a Worker by Belgian philosopher Dieter Lesage. The text, originally written at the artist’s request for a description of her artistic practice, sardonically describes the conditions of labor undertaken by artists. In “remixing” the original text in her performance (an allusion to Wudtke’s long-time practice as a DJ), Wudtke calls into question the mode of recognition for which an artist should be compensated. Against a neoliberal model for the arts, which considers the selling of art works as the prime (if not only) avenue for artists to receive an income, Ina Wudtke’s video is a plea for paying the labor of an artist independently of whether she sells or not—and thus, it questions the social and financial relationships of the artist as a worker with the right to a financial recognition of her labor. Still, it goes one step further to declare by the transitive power that if artists can be considered workers, then the reverse is also true—a theme that Wudtke has explored recently in her research into the little-known history of (factory) workers in the Weimar Republic and the GDR who became artists and writers.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Goethe-Institut New York, 30 Irving Place, New York, United States