- February 8, 2023
- 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
- On campus
Join us for the next two installations of our Anthropology & Social Change program's Visiting Scholar Series with Katja Praznik on Marxist feminist consideration of Artists' Unwaged Labor. These talks will be taking place in the CIIS lobby on February 8th and 9th from 6-7PM PST. It will also be streaming live on Instagram @anthciis, so no worries if you can't join in person.
Is art a form of labor and if so, what kind of work is it? Considering the perennial precarity of lives and working conditions of art workers, why do we continue to consider art as an act of creation rather than work. What do we gain and what do we lose? Employing a Marxist feminist viewpoint, Praznik will present a critique of the essentializing notions of art work and the relevance of a feminist epistemology to counter the dominant views about artist’s labor. Focusing on the experiences of art workers and the history of labor regulation in the arts in socialist Yugoslavia, Praznik will elucidate the contradiction at the heart of artistic production and the origins of the mystification of art as labor. She will discuss the ways in which historical experiences of socialism, such as Yugoslav socialism, can inform the nature of class struggle in the arts and how the radical history lessons can inspire contemporary struggles for art workers’ labor standards in the world of neoliberal capitalism.
