Henrik Nieratschker
0work
Artistic Practice as a Site of Postwork Imagination
Keywords: Work / Postcapitalism / Postwork Imaginaries / Geschichtung / Political Imagination / Artistic Research / Speculative Fiction
Abstract
In the face of increasing digital surveillance, control, and automation of work there is an urgent necessity to imagine radically different, alternative approaches to working. ‘0work: Artistic Practice as a Site of Postwork Imagination’ engages with current discussions on the future of work in theory, art, and activism and asks how artistic practice could contribute to such imaginations in meaningful ways.
Starting from my experience of working as a package handler for an international shipping company, the research project seeks to develop a situated understanding of the contemporary crisis of work in digital capitalism and negotiates corresponding visions of a workless postwork society through an artistic practice of extended media installation. The artistic work combines moving image, sound, and text with manually and digitally manufactured, physical artifacts and interactive and performative situations. It critically reflects the experience of work in the shipping warehouse and looks at historical workers' movements in search of unrealized emancipatory potentials. Different modes of writing – including fiction and theory – elaborate on insights gained from the artistic work and feed back into practically working towards artistic strategies of postwork imagination.
Through this interplay of art-making and writing, a collection of concepts (such as 0work, Situated Dissonance, and Geschichtung) is developed that problematizes notions of work and art in contemporary postcapitalist theory, acknowledges the often contradictory positioning of artists and workers in both class antagonisms and digital infrastructure space and advocates for artistic practice as a site of political imagination.
The project ultimately aims to formulate a particular, relatable, and empathetic perspective on the computational condition of work from which more just, emancipatory futures of work can be imagined, articulated, and eventually brought into being. These potential futures strive to account for both the techno-social affordances of digital technologies as well as the lived reality and immediate needs of workers today.
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Andrea Sick (HfK Bremen), Prof Dr. Janneke Wesseling (University of Leiden), Co-promotor: Prof. Dennis P Paul (HfK Bremen)