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And Others–Collectivity, Labour, Value and Social Reproduction

When: —
Venue: Online

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Discussants: Fabiola Fiocco, Katja Praznik, Karolina Majewska-Güde, Kirsten Lloyd, Jelena Vesic,

Project lead and moderator: Lina Dzuverovic

Keywords: collaboration, collectives, social reproduction, value, gendered labour, affective labour, sacrificial labour, arts administration, bureaucracy. 

BIRMAC and Art Monthly, in association with Electra present:

One of four discussions within the research project  ‘And Others: The Gendered Politics and Practices of Art Collectives’ by Dr. Lina Dzuverovic, which investigates different questions central to collective work. Building on two months of asynchronous collective writing, involving seventeen participants, the panelists below consider how we might write, think, read and practice together through other means.


This panel focuses on labour and value in collective work, acknowledging that even in most progressive artists’ groups, collectives, or communities, collectivity rests on some form of socially reproductive, affective and often unremunerated labour—most often performed by female-identifying collective members, friends, partners, mothers, administrators or curators. Of course, these reliances are not strictly gendered—and are always situated, depending on many intersecting factors such as class, race, access, mobility, economic status, education, stage of life/work, experience, as well as on characteristics that are more difficult to define and write about, such as personality traits, confidence, ‘charisma’, etc (all of which are entangled with the above-listed social conditions). 


What does ‘work’ mean within a collective structure; does one notion of work differ from ‘artwork’, and if so how?  Emerging from this question is also the issue of the relationship between life and work, as collectivity is often imagined as a broader framework within which being an artist means more than just being a production machine, with groups and collectives aiming to create an alternative to the pressures of production, representation, visibility, and to actively resist co-option. What kind of labour counts as artistic work, who enacts this labour, and how can we account for all the activities within a collective that are necessary to prop up the narrowly defined process of art-making?  How might we reconfigure how labour normally classified as ‘support work’ is valued, or propose expansions of what we see as an artwork?


In addition to questions of marginalisation (excluded or marginalised participants being a symptom, not the cause), the panelists consider conceptualisations of collectivity itself, given that collectives often inadvertently reproduce the embedded social inequalities characterising the heteropatriarchal systems within which they exist. Both the public panel and the preceding conversation address the multiple roles at work within this shifting labour, including the maintenance and preservation of archives, and how this pertains to notions of legacy and historicisation.

The panel conversation will be followed by an informal Q&A with the audience.  

Please note all events within this series will be recorded.

This project has been supported through Birkbeck College’s School of Arts Research Grants and the Open Society University Network, Center for Arts and Human Rights at Bard College 2022 Faculty Fellowship.

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