Exhibition: Angharad Williams, Annette Wehrmann, Gili Tal, Guillaume Maraud, Josef Kramhöller, Laura Ziegler & Stephan Janitzky, Lise Soskolne, Matt Hilvers, Stephen Willats
Film program: Adrian Paci, Agnès Varda, Ayo Akingbade, Barbara Kopple, Berwick St Collective, Laura Poitras & Linda Goode Bryant, Max Göran; Lucrecia Martel selected by Nadja Abt; and films selected by Simon Lässig
Accompanying program: Cana Bilir-Meier & Gürsoy Doğtaş, NewFutures, Periods of Non-Productivity, Ramaya Tegegne, Tirdad Zolghadr
Publication: Annette Wehrmann, Dung Tien Thi Phuong, Josef Kramhöller, Laura Ziegler & Stephan Janitzky, Leander Scholz, Lise Soskolne, Mahan Moalemi, Marina Vishmidt & Melanie Gilligan, Steven Warwick
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Not Working. Artistic production and matters of class is a project that brings together international artists, theorists, and writers who in their work examine the interdependence of artistic production and social class. Every form, including the artistic, is ground for the negotiation of class relations. A formal language always surpasses the formal: it can be read in relation to privilege and economic contexts that can inscribe and ultimately permeate materials, thematic concerns, and modes of (re-)presentation.
The complex structures and substantial rise of social inequalities—particularly visible in light of the current pandemic—have given the concept of class a wide range of connotations. In sociological terms, class can be understood as the ascription of individuals to specific social groupings, which are characterized by objective elements such as income. Beyond the pure economics, the concept also has symbolic significance. When speaking of class today, it is usually in reference to its historically white and predominantly male constitution. But what has become apparent is that categories of “race” and “gender” are deeply inherent to concepts of class. In fact, these aspects are the determining elements of class relations.
What forms do artistic practices assume, and what do they tell us about the conditions of their production? The works on view are characterized by a consciousness of how background, socialization, education, and artistic practice are inevitably entangled. They hence allow for a consideration of these categories in relation to the actual lived realities of their producers. However, given the distinctions that do exist, why does contemporary art, in many cases, continue to be presented against the backdrop of supposed “class homogeneity;” remaining complicit in the reproduction and masking of existing conditions which it often claims to overcome. The term “class” is strikingly absent in discourses that assert political relevance and critical potential. When it does become the subject, the economic disparities and inequalities are too often clumsily reproduced in the same context. The title Not Working addresses the often glorified precarity inherent to the notion of artists as social figures, and the cliché that economic regulations do not apply to their form of work. Moreover, the title outlines the dysfunctional system, which is built on the fundamental precarization of most of its producers.
Initiated by Maurin Dietrich
Curated by Maurin Dietrich and Gloria Hasnay
More info: www.kunstverein-muenchen.de/en/programm/ausstellungen/rueckblick/2020/not-working