[Bk Discussion List] At Work / Au Travail - Mar 23 2010

[scott at basekamp.com]

======== AT WORK / AU TRAVAIL ================================================

March 23, 2010 - 6:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Hi Everyone,

This Tuesday is another event in a year-long series of weekly conversations  
and exhibits shedding light on examples of Plausible Artworlds.

This week we’ll be talking with some of the people AT WORK / AU TRAVAIL,  
which is not so much a collective as an open call to artists and workers  
around the world to regard their workplace – whatever it may be – as a  
site of clandestine art production. Members are invited to consider their  
current employment as a kind of readymade artist’s residency, complete with  
wages, social connections, resources, and downtime. At Work / Au travail’s  
members, far from attempting to unite labor in order to leverage its power  
against capital, have simply stopped believing in work altogether, while  
continuing to be “At Workers." Rather than sabotaging the means of  
production, they use their right to manage their won labor time in order to  
turn the machines to other experimental purposes — or just turn them off  
for a bit. In so doing, “At Workers” seek to transform their conditions  
of exploitation into the conditions of freedom, with no further goal than the  
continued practice of their own personal freedom. While this strategy might  
be read as so much playful resignation in our era of generalized precarious  
labor, it offers the following provocation: the onus is on each of us  
individually, and all of us collectively, to produce our own freedom,  
regardless of how hopeless the conditions might appear.

Created in Montreal around 2004, AU TRAVAIL / AT WORK now has members  
worldwide — indeed, one wonders how many people are NOT potential members!  
It offers its members a network of relations as well as methods for sharing,  
and organizing exhibitions that ensure the dissemination of their ideas,  
actions, and accomplishments. Immersed in highly diverse sectors of the  
economy, does AT WORK / AU TRAVAIL sketch the contours of a new form of  
commitment, where the all-too-stifling workaday world is a plausible  
artworld?

See you all then!

Join us every Tuesday night – in person, or on Skype, skypename:  
‘basekamp’
If you come to the potluck chat in person, be sure to bring a dish :)
Basekamp space: 723 Chestnut St, 2nd floor, Philadelphia usa

Click to join this week’s Potluck Chat on Skype:
http://bit.ly/cFl0rR

Follow Plausible Artworlds:
http://twitter.com/basekamp
http://basekamp.com/info

Comment here
http://basekamp.com/about/events/at-work-au-travail#comments [1]

/Plausible Artworlds is a project organized by Basekamp and Stephen Wright,  
and has been funded by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the  
Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative./


[1] http://basekamp.com/about/events/at-work-au-travail#comments
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://basekamp.com/pipermail/bk-discussion-list_basekamp.com/attachments/20100322/2642c824/attachment.html>