The Labour of Memory - The artist as interlocutor between political activism and memory

Abstract:
This paper aims to reflect on the ways in which current conditions of precarious and politically
engaged artistic labour are informed by the historical position of the artist as an interlocutor
between memory and political activism.

Issuing primarily from contemporary collective practices in cases where the contributors have direct
involvement (Precarious Workers Brigade, Ernest, University for Strategic Optimism), this line of inquiry
proposes to examine asynchronously the role played by artistic labour as a mnemonic displacement of
forms of political activism.

Examining various configurations of work that comprise the ‘artistic’ articulation of memory, both inside
and outside the cultural institution, the paper explores to what degree these acts can be considered a form of
activism in themselves, as immanent critique or alternative subjectivation. It also seeks however, to
question the extent to which such an act of (cognitarian/affective/physical) artistic labour already functions
necessarily as a mode of subsumption, valorisation and a disciplining of memory, understood as a
collective resource. Does the apparent presentation of an artistic overcoming of what Debord called the
‘necessary alienation’ of time merely constitute a diversion of memory and its associated processes of
subjectivation into circuits of capital’s reproduction?

Referring to the work of Berardi, Ranciere, Debord and Stiegler, the paper proposes that such practices
constitute not only an articulation of memory, but memory materialised - understood prosthetically. In this
respect, to what degree do such art practices create new and autonomous collective subjectivations, or
conversely, function as a means of further cognitive proletarianisation for those involved? Do they combat
or compound precarity, or both?

Our own diverse positions, as directly involved in the collective actions we discuss, inform an attempt to
collectively understand the various issues at stake from a more comprehensively informed perspective than
might be attained from writing individually on the matter. It is towards such practices that we address the
theoretical problems and propositions described.

Keywords: Precarity, Memory, Activism, Artistic Labour

Authors:

Joanna Figiel - PhD candidate, City University London Joanna.Figiel.1@city.ac.uk
Mihaela Brebenel - PhD candidate, Goldsmiths College miha.brebenel@gmail.com
Christopher Collier - PhD candidate, University of Essex Christophercollier7@gmail.com

Collaboration with: Mihaela Brebenel - PhD candidate, Goldsmiths College miha.brebenel@gmail.com Christopher Collier - PhD candidate, University of Essex Christophercollier7@gmail.com