The Postcolonial Museum. The pressure of memories and the bodies of histories - 2013

Activity: Participating in or organising an academic or articstic eventConferencesResearch

Joanna Figiel - Speaker

    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
    07.02.201308.02.2013
    The Postcolonial Museum. The pressure of memories and the bodies of histories - 2013

    Event

    The Postcolonial Museum. The pressure of memories and the bodies of histories - 2013

    07.02.1308.02.13

    Napoli, Italy

    Event: Other