bare minimum collective invites to a reading group in the framework of the exhibition In the meantime, midday comes around.
The admission is free.
We kindly ask you to register in advance at besucherservice@kunsthallewien.at or directly at the cash desk in Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier. The number of participants is limited.
The reading group will be held in English.
Join bare minimum collective members Lola Olufemi and Christie Costello for a reading group with freewriting elements that explores the workers’ relationship to labor, how capitalism warps temporality, and the ongoing practices of refusal that make it possible to imagine a future where labor is not defined by wage or the profit motive. What would a world without work look like? How do we get there? What awaits us in a world after work?
Reading materials will be sent to participants in advance. It is not a requirement to read them, but we would like to make them available, as this can contribute to a successful discussion.
The invention of the Fordist work week was just that: an invention. Before the violent separation between all kinds of workers and the means of production, time might have been easier to steal back. The movement away from collective modes of working toward the creation of the individual worker, with personal goals, achievements, and commitments to the workplace – and an attachment to its continuation – has transformed our sense of what working hours can give us. Today’s workers are primed for efficiency; their aim is to maximize hours of productivity in order to get the most out of their day. Human assembly lines are being replaced by creeping automation for this very reason.
In cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, a conversation and workshop will take place with bare minimum collective at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on March 21 from 4 to 5 pm and March 24 from 2 to 7 pm.
Lola Olufemi is a black feminist writer and researcher from London and Christie Costello is an art historian, artist and writer, both part of the bare minimum collective. This collective believes in doing nothing, or at the very least, as little as is required of us.
Workshop_Laziness clears space for us to be with one another, and to become rich in need. Using collective reading, free writing and discussion, this experimental workshop will explore the relational possibilities inherent in anti-work politics. This workshop will enable participants to identify and write back to the structures and systems that alienate, exhaust, suppress and tire them.
No prior preparation is required.
The workshop is part of a teaching assignment Bodies of Sleep within the exhibition Sleepy Politics. All lectures will be open to the public. Dreamers interested in the workshops but not enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna are welcome to register via sleepypolitics@proton.me up to one week before the event begins.