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Wyoming Evenings: What Is the Good of Work? (1/4)

Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
New York, NY

What is the good of work? How and why did the future change from the sixties and seventies vision of a leisure society to an exhausting life of increasingly purposeless work? What are the implications of the shift from a Fordist model of production to a post-Fordist one? Why is work valorized in contemporary society? What happened to the critique of labor and its radical potential from the Middle Ages up through the strategies of the Situationists and others? As unemployment becomes an increasing reality, how might we think of unemployment as an artistic and philosophical category?

These questions will be examined during four events at the Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building in the East Village. Each event will involve two guests-one artist and one cultural producer of another kind. Marysia Lewandowska and Peter Fleming will be the guests at the first event on October 17.

Marysia Lewandowska is a Polish-born, London-based artist who has collaborated with Neil Cummings between 1995 and 2008. Her past and current projects reflect the ways in which institutions determine the exchange of values between art and its publics. Marysia is a professor at Konstfack in Stockholm, where she established Timeline: Artists Film and Video Archive. She is currently developing Womens Audio Archive as part of her residency at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. Peter Fleming is professor of Work, Organization and Society at the Queen Mary College (University of London). One of his areas of research concerns the cultural politics of work organizations and the modes of ideological control that operate to enlist the participation of labor.

The series takes its starting point in the observation that today the artist-defined by creativity, unconventionality, and flexibility-appears to be the role model for contemporary workers. Bohemians in general and the artists in particular are the perfect entrepreneurs.

Wyoming Evenings is organized by the Goethe-Institut New York and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and curated by Maria Lind and Simon Critchley.

Maria Lind is a curator and critic, currently holding the position of director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Prior to coming to Bard, she directed the Kunstverein in Munich (2002-4) and IASPIS in Stockholm (2005-7). This fall, Sternberg Press is publishing a book with her writings from the last 15 years.

Simon Critchley is a Chair of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York. He works in the history of philosophy, Continental philosophy, ethics and political theory. He is the author of ten books, including "Very Little...Almost Nothing" (1997), "On Humor" (2002), "Infinitely Demanding" (2007) and "On Heidegger's Being and Time" (2008). "The Book of Dead Philosophers" was published by Vintage in 2009 and was a New York Times bestseller. It is alleged that he is Chief Philosopher of the International Necronautical Society.

Note: This ticket is only valid for the first event of this four-event series. Series tickets are available for a reduced price ($35).

Kid Friendly: No

Dog Friendly: No

Non-Smoking: No

Wheelchair Accessible: No

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