With Anne König (Spector Books) and Werker Collective
On the occasion of the installation A Gestural History of the Young Worker by Werker Collective with Georgy Mamedov at the Gropius Bau, this event will provide insights into the background of the project, which is accompanied by a publication of the same name published by Spector Books. The book presentation features a conversation between co-publisher Anne König and Werker Collective.
Image gallery
The event will start with listening to the audio work Condition Report (2023). It is based on transcribed conversations by Werker Collective surrounding their experiences working under challenging conditions while developing A Gestural History of the Young Worker (2019), and addresses censorship, erasure and invisible labour related to publishing.
The installation A Gestural History of the Young Worker, on view from 18 November until 17 December 2023 at the Gropius Bau as part of the public programme for the exhibition General Idea, was first conceptualised for the 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art in Yekaterinburg (Russia) in 2019. The work has faced restrictive censorship several times over the past four years in Russia, with conditions becoming more dramatic and destabilising over time.
Werker Collective operates at the intersection of labour, ecofeminism and the LGBTQ+ movements, advocating for an image critique of daily life to analyse what becomes visible and what remains hidden or silenced in different political contexts. The art collective, initiated by Marc Roig Blesa and Rogier Delfos in Amsterdam in 2009, released ten issues of a publication called Werker Magazine. Since then, Werker Collective has explored a variety of media, including installation, performance, video, sound, textile, digital publishing, and has also developed community projects, reading groups, cine-clubs, radio podcasts and publishing workshops.
