Never Work Festival

Good work is becoming increasingly scarce, yet selling one’s own labor is unavoidable—which leaves many feeling discouraged, exhausted, and ill. In a rapidly changing world marked by economic inequality and gig work, mere survival is already hard work for many. And so the vision of a “good life” remains out of reach for most.

The international performance festival Never Work brings together artistic works from various parts of the world that critically engage with contemporary discourses and the realities of life in the working world at the Sophiensælen in Berlin-Mitte.

A building that opened 120 years ago as the Berlin Craftsmen’s Association Hall, providing craftsmen and women with professional, political, and cultural training; and which, at the beginning of the 20th century, developed into an important meeting place for the labor movement and the revolutionary left; before so-called “Eastern workers” were forced to work here in the 1940s and the workshops of the Maxim Gorki Theater moved in during the GDR era.

The Sophiensæle, finally founded in 1996 as an independent theater by artists for artists, has been producing and presenting dance, theater, and performance for 30 years now—always with the mission of questioning, discussing, and changing working conditions in the independent arts scene.

On the occasion of these anniversaries, the artists, thinkers, and activists participating in the festival explore the connection between work, (survival), and the constant work on the self. They engage with the global division of labor and the relationship between work and nation or identity—and address indispensable, invisible, precarious, and illegalized labor, as well as romanticized and completely superfluous labor. In doing so, they transform the absurdities of a working world under financial capitalism into aesthetic experiences.

Without claiming to provide a complete representation of this socio-politically explosive field—on which election campaigns and the future of democracies worldwide hinge—the Never Work festival brings together diverse artistic explorations and provocations. It provides a stage for the nuances and grotesque experiences that connect workers worldwide—as well as for the dreams of working differently or not at all.