Labour is now well-established as a core theme in contemporary art, but what happens when a temporal perspective is prioritised? Thinking together with a selection of artworks, this lecture examined how the working day continues to shape and discipline capitalist life across contexts including factories and offices, nighttime, creative and platform economies, and in the hidden labour performed (usually for free) in the home.
The seminar tested material from Contemporary Art and Capitalist Life, a forthcoming book that interrogates artists’ use of documentary strategies to negotiate the most pressing issues of the early 21st century from class, climate and the legacies of colonialism, to housing and healthcare.