Self Portrait II, 2017 Performance Selma Selman (c) Tibor Varga Somogyi
Who Maintains the City?
Work, Gender, Migration and the City.
Reproductive labor plays an important role for the city: our current life in the city is unthinkable without the cleaning of our houses, offices and streets, without the care work for elderly and sick inhabitants, or without childcare.
At its beginning, the COVID-19 Pandemic gave center stage to this kind of labor and sheds light on its contradictions. The pandemic shows our society’s economic and existenital dependency on un- and underpaid reproductive labor; as well as the exploitative working conditions of this kind of work. Importantly, a large part of this, now called, essential work is mainly done by women and/or migrants! In the course of the still ongoing pandemic, soon again, these grievances were pushed back into their usual invisibility. It is therfore even more important to take a closer look at this issue.
In this seminar, we will try to understand the complex relations between reproductive labor in the city, gender and migration. We will do so by investigating the different aspect relating to the topic and drawing connections between them. For this purpose, we will discuss and analyse the works of artists, cultural theorists, geographers, activists and urban planners.
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Literature, art works, and examples from activism:
Freilich, Toby Perl. 2020. “Blazing Epiphany: Maintenance Art Manifesto 1969!: An Interview with Mierle Laderman Ukeles,” Cultural Politics, No. 16 (1): 14–23.
Horne, Victoria. 2017. "Losing Ground? A Note on Feminism, Cultural Activism and Urban Space.” Third Text, vol. 31, no. 1, 67–78.
Trogal, Kim. 2017. “Caring: Making Commons, Making Connections.” In The Social (Re)Production of Architecture edited by Doina Petrescu and Kim Trogal. London: Routledge.
Vergès, Françoise. 2019. “Capitalocene, Waste, Race, and Gender.” e-flux journal, no.100, https://www.e-flux.com/journal/100/269165/capitalocene-waste-race-and-gender.
Zechner, Manuela. 2021. "Füreinander sorgen, wie wir es gerne würden: Die sozial-ökologische Krise und unsere Care-Sackgasse.” Gropius Bau Journal, https://www.berlinerfestspiele.de/de/gropiusbau/programm/journal/start.html, accessed September 5, 2021.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, MANIFESTO FOR MAINTENANCE ART, 1969! Proposal for an exhibition: “CARE”, 1969
Margaret Salmon, Housework, 2014, https://vimeo.com/84325957
Berwick Street Film Collective, Night Cleaners, 1972-1975
Petja Dimtrova, Let’s Organize!, 2019
Casco Art Institute, The Grand Domestic Revolution GOES ON, 2010
The seminar is based on affirmative pedagogy (according to Rosi Braidotti).
The main elements are text, book and lecture discussions, excursions, discursive development of individual interrogation, which also involves methods of drawing. Workshops will allow us to practice the handling of scientific sources, good scientific practice and writing abstracts. Individual meetings are possible if necessary.
