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Book Discussion: “Art Work: Invisible Labor and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism,” by Katja Praznik

This roundtable will discuss Katja Praznik’s forthcoming book Art Work: Invisible Labor and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism (University of Toronto Press, 2021), which represents a major new study about the field of cultural production in socialist Yugoslavia by focusing on the experiences of art workers and the history of labor regulation in the arts. Based on an interdisciplinary methodology and a materialist feminist analysis of cultural policies and attitudes to cultural labor, the book presents and examines the Yugoslav socialist model of culture and shows the historical trajectory of how policies toward art and artistic labor changed by the end of the 1980s. This was the historical juncture when neoliberal tendencies prevailed including in a socialist country, and when workers with labor rights and protections were transformed into self-sufficient (and exploited) entrepreneurs. The book will be discussed in a broader context of (post) Yugoslav cultural and social analysis and practice, highlighting the importance of materialist labor analysis of socialist arts and culture and its importance for understanding the post-socialist era and increased labor exploitation in the arts. Apart from the author, the other speakers have expertise in the realm of labor relations in cultural production, cultural politics and policies of socialist modernity and its post-socialist cultural and political transformation. Roundtable members: Katja Praznik, U at Buffalo ; Jaka Primorac, IRMO ; Nataša Prljević, HEKLER ; Tamara Vukov, U de Montréal (Canada) ; Bojana Videkanic, U of Waterloo (Canada) (Chair)

art work, cultural labour, cultural policy

Radi se o sudjelovanju na okruglom stolu u sklopu konferencije.