Curated by Milena Høgsberg
There is surely some bitter irony to the fact that an exhibition about the changing conditions of labor is taking place in Norway, one of the few European countries not really affected by financial crisis and mass unemployment. Yet the purview of “Arbeidstid” (Work Time) is not just joblessness and the erosion of the social safety net but also the transformation of work into entertainment, lifestyle, and identity project that marks today’s information economies. Engaging the perspectives of some thirteen artists and collectives, including Olivia Plender and Sharon Lockhart, alongside a specially commissioned project by Danish artist Michala Paludan involving selections from Scandinavian labor-movement archives, this exhibition raises the question of how art can address and imagine the future of work, for both the employed and the unemployed.
