January’s Art and Immaterial Labour conference at the Tate brought together some famous names from post-Autonomia to discuss conjunctions between the dematerialisation of art and immaterialisation of labour. John Cunningham reports.

“Upon hearing that some of the stars of the post-autonomist scene – Maurizzio Lazzarato, Judith Revel, Franco Beradi aka Bifo and Antonio Negri – were to give presentations at a conference examining the conjunction of ‘immaterial labour’ and art, my initial reaction was fairly sceptical. The concept of immaterial labour has always showed signs of strain at the sheer weight of revolutionary expectation placed upon it – a carrier of a subversive charge so immanent to Capital that it is almost already here. This conclusion has been subjected to an incisive critique by more sober analysts within autonomist Marxism such as George Caffentzis, Steve Wright and Sergio Bologna, amongst others. Given the pre-eminence of symbolic production inherent to immaterial labour, that Lazzarato and Negri, both intimately connected with the theorisation of immaterial labour, should now be addressing the role of contemporary art did seem oddly appropriate. However, it was also a source of potential disquiet. From the mass worker of operaismo (workerism) to the socialized worker of Autonomia to cognitive labour – would the cycle of struggles end in the self-valorisation of the knowledge worker and ultimately the artist? Such a schema is an easy caricature of this variegated discourse around the possibilities of resistance in postfordism. Indeed, immaterial labour has lent itself to an uncritical optimism regarding its potentiality to give rise to the subversive subjectivities of the multitude…” Continue reading Art Stripped Bare by Post-Autonomists by John Cunningham, Mute Magazine.