Dates:
Tuesday, 31 March & Wednesday, 1 April, 2026
from 10h00 – 17h00
Location:
HKB, Schwabstrasse 10, 3018 Bern
> Please apply until 20 March, 2026 via cap@hkb.bfh.ch
Universität / Haute École
for student applications
Interdependent Cultural Workers
What and who does your artistic practice depend on? Who nourishes your criticality? What supports you to study? Who cares for your working body?
This two day workshop focuses on interdependence as a set of relations and a political perspective that thwarts the racial capitalist myth of independence, bringing into view the vast and sophisticated networks that sustain each of us.
Artists are reliant on many others in order to develop their art practice. We also depend on working in and across different fields of work to survive. By nursing, teaching, bike couriering, waitressing, cleaning, administrating, building - we develop knowledge and connection with communities, colleagues and contexts that constantly inform our artistic expressions.
Founded on individualism, the art world often disavows our inherent interdependence, ignoring the wider networks that support artists’ lives beyond the cultural field and its institutions. This dynamic sures up privilege and hierarchies that are rooted in heteropatriarchy and racial capitalism, and can neglect the creative potential artists have as archives and agents of cross-worker experience and struggle.
Through collective investigation, discussion and reflection we will explore the figure of the artist as an interdependent cultural worker and the rich political and social practice this is informed by and opens us up to.
Jenny Richards' research focuses on the politics of work, health and the body developed through collaborative and collective practice. She is a doctoral candidate on the KTD programme at Konstfack and KTH. My project 'Against(ing) Outsourced Bodies of Care' examines the effect and resistance to the expansion of commercialized, individualized and outsourced care. She was previously co-director of Konsthall C, Stockholm where together with Anna Ahlstrand and Jens Strandberg they developed Home Works, an exhibition programme exploring the politics of domestic work and the home. She collaborates with Johnny Chang on developing the platform 'Gathering Against', an online and physical tool library which gathers resources for collective practice. Manual Labours, initiated in 2012 is an ongoing collaborative research project with Sophie Hope investigating physical relationship to work.
www.manuallabours.co.uk