Event
Living Machines | Reading & Discussion Group
Thursday 23 February 2023
Reading and discussion workshop facilitated by artist Stella Rooney
Referencing French philosopher Jacques Rancière’s seminal text Nights of Labour which examines 19th century factory workers’ poetry, letters, newspapers and journals, artist Stella Rooney will lead a reading and discussion workshop to consider historical and contemporary working-class cultural expression.
Channelling Harun Farocki’s film Georg K. Glaser – Writer and Smith (1988) featured in the exhibition Harun Farocki: Consider Labour at Cooper Gallery, the workshop brings centre stage the precarious nature of labour implicit in the gig economy and the resurgence of mass strikes across Britain today.
Booking
The reading group is free to attend. Book a space via Eventbrite.
Artist biography
Stella Rooney is an artist and organiser living in Glasgow. Working across photography and moving image, her work is a point of engagement with collective histories, investigating labour from the perspective of both past and present. Since graduating from Duncan of Jordanstone in 2020, Stella completed a year-long culture collective residency with StreetLevel Photoworks and participated in the Hospitalfield Graduate Programme. Her recent project ‘She Town’ explores the role of working class women in Dundee’s industry and radical tradition. Stella is also a trade unionist and is involved in building community power as the chair of her local Living Rent branch in Dennistoun.
About the exhibition
Bringing together the ten-screen video installation Labour in a Single Shot with Farocki’s most celebrated filmic essays; Workers Leaving the Factory (1995), Georg K. Glaser – Writer and Smith (1988), and In Comparison (2009), Harun Farocki: Consider Labour at Cooper Gallery critically questions the technological, aesthetic, and political conditions of making labour visible.
Re-inventing the 'filmic essay', Farocki’s thought-provoking oeuvre investigates how capitalism, consumerism, media, technology and war intertwine with all our lives for the past century. Influenced by theatre director Bertolt Brecht, philosopher Theodor Adorno, and film director Jean-Luc Godard, Farocki’s unique style of non-narrative-filmmaking consistently addresses practices of labour and the production of images that are concerned with understanding, reflecting and confronting modern society.
Read more on our exhibition page.
Access
The gallery is on two floors. First floor has ramped access and disabled toilet.
Second floor is accessible via lift and for wheelchair access via a stairclimber. The workshop will take place on the second floor.
Please email in advance if you require lift or stairclimber access so we can arrange support.
Large print versions of the exhibition information handout are available, please ask our Guides.
All enquiries please contact: exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk
Image credit
Harun Farocki, Georg K. Glaser – Writer and Smith, 1988 (film still)
Funding support
This event accompanies the exhibition Harun Farocki: Consider Labour which is supported by the Goethe Institut, Glasgow.
Cooper Gallery
exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk