KEYNOTE SPEAKER : Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky

In the nearly 130 years since the Lumière brothers filmed their employees in La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon [Workers Leaving the Factory] (1895), artists and filmmakers have explored the capacities of the moving image to examine labour as a crucial facet of everyday life and modern society. The Lumières’ iconic La Sortie – shot multiple times over several days (including a Sunday) – is emblematic of film’s history in witnessing both the evolution of work and the challenges and complexities of capturing those social and political realities of labour often abstracted or concealed from vision. In more recent times, renewed interest in La Sortie, through its re-appropriation by artists such as Harun Farocki, Kevin Jerome Everson, Sharon Lockhart, and Andrew Norman Wilson has coincided with a growing exploration of the status of labour in film. Meanwhile, the discussion around work has evolved, incorporating new voices and other immaterial, affective, digital and globalised forms of labour affected by changing economic models, technologies, media and means of production.

Thursday 22 June 2023

09.00-09.30 // Registration and welcome (coffee)

09.30-11.05 // Panel 1 - Obsolescence, Extractivism, Remediation: Labour and Experimental Documentary

Lorenz Hegel, Coal, Metal, Labor: Means and Ends of Production in Marx and Wang Bing’s West of the Tracks (2002) (PhD Candidate, Yale University)

Lawrence Alexander, Workers Leaving the Chapel: “Cross-Influence”, Extractivism, and the Labours of Moving Image Excavation in Harun Farocki’s The Silver and the Cross (2010) (Visiting Researcher, Free University of Berlin)

Palita Chunsaengchan, Surveying Deaths of Single-Screen Theatres, Media Obsolence and Labor Disposal in Bangkok through Phantom of Illumination (2017) (Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota)

Jörg Markowitsch, Dystopias of the working world: Katharina Gruzei's reinterpretation of ‘Workers Leaving the Factory’ (Independent Researcher) [online]

11.10-12.25 // Panel 2 – Working Bodies: Maternal labour, Caretaking and Nursing in Documentary

Alice Bardan, Maternal Labor, Anxiety, and Precarity in Audre Pepin’s Observational Documentary A la vie/Sheroes (2019) (Assistant Professor, Mount St. Mary’s University)

Wiebe Copman, “… which is also work.”: Caretaking and the Lyrical Mode in Ute Aurand and Maria Lang’s Der Schmetterling im Winter (2006) (Graduate Teaching Assistant, Ghent University)

Laura Lux, The Body as a Factory: Surgical Images and the Labour of Nursing in Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica (2022) (PhD Candidate, King’s College London)

12.30-13.30 // Lunch (provided)

13.30-15.05 // Panel 3 - Revolution and its Challenges: Unrest and Activism on Screen

David Wilt, The Proletariat and the Mexican Revolution in Mexican Cinema (Professorial Lecturer, George Washington University)

Harrison Whitaker, The End of Hollywood’s Union Man (PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge)

Sarah Hamblin, The Crisis of Comfort: Post-Fordist Labour and Radical Politics in Satayjit Ray’s Calcutta Trilogy (Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston)

15.10-16.10 // Panel 4 – Hidden Labour and Means of Production in Cinema

Theodor Frisorger and Dennis Göttel, Televised Filmmaking: Early Making-of Films at the WDR (PhD Candidate, University of Cologne) and (Junior professor, University of Cologne)

Joshua Schulze, Painted Sandals and Blistered Feet: The Production of Sundown (1941) and the Racialized Labor of Hollywood Extras (PhD Candidate, University of Michigan) [online]

16.10-16.30 // Break (coffee)

16.30-18.00 // Keynote – Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky

20:00-22:00 // Screening – Harun Farocki / Labour through the Decades (Close-Up Film Centre) This free screening has been organised as a sister event to the conference. Separate registration is required. Due to the limited capacity of the cinema, tickets will only be available in advance and on a first-come-first-served basis. Conference registration does not guarantee admission.

Book your ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/harun-farocki-labour-through-the-decades-tickets-646058497357

Friday 23 June 2023

09.30-10.00 // Late Registration (coffee)

10.00-11.00 // Panel 5 – Precarity and Unrest in Contemporary French Cinema

Temenuga Trifonova, L’emploi du temps: The New Landscape of Work and Struggle in Contemporary French Cinema (Associate Professor, University College London)

Francesco Sticchi, Brizé-Lindon’s Trilogy of Work (Lecturer, Oxford Brookes University)

11.05-12.20 // Panel 6 – From Industrial Work to Globalisation: German Histories of Labour in Film

Alex Fletcher, Representing Global Labour in Late Farocki (Associate Lecturer, University of the Arts London)

Stephan Hilpert, Leaving the Factory: Christian Petzold’s Wolfsburg (2003) (Macromedia University, Cologne)

Nick Hodgin, East German Documentaries: Love of Labour and Labour of Love (Senior Lecturer, Cardiff University)

12.20-13.30 // Lunch (provided)

13.30-14.45 // Panel 7 - Digital Labour and Film: Breakdowns, Simulation, and Absence

Nick Jones, Digital Work Rendered Visible: VFX Breakdowns and the Absent Artist (Senior Lecturer, University of York)

Carleigh Morgan, Crowd Work: Animation and Automation in the Production of Simulated Crowds (PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge)

Matthias Kispert, Representing Digital Platform Work through Delegate Performance (Research Assistant, University of Westminster)

14.50-16.05 // Panel 8 – The Ethics of Participation: Film Collectives and Participatory Filmmaking

Yung-Hang Bruce Lai and Fredie Chan Ho Lun, Empowering Precarious Workers through Participatory Filmmaking: A Case Study of Fredie Chan’s Independent Cinema in Hong Kong (Research Associate, King’s College London) and (independent documentary filmmaker)

Lorenzo Lazzari, After Work: The Experience of Video-Nou in Can Serra, 1978 (PhD Candidate, University of Udine)

Liesje Baltussen, Fugitive Cinema and the Working Class: Two Ways of Engaging (PhD Candidate, University of Antwerp)

16.05-16.30 // Break (coffee)

16.30-17.45 // Panel 9 – Theory and Method: Critical Approaches to Work on Screen

Angelika Seppi, “Tout va bien”: Class Struggle and the Limits of Cinematic Representation (Visiting Professor, Bauhaus-University Weimar)

Elisabeth Korn, The Dialectic of Image and Labour: An Impulse for Rethinking the Culture Industry after 1968 (Lecturer, University of Film and Television Munich)

Joshua Harold Wiebe, The Screen is Black: Labour and Negation (PhD Candidate, University of Toronto) [online]

17.45-18.00 // Closing Remarks

Organised by Laura Lux (KCL) and Georgina Le Breuilly (KCL)

This conference is part of the German Screen Studies Network’s DAAD-funded Promoting German Studies Project, "German Screen Studies Network (GSSN): Media, Cultures, Histories” led by Dora Osborne and Paul Flaig (German and Film Studies, University of St Andrews) in partnership with the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures (DLLC) at King’s College London.

Images at Work: Labour and the Moving Image