Werker Collective: 365 Days After & Against Work

Following 365 Days of Invisible Work (2017), 365 Days After & Against Work has been assembled collectively by cultural workers from different geographies through a study group, Against Work, organized between 2023 and 2025 at Gropius Bau in Berlin, S.M.A.K in Ghent, and TEA in Tenerife and including materials from After Work, the residency at S.M.A.K. by Werker Collective. The study group formed on the basis of conversations with cultural workers who shared their unease about hazardous conditions in the museum, academy, gallery, studio, and at home. During the research, those conditions worsened, manifesting in burnout and people leaving. It is precisely because things are still not working in the cultural sector that Werker is publishing this calendar in the hope that questions, ideas, dreams, complaints, confessions, and demands will inspire collective action to change the ethos that is hurting our bodies and minds. We will keep working to abolish work until we add a new word to our vocabulary, a replacement word to denote what work could be. Werkers practice is inspired by the Worker Photography Movement of the 1920s and 1930s. Far from having a rhetorical approach, it looks into ways of reactivating the movements working methodologies, based on self-representation, self-publishing, image analysis, and collective learning processes. Tanja Boon is curator at S.M.A.K. Ghent. She has curated solo exhibitions and residencies with artists including Rose Wylie, Kader Attia, and Anna Bella Geiger as well as Werker Collective. Art critic and historian Sven Lütticken (b. 1971) teaches at the Vrije Universiteit and publishes in Artforum, New Left Review, and Texte zur Kunst.