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Labor and ideas about labor continue to play a formative role in the structuring of social and political life, particularly as work has undergone relentless and wide-reaching transformation driven by the incessant demands of a late-capitalist globalized society. Whether performing the unpaid work of social reproduction, the fragmented work of independent contracting, or the perilous work of assembly manufacturing, laborers of all types find themselves perpetually overworked, underemployed, and vulnerable to the brutal configurations of contemporary neoliberal labor practices. What can art say about the various worlds of labor and life we find ourselves inextricably defined by and embedded within?

In Fall 2018, Faculty Research Fellows for Curatorial Research and Practice, Daniel Eisenberg and Ellen Rothenberg, organized the Re-Working Labor Symposium at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The conference, which featured lectures by prominent historians, artists, cultural critics, and curators, culminated in a day-long gathering of working groups that exchanged ideas about labor and labor-based art practices.

This panel seeks to extend the ideas and themes explored in the Re-Working Labor Symposium by calling for academic and experimental presentations that create scholarship around the shifting nature of work and the relationship between labor and art. Guiding questions for contributors to this session include: how have artists and researchers envisioned new images and critiques of labor; what role does race, sexual orientation, gender, and able-bodiedness play when conceptualizing the intersection of labor and art; and, can we imagine a world where alternatives to capitalist definitions of work thrive?