Working Class Ecologies, 2022

www.wienwoche.org

16-25 September 2022

Artistic Director : Jelena Micić
Executive Director: Nataša Mackuljak
Festival Curator: Deniz Güvensoy

Everyday use of plastic products, non-sustainable clothing, and a diet, based on cheap imported food is an inevitable reality for many. The preferences of the ones with the lower income are shaped by a set of conditions such as a restrictive labor market, educational discrimination, and systematic oppression based on income, citizenship, race, gender, and ability. The struggle to survive and sustain the lives of others and oneself is becoming a serious task in times of health and energy supply insecurity and food supply shortage. Although the effects of the crisis are proportional to the position in the social hierarchy, all the lives on the planet are being affected more or less drastically.

The recent pandemic supported further precarisation of the working people, many of which risked their health by taking on essential and irreplaceable tasks within the service and healthcare sector. When we witnessed deer, and boars, taking over the urban space, there was an illusion of the positive effects of the lockdown. However, hyper-digitalization of the workforce produced the same carbon emissions as air transportation. On the other hand, ongoing wars and military conflicts in and out of Europe reintroduced dystopia and revealed inequalities between displaced people based on origin and nationality. While the fossil fuel industry governs the unequal distribution of resources, the military-industrial complex creates its economy at the expense of the energy and life force of those with no choice but to produce.

Deniz Güvensoy und Jelena Micić

Projects> Befreiende Evas // Doing the Dirty Work // Feminist Cross Stitch Club // Fences, Insects, Embroideries (materialcommunities) // How Many Layers? // Immo Grief // Nosotras por/para nosotras // Oikos: ‘The House’ // The Last Inventory // Feeling of a Dumpling // agri_culture // Symbiopoesis // Torbalon

Collaborations: Basis Wien // Vienna Design Week // Depot: Discussion Program