What does it actually mean to employ a self? The goal of the workshop is to explore the new role of the artist in a society which claims to be based on the production of knowledge and creative industries. What are the consequences for the self-conception and self-perception of artists, when art and cultural production is no longer situated outside of a general economy, but in the thick of it? The workshop will investigate both, contemporary theory on this question as well as emerging critical practices across different disciplines.

There is no specific target group for this workshop. It is addressed to all students who have an interest in critically exploring, reflecting and engaging themselves as well as their own practices with some of the basic principles of cultural production today or in the near future.

As key learning outcomes the workshop will provide a first sketch or draft towards a critique of the political economy of the self. It will include theories of self-portraiture, research on divisions of artistic labor as well as debates on strategies of economic survival as a freelancer. The result will be a lot of new questions, rather than answers.

Participants of this workshop are expected to be ready to invest into an intense week of a full of very different activities like reading, researching, interviewing, recording, performing and presenting.