[Commlist] Images at Work: Labour and the Moving Image Conference

Paul Flaig is happy to announce the following conference programme for 
*Images at Work: Labour and the Moving Image*, featuring keynote 
speaker Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky (University of Chicago) and to be held 
at King's College London from 22-23 June 2023. This conference is 
organised by Laura Lux (KCL) and Georgina Le Breuilly (KCL) and is part 
of theGerman Screen Studies Network 
<https://germanscreenstudies.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/>’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).

Registration and further information about the conference as well as a 
special screening of works by Harun Farocki at Close Up Film Centre can 
be found here: Images at Work: Labour and the Moving Image Tickets, Thu 
22 Jun 2023 at 08:00 | Eventbrite 
<https://www.eventbrite.com/e/images-at-work-labour-and-the-moving-image-tickets-636578512467>
<https://www.eventbrite.com/e/images-at-work-labour-and-the-moving-image-tickets-636578512467>
	


///


  Images at Work: Labour and the Moving Image

*
*

*Nash Lecture Theatre, Strand Campus King’s College London Thursday 22 
June - Friday 23 June 2023 *

*
*

*This in-person international research conference brings together film 
studies scholars to examine representations of labour on screen*

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)

Sarah Ann Wells, The International Women’s Strike Film (Associate 
Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison) [online]

*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*

*20:00-21:30 // 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.*A booking link will be shared 
here soon.*


      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 Early Automation 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*


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