Images at Work: Labour and the Moving Image

Keynote Speaker: Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky

An 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.

This conference is part of the German Screen Studies Network’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) in partnership with the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures (DLLC) at King’s College London.

Organised by Laura Lux (King's) and Georgina Le Breuilly (King's). Please register to attend this event.