About

Werker is a multifaceted project initiated by Marc Roig Blesa and Rogier Delfos in Amsterdam in 2009. It operates in the intersection of labour, ecofeminism and the LGBTQI+ movements in favour of an image critique of daily life, to analyse what is made visible and what remains hidden or silenced in different political contexts. The project started by releasing ten issues of a publication called Werker Magazine.

Werker takes inspiration from Der Vereinigung der Arbeiter-Fotografen (the association of worker photographers), a group of politicised photo-clubs that appeared in Germany in the 1920’s, following in the steps of the first socialist photography experiments in the USSR which extended into the rest of Europe, the United States, and Japan. It takes an interest in working methodologies based on self-representation, self-publishing, image analysis, collective authorship and counter-archiving.

Werker aims to expand the notion of self-publishing into a variety of media such as moving image, digital publishing, installation, printed matter and performance. It operates contextually, thus exploring different forms and strategies of interaction with a variety of audiences.

For the last 10 years, under the name Werker Collective, it has been activating photography, design and publishing workshops with students, cultural workers, self-organised unions of migrant domestic workers, undocumented migrants, in support of anti-eviction activists, feminist groups, LGBTQI+ communities and people with neurological or functional diversities, amongst others. Through these workshops, Werker Collective is weaving an intersectional and transnational network of allies, reactivating oppressed histories and inquiring worker’s solidarity through collaborative artistic practice.

The self-representation methods proposed by Werker Collective, pay special attention to the myriad of vulnerabilities that emerge when unspoken and invisibilized topics are addressed. In such processes, it is at stake to always consider the right to remain unseen, which kind of visual materials are to be produced, and for what goal. (Further reading: Yes With Us, Never About Us: Art/Workers, Solidarity and Privilege. Collectively, Werker Collective, Iaspis Stockholm 2021)

One of Werker’s more recent developments is the Werker Archive which carries the mission of collecting, preserving and spreading the legacy of self-organised radical documentary practices initiated by the association of worker photographers in the 1920’s. The aim of this archive is to provide tools to enable the production of anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and anti-patriarchal political imagination. Werker Archive is physically located in the Nieuwmarkt neighbourhood of Amsterdam and it is activated regularly through workshops, performances, installations and publications. It comprises more than 3000 historical and contemporary documents. Its oldest document being an albumen print from the 1871 insurrection that led to the Paris Commune, the first self-organised worker’s government in modern history. The archive is ever-expanding as contemporary documents are being produced through workshops, and historical materials are collected from archives in affinity, donations and personal acquisitions.

Reassessing the archive, its authority and language, is at the basis of a politics of restitution which is meant to repair the damage that has been made through the centuries, to large amounts of populations and ecosystems in the world, mostly in the name of progress and civilisation. Amending the past is a politics of the future. “Archives are the Commons not the past” (Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Versobooks 2019).

The current crises of Covid-19 exemplifies the discrepancies between our current economic system and the biosphere. Historically, it seems to us that after the international worker’s solidarity movement, and after the multiple identity politics struggles, there is the need for a planetary post-anthropocene emancipatory politics. This requires an alliance of human and non-human bodies, to articulate an ecofeminist queer alternative together, on the principles of care, maintenance and reproduction of all forms of life. (Further reading: Imaging Dissent: Towards Becoming a Common Subject. Werker Collective, Art & Education Classroom, e-flux January 2020)

Some of the artists, activists, researchers, unions, schools, museums and archives that compose Werker’s ecosystem are: Activestills, Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Association Ancrages, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, Centre Culturel Populaire Palentes Orchamp (Groupes Medvedkine), Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Ciudadan@s en Defensa de la Escuela Pública, Dar Chabab, Der Arbeiter-Fotograf, Dutch Art Institute, Georgy Mamedov, International Institute of Social History, Jo Spence Memorial Archive, @juancarlosmohr, Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga, Silvia Federici, MayDay Rooms, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Photography Workshop, Jo Spence Memorial Archive, Rijksakademie van Beelende Kunsten, Sindillar: Sindicato de Trabajadoras del Hogar y los Cuidados, Susoespai: Creació i Salut Mental, Stedelijk Museum, Steve Edwards, Sonsbeek 20–24, Tate Modern, Taula en Defensa dels Drets de les Treballadores de la Llar i les Cures, The Showroom, The Voice of Domestic Workers, We Are Here.