Smrt umělce & Reader Set – 2 Books

An essay on invisible labor in the arts and a volume of art theory texts published for the Biennale Matter of Art 2024, together for a discounted price.

Smrt umělce. Ať žijí pomocnice!
We can imagine the art world as a household where some people do work that is invisible, even though this work is what makes artistic creation at all possible. We see only the authors—the artists and the curators—but art contains many other roles that are indispensable. Many of them require a great deal of effort, imagination, inventiveness, and sensitivity. The art world is full of production and curatorial assistants, caretakers of various kinds, educators, restorers, and custodians. In this essay you will meet them—the passionate ones who work from a place of love and give far more to the art world than they are paid for as well as those who are in danger of burning out or have already burned out and see art merely as an alienated job. What would the art world look like if women helpers stepped out of the shadow of the artists?

Sowing Unrest – the Biennale Reader was published on the occasion of the third Biennale Matter of Art. With newly commissioned as well as republished essays, conversations, poems, and artistic contributions, it grafts the two curatorial threads of the biennale—Aleksei Borisionok’s interest in workers’ movements and Katalin Erdődi’s focus on rural change—in order to talk about the past, present, and future of political movements across the rural–urban divide. How do people in rural areas organize to effect change in society? How can people strike and achieve their political demands? How can care be organized as a basis for solidarity and mutual aid? We are curious about the various ways in which unrest—a state of dissatisfaction, disturbance, and agitation—can grow in unexpected places.

Texts: Kateryna Aliinyk, Aleksei Borisionok, Ramona Duminicioiu, Katalin Erdődi, Fernando García-Dory, Kateřina Kolářová, Tomasz Rakowski, Marta Romankiv, Galina Rymbu, Olia Sosnovskaya, Alex Toshkov, Tomáš Uhnák, Maja Vusilović

Visual Essays: Orla Barry, eeefff, Katheryna Lysovenko, Tamás Kaszás