With the bbk berlin e.V. Arbeitsgruppe Art Worker Solidarity, Jan Kunkel, Dietrich Meyer, Ragnhild Aamås/UKS Oslo (Unge Kunstneres Samfund/Young Artists’ Society).

Doors open from 18:00, Start at 18:30

The current cultural and political moment brings with it unprecedented challenges for cultural workers in Berlin. On top of already precarious working conditions, art workers are affected by dramatic funding cuts. These impede the accessibility of art production and art spaces, and often lead to the selective deplatforming of critical voices and resistant practices.

What forms of self-organization might allow art workers to push back against the isolation and individualisation they face as freelancers in this context? What histories and practices of organising around working conditions can be drawn on, and what does the model of the union have to offer? This event brings together representative examples from North European and local contexts in order to discuss how to continue to collectivise art workers’ struggles.

This event includes inputs on three questions from invited guests:

In what context do we organise, as non-German and German art workers? Jan Kunkel will trace a brief historical arc of the structural contradictions between unitary and individual union models in Germany—and ask how these have conditioned the political horizon of an organized mass labour movement under capital.

What rights do freelancers have and what challenges do they face in organizing around labour? Dietrich Meyer will discuss his experience organizing as a freelance worker in Germany, and talk about models of solidarity-based organizing among technicians in galleries and museums.

How do other artists’ associations in Northern Europe organise? Ragnhild Aamås, Chair of the UKS / Young Artists’ Society in Oslo, will talk about the history and structure of the UKS, how it supports both non-EU/EEA artists and Norwegian artists, and how to maintain independence in an arts scene that is predominantly state-funded.

Inputs from the three speakers will be followed by a discussion with all present, moderated by Constanza Mendoza.

Jan Kunkel works with language, objects, and their dissimulation. She is closely invested in the intricacies of economic and libidinal logics—how these domains might disattune from common notions of infrastructural procurement and solo practice. Recent exhibitions and performances include Kunstverein München, Munich (2023); Studiengalerie 1.357, Frankfurt (2023); di volta in volta, Paris (2024); au JUS, Brussels (2025); Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2025); and Hours, Berlin (2025).

Dietrich Meyer is an artist, silkscreen printing business owner, and former art technician (he still does this from time to time for money). As an artist, he has exhibited at MATCA (Cluj, RO), gr_und (Berlin, DE), Adjunct Positions (Los Angeles, USA), as well as Manifesta 12 (Palermo, IT), among others. He is the cofounder of the now defunct artist run space, High Tide, in Philadelphia. He recently reopened his business, Et al. Press, which specializes in silkscreen printing. He has worked as an art technician across various institutions, galleries, auction houses, as well as working for other artists in the US and across Europe over the last 16 years. He is a former labor organizer, though he finds himself being drawn back into this work as of recently.

Ragnhild Aamås studied archeology and philosophy at the University of Oslo, MRes Art: Exhibition Studies at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, and completed her MA at Oslo National Academy of Fine Art in 2012. As an artist and writer she has initiated and run reading groups since then, and held various offices in the artist associations UKS (Young Artists Society, currently as chair), NBK (the association of Norwegian Visual Artists) and BOA (the association of visual artist in Oslo and Akershus county). Between 2014-2021 she reimagined and co-directed the artist run exhibition space Podium together with Ayat Tuleubek and Ignas Krunglevicius.

The AG Art Worker Solidarity was formed within the bbk-Berlin (Berlin Visual Artists’ Association) in response to known cases of censorship and silencing of visual artists in Berlin due to their positions in solidarity with Palestine, as well as the ongoing, intentional precarisation of artists through defunding and attempted deportation, all of which are exacerbated by the rise and normalisation of right-wing extremism. Rather than seeing these as isolated phenomena, the AG Art Worker Solidarity seeks to collectively push back against repression by inviting members to meet each other regularly to establish and strengthen intersectional networks of solidarity.