Katja Praznik, Arts Management

Professor Praznik will discuss the variegated forms of the paradox of unpaid artistic labor, which she defines as the contradiction between the prestige and perceived exceptionality of artistic work and the injustice of the precarious, often unpaid labor that sustains it. She examines specific historical regulation of artistic work in the United States and compares its consequent deconstruction after the WWII with the transformations of artistic labor in socialist contexts to demonstrate the undermining effects of neoliberalism on artistic labor and the rising resistance of art workers against these forces.

Katja Praznik holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Ljubljana. After working as a freelancer in the Slovenian independent art scene, she joined UB as an Assistant Professor in the Arts Management Program where she teaches cultural policy. In 2016, Praznik published her second book in Slovene language, The Paradox of Unpaid Labor: Autonomy of Art, the Avant-Garde and Cultural Policy in the Transition to Post-Socialism, which analyzes the birth of unpaid artistic work in the former socialist Yugoslavia and the deterioration of working conditions in the arts during the post-socialist era.

Complimentary wine and hors d’oeuvres served.

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