To celebrate the publication of Dave Beech’s new book on Art and Postcapitalism, PUBLICS has organised a group reading session and book launch event on December 4th. This is the first of many reading sessions initiated by PUBLICS as a way of bringing people together to read aloud and to enjoy the act of collective reading from its vast library dedicated to art and publicness.

From 3–5pm you are welcome to join artists Dave Beech and Minna Henriksson at PUBLICS for some reading and listening. Together you will read some of the selected books and publications from PUBLICS vast Library, somehow related to the many questions and subjects relating to Art and Postcapitalism, value production and the economics of art. At 5pm there will be a public presentation by Dave Beech from his new book, to be followed by a discussion with Minna Henriksson and the audience.

The book Art and Postcapitalism: Aesthetic Labour, Automation and Value Production reconsiders the twin demands of wages for traditionally unpaid forms of work and a post-work future in contemporary postcapitalist theory through a reconstruction of the history of debates about art and labour. Whereas historical postcapitalism typically overstated the emancipatory potential of art as a model of work in communism, contemporary postcapitalism ejects art from its visions of a world emancipated from work. Art and Postcapitalism argues against both Romantic anti-capitalism and the contemporary politics of work by developing a new understanding of art and labour within the political project of the supersession of value production.

Dave Beech is Reader in Art and Marxism at the University of the Arts, London. He is the author of Art and Value: Art’s Economic Exceptionalism in Classical, Neoclassical and Marxist Economics (Brill 2015), which was shortlisted for the Deutscher Memorial Prize. His most recent book Art and Postcapitalism: Aesthetic Labour, Automation and Value Production (Pluto Press) is out now. Art and Labour (Brill 2020) is forthcoming. Beech is an artist who worked in the collective Freee (with Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan) between 2004 and 2018. His current art practice translates the tradition of critical documentary film into sequences of prints that combine photomontage and text art.

Minna Henriksson is a visual artist based in Helsinki. Her work is often collaborative, and relates to histories of the anti-racist, leftist and feminist struggles. Henriksson has been active in several groups and institutions aiming to improve working conditions in art field. She is co-editor of ‘Contemporary Art and Nationalism – Critical Reader’ (Pristina 2007) and ‘Art Workers – Material Conditions and Labour Struggles in Contemporary Art Practice’ (Helsinki/Tallinn/Stockholm 2015). In 2017 Henriksson was awarded with the Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Award of artistic work committed to the ideal of democracy and antifascism. Henriksson is board member of leftist artists’ association Kiila.