Vaida Stepanovaitė is a researcher, curator, and organizer, as well as an associate lecturer in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research examines the relationships and tensions between art, work, and labour across both institutional and self-organized contexts. She questions the notion of art as an aesthetic practice disconnected from the broader economy, and challenges the idea of labour as belonging solely to the economic sphere.

Vaida played a pivotal role in establishing the Art Workers’ Union in Lithuania in 2023. A branch of the May 1st Labor Union, the Art Workers’ Union seeks to protect workers’ rights in the field of visual arts while also reimagining “art workers” as a new, broader collective subject. In her practice-based research, Vaida highlights the unspoken hierarchies and the differential value assigned to roles in the field of art, as well as the material differences this discrepancy fosters between creative and infrastructural work.

In this podcast, Vaida Stepanovaitė guides us through some of the intricate lineages of past and present trade unions in the post-Soviet Baltic states, while also drawing inspiration from international movements such as the Art Workers’ Coalition and W.A.G.E., as well as from recent collective efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. She reflects on the devaluation of labour and people within the context of “uber-economics” or the gig economy, on the toll, precarity takes on the tired bodies of workers, and on the need for radical action to foster new forms of collectivization. The struggle against inhospitable working conditions and the gaps in the social safety net affecting art workers, serves as a starting point for devising better models for arts institutions and building new solidarities in the quest for a good life.

Photo credit: Emilija Filipenkovaite

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