Social Reproduction Feminism I

This screening is part of a monthly film series presented by Soctalk and hosted and co-curated by WORM, exploring cinema through the lens of social reproduction feminism (for example, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uur-pMk7XjY). In the words of Cindi Katz (2001), social reproduction is the fleshy and messy stuff of everyday life. The program invites audiences to look at film as a way of understanding the structures of regular practices that make life possible, while questioning whose labour remains unseen. Across four screenings, we explore how capitalist relations profit from the status quo and depend on keeping much of this work hidden.

The first screening is inspired by the work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles (1939), with the main focus on how social reproductive labour can be reappropriated as art. Jobs such as cleaning or repairing are often invisible, yet fundamental to public life. Ukeles has extensively documented her own maintenance labour as art, the repetitive constant work that disappears as soon as it happens. By foregrounding maintenance as a creative and political practice, this program challenges dominant ideas of value and artistic production.