ART AND WORK: INITIAL REFLECTIONS ON THE POLITICAL MEANING OF THE CONFORMATION OF ARTISTIC WORK COOPERATIVES IN URUGUAY.

Abstract

The present work proposes to briefly examine the political meaning of the conformation of the Cooperatives of Artistic Work in Uruguay after the promulgation of the law 18.384 – Statute of the Artist and related trades – approved by the government of the Broad Front in the year 2008. It starts from the idea of non-exceptionality of cultural work within the framework of current post-Fordist forms of production to think of struggles that reorganize work in favor of the common, autonomy and that involve the social in a broad sense. Specifically, it is interesting to address two dimensions of the problem. On the one hand, the ambiguous situation of cultural and artistic production in its link with political struggles and forms of collective organization as spaces of social transformation in current capitalism. And linked to the above, the other dimension refers to the centrality of autonomous work today – paradigm of the character of artistic work – as a renewed form of domination and the possibilities of its reorganization and liberation through collective action. It seeks to contribute to the discussions about the political potential of culture in its link with the forms of cultural production and collective organization in Uruguay within the framework of governments called “progressive” and “social change”.