The General Strike - An Artist Talk on the Work of Santiago Sierra & Claire Fontaine

The General Strike, the organized refusal to work among a critical mass of laborers, has been attendant upon and responsive to the capitalist form of accumulation since the latter’s inception. Having variously emerged and receded as a broadly recognized means of resistance since the mid 19th century, the potential of a general strike to precipitate capitalism's inherent tendency to crisis was forcefully expressed by the anti-austerity movement in Greece and in Spain in 2012. A general strike interrupts the availability of labour foundational to the production of value which enables capitalism to valorize things over people, and to press other life processes (politics, love, art, science) into the service of itself – that is, profit maximization. Talk refers to the work of Santiago Sierra and Claire Fontaine