Complementing the photographs of industrial workers in the exhibition “La Forge d’une société moderne”, the talk focuses on industrial work(ers) as a motif in a variety of artistic genres and media that circulated in interwar Luxembourg. The depictions, which were distributed and promoted by different actors with different interests, show the industrial worker as affiliated with (or a representative of) a particular steel company, the industrial sector as a whole, the Luxembourg nation or the working class. All actors employed the figure of the worker for their own ends, drafting it into the service of their respective ideas and perspectives on industrial work. Suggesting specific ways of seeing, the images contributed to the perception and meaning-making of industrial work in times of economic and political change.
Thursday, 30 November 2017, 19.30
Centre national de l’audiovisuel, Dudelange
Free entrance. The presentation will be held in German.
Ira Plein is a PhD candidate at the C²DH and member of the research team FAMOSO (Fabricating Modern Societies: Industries of Reform as Educational Responses to Societal Challenges (ca. 1880-1930).
