Workers’ inquiry and class composition in the art world: Establishing spatial struggle and the production of working-class knowledge

Drawing from traditions of workers’ inquiry and co-research, I approach knowledge production through political organizing. I use class composition analysis to situate artistic labour and political organizing within the productive and socially reproductive activities of the art world’s institutions in so-called ‘Vancouver, Canada’. The analysis examines three connected organizing contexts, an art workers’ inquiry, a worker social, and a town hall. In the analysis, I identify (1) contradictions in the technical and social composition of labour in the field, (2) the problem of politicization in the context of art institutions, and (3) the production of the knowledge necessary to overcome the subsumption of labour organizing as politically-coded public programming. I argue that organizing within the art world generates value for art institutions, therefore workers require political contexts external to the art world institutions to produce working-class knowledge and resist exploitation through what I conceptualize as a spatial struggle.