12.4. – 10.5.2026 »Überarbeit: The Reserve Army of (Precarious) Labor« with Filipe Lippe & Vijai Maia Patchineelam
»Überarbeit: The Reserve Army of (Precarious) Labor« is a transdisciplinary project, developed by the artists, researchers and educators Filipe Lippe and Vijai Maia Patchineelam in collaboration with M.Bassy, combining an exhibition with a series of participatory events. The project addresses issues related to the current dismantling of the world of work, emphasizing the historical line which interlinks colonial slavery and the contemporary form of precarization of working conditions under neoliberalism, revealing how it operates within art and culture. The accompanying program of three public formats examines the historical, racial and ideological dimensions of labor from modern colonialism to the gig-economy, exploring how artists, as precarious workers, can challenge this system.
Structured as exhibition, artist talks, collective reading and listening sessions, film screenings, and discussion rounds, the project applies forms of collective cooperation and community-based practices as a means of opposing market-oriented neoliberal hegemony within the arts. The exhibition, which presents paintings, installations, videos and text-based works by the two artists, is designed as a participatory installation – a study room in which research materials such as books, scientific papers, films and recordings are available for joint examination and expansion. The events follow the dialogical educational approach of Paulo Freire's »Pedagogy of the Oppressed«, in which the artists and the audience actively participate in a collaborative production of knowledge, expanding the concepts of the white cube and the classroom into a non-hierarchical, inclusive communal space.
Precariousness also affects the fields of culture and art, but these sectors still lack an in-depth critical analysis of this. The project proposal Überarbeit is a step in this direction.
ACCOMPANYING PROGRAM:
Event #1 / Opening: 11.4.2026, 7 P.M., Artist talk, discussion and dinner encounter with Filipe Lippe & Vijai Maia Patchineelam
How can artists challenge the increasing precarization of labor by establishing alliances, mutual aid and collaborative practices? Introduction to the theme of project and the methodology of the project. Fundamental theoretical works and initiatives that have informed the project will be presented.
Please reserve via: reservation@m-bassy.org
Event #2: 18.4.2026, 7 P.M., Reading session, listening session and discussion with Filipe Lippe & Vijai Maia Patchineelam
The reading session will include fragments from papers and books by authors such as Paulo Freire, Frantz Fanon, Katja Praznik, Alexandra Kollontai, Guy Debord, Silvia Federici, Mário Pedrosa, Ricardo Basbaum, Nancy Fraser and Ricardo Antunes. The listening session will present an audio archive of Afro-diasporic music and experimental pop, interspersed with excerpts from lectures, poems and interviews on topics related to the world of work, class relations and colonial history, including Gang of Four, Nelson Cavaquinho, Stereolab, Stuart Hall, Max Roach, Amiri Baraka, Victoria Santa Cruz, Archie Shepp, Walter Rodney, Fred Hampton, Carlos Puebla, Fela Kuti, Wladimir Iljitsch Lenin, Chico Buarque de Holanda and Sun Ra.
Limited seats available. Please reserve via: reservation@m-bassy.org
Event #3: 2.5.2026, 7 P.M., Film screening and discussion with Filipe Lippe & Vijai Maia Patchineelam
For the third public event, we will screen the film »Volkswagen – Factory workers in Germany and Brazil« (1974) directed by Jorge Bodanzky and Wolf Gauer. In this film, Bodanzky, a post-Cinema Novo filmmaker, and Gauer depict the life and material conditions of two Volkswagen factory workers in both Brazil and Germany. In preparation for the screening a collective reading session will take place in order to contextualize and give direction for the discussion at the end of the event.
Limited seats available. Please reserve via: reservation@m-bassy.org
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS, RESEARCHERS & EDUCATORS:
Filipe Lippe
Filipe Lippe (b. 1986 in Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; lives in Berlin) is an artist, poet, and theorist. He is currently a PhD candidate in philosophy of art at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. In his thesis, he analyzes, from an unorthodox dialectical historical materialist perspective, the interrelation between class inequality, racism and the reproduction of colonial mechanism of social organization within Brazilian art under neoliberalism. In recent years, Lippe has exhibited his work in several institutions, independent spaces and galleries such as Museu Afro-Brasil, São Paulo, Brazil; Friche la Belle de Mai, Marseille, France; Instituto Guimarães Rosa México-City, México; Casa de Cultura Mário Quintana, Porto Alegre, Brazil; Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro; M.Bassy e.V., Hamburg; and Haus für Poesie, Berlin. As an educator, he has taught at universities and art academies such as Leuphana Universität Lüneburg; HfbK Hamburg; and UDK Berlin. His texts have been published by different online platforms and magazines such as Arts of the Working Class, Revista Celeste and Stedelijk Journal.
Vijai Maia Patchineelam
Vijai Maia Patchineelam (b. 1983 in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; lives in Berlin) is an artist, researcher and educator. His artistic practice focuses on the dialogue between the artist and the art institution. Placing the role of the artist as a worker in the foreground, Patchineelam’s research-driven artistic practice experiments with and argues for a more permanent role for artists – one in which artists become a constitutive part of the inner workings of art institutions. This displacement of roles is part of a larger trajectory of his PhD research at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and the University of Antwerp, Belgium and a.pass (Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies), Brussels, Belgium. As a final outcome of his doctoral thesis, Patchineelam has published the book »The Artist Job Description: for the Employment of the Artist, as an Artist, Inside the Art Institution« (2022) with Track Report, Antwerp, in collaboration with OAZA, Zagreb, Croatia and a.pass, Brussels. As an educator Patchineelam has taught and conducted workshops at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp; a.pass, Brussels; Philippine Women's University, Manila, Philippines; and Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art, New Delhi, India. He is currently a guest lecturer at the Advanced Master of Research in Art and Design at Sint Lucas Antwerp.
We would like to thank the Eimsbüttel District Office and the Ministry of Culture and Media in Hamburg for their funding and support of the project.
