Werker Collective are excited to announce that A MOVING HISTORY OF THE YOUNG WORKER will be on show till 24 August 2025 at Paradys in Leeuwarden (capital of the Dutch province Friesland). In their film installation A Moving History of the Young Worker, Werker Collective explores the history of the international workers’ movement through a queer lens. Central to their investigation is the way the worker’s body has been depicted under varying political and geographical conditions.
WERKER COLLECTIVE, A Moving History of the Young Worker (2025), 3 channel video installation, 56 minutes.
PARADYS LEEUWARDEN
Opening: Saturday 14/06/2025,Reception: 16:30 at Bouwurk, located on the Oldehoofsterkerkhof, Leeuwarden.
A Moving History of the Young Worker is on view at Blokhuispoort, Blokhuisplein 40, Leeuwarden.
Friesland has always had a strong bond with both emancipatory politics and the international labor movement. An important role was played by Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis (1846–1919), godfather of anarchism in the Netherlands, with strong roots in Friesland. In A Moving History of the Young Worker, Werker brings together film fragments from very different sources: feature films, documentaries, amateur films, TV broadcasts, educational films, commercials, using an editing technique introduced in 1925 by the Soviet (queer) filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, who in this way strove to make political films more attractive to the general public. The structure of A Moving History of the Young Worker is determined by ‘the five K’s’ that, according to Domela, oppressed the worker: Kerk (church), Koning (king), Kapitaal (capital), Kazerne (army) and Kroeg (pub) — and which require little imagination to see how relevant these ‘K’s still are today.
WERKER CINE CLUB
SESSION 1 - KAPITAAL, KONING, KROEG
Friday 27/06/2025 at 16:00 hr
SESSION 2- KAZERNE, KERK
Saturday 28/06/2025 at 16:00 hr
Werker Collective started their research for A Moving History of the Young Worker in 2018, organising a queer cine club at U-Jazdowski CCA in Warsaw. Werker was inspired by the worker cine-club culture that emerged in Poland during the Soviet era, when workers produced their own amateur films with film equipment that was made accessible to them at the factories. Polish worker cine-clubs managed to circumvent the official narratives that were prevalent in the dominant media at the time, addressing questions around gender, desire, consumerism, mass-media, sexuality, work, family, housing, leisure etc.
On the occasion of the launch of A Moving History of the Young Worker in Leeuwarden, two cine-club sessions are organised. The sessions consist of a screening followed by a conversation with Werker Collective and a special guest.
More information on the program via ARCADIA