Labour Power Plant: Romana Schmalisch and Robert Schlicht in Conversation with Andreas Petrossiants

Join the Department of Performance Studies for a presentation by Berlin-based artists and filmmakers Romana Schmalisch and Robert Schlicht on the occasion of the publication of their book Labour Power Plant (Archive Books, 2026). The publication gathers material relates their film of the same name (2019), a seemingly dystopian, but documentary-inspired narrative which examines the formation of labor power. They will show excerpts from the film and discuss the notion of labour power, “humanist” management strategies, and the recuperation of critical artistic forms by the corporate world to maximize productivity, like the “Théâtre d’entreprise,” whose methods are based on Bertolt Brecht’s and Augusto Boal’s theater.  

Romana Schmalisch is a Berlin-based filmmaker and artist who studied Fine Arts and New Media at the Berlin University of the Arts. Robert Schlicht is a Berlin-based filmmaker and artist who studied Philosophy at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Since 2004 Schlicht and Schmalisch have collaborated on numerous projects at the interface of film, art, and theory to examine how historical processes and societal structures can be represented. The theme of labor in capitalist societies is a focal point in their films, exhibitions and lecture series. They took part in residencies and have received research and project grants from Akademie der Künste Berlin, Le Laboratoire d’Économie et de Sociologie du Travail Marseille, La Maison Française d’Oxford, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, Institut d’études avancées d’Aix Marseille Université, the experimental film initiative On&For Brussel, among others. Their films and artworks have been shown in cinemas, festivals, and art institutions worldwide including the Berlinale; HKW Berlin; n.b.k. Berlin; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; FRAC Grand Large—Hauts-de-France; FRAC Sud and Mucem, Marseille; Centre Pompidou, Paris; CCCOD, Tours; Kunsthalle Wien, NN Contemporary Art, Northampton; collective gallery, Edinburgh.

Andreas Petrossiants is a writer and editor living in New York. His work has appeared in Social Text, Antipode, New York Review of Architecture, Lux Magazine, The New Inquiry, AJ+ Subtext, Bookforum.com, Frieze, the Verso and Historical Materialism blogs, and e-flux journal, where he is an editor. He is a PhD candidate in the Department of Performance Studies at NYU, where he is writing about circulation struggles, movements that contest urbanization, and autonomist feminism.