“The economic crisis that began in 2007-8 led to layoffs on a massive scale, leaving thousands of newly unemployed workers with little hope of another job. Their response put workers’ control back on the agenda in Europe. For many years beforehand, factories had been occupied and recuperated almost exclusively in Latin America.
In most cases an occupation is not a deliberate step towards workers’ control but a means of workers’ struggle against the closure of a production site or company or the relocation of production to another country. The struggles often fall apart without any concrete results. “Occupy, Resist, Produce” focuses on the rare, better organized cases where the purpose of the struggle is to bring production under workers’ control. The workers do more than protest, they take the initiative and become protagonists, building horizontal social relations on the production sites and adopting mechanisms of direct democracy and collective decision-making. The recuperated workplaces often reinvent themselves, building links with local communities and social movements.”
https://www.ressler.at/occupy_resist_produce/
A 4-channel video installation by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler
