WORK HARD! PLAY HARD! is a collective self-organised platform dealing with the issues of knowledge production, cooperation, work, leisure, technology and acceleration through various performative, participatory and discursive formats.
We initiated WHPH in 2016 to try inventing a space where it would be possible to discuss these subjects in unconventional ways and in a broader Eastern European perspective by inviting our friends and colleagues. This platform originated as a way to re-establish the notion of collective work in the professional fields of art, politics and technology, where it has been significantly damaged by social atomisation and liberal individualisation in post-soviet context since the ’90s.
The structure of WHPH includes 4 permanent members of the working group, Aleksei Borisionok, Olia Sosnovskaya, Nicolay Spesivtsev and Dzina Zhuk, who sustain it on a relatively regular but constant basis, and a wider and flexible number of contributors, invited to generate a collective annual event. Each year the structure of this event changes — lasting a week or a weekend, being dispersed and travelling around the city or concentrated in a few locations with a non-stop action, being public or secretive, virtual and embodied — the dynamics of collaboration and self-organisation is shifting. Such experimentation reflects today’s precarity of temporal dispositions of work and leisure. The frictions between them become a working tool to accumulate knowledge about forms of collectivity.
Participants (2016-2019): Roman Aksionov (Minsk), akunka, Silvia Amancei & Bogdan Armanu, Alex Anikina, Anya and Valentine, APART (Bratislava), Apparatus 22 (Brussels / Bucharest) and Sergey Kantsedal (Turin), Karen Karnak and Tae Ateh (Minsk), atom (London), Armen Avanessian (Berlin), bitchcoin (Minsk / Moscow), Blue 321 (Moscow), Daniil Bolshakov (Minsk), Aleksei Borisionok, Uliana Bychenkova (Kyiv), The Center for the Research on Intimate Interfaces (Polina Shilkinite, Sasha Pistoletova, Jozhi Stolet) (Moscow / Saint-Petersburg), Kirila Cvetkovska and Vera Zalutskaya, Gediminas Daugela & Alisa Smorodina, Nick Degtyarev, Nadia Degtyareva, Diskrassvet (different cities), Nastya Dmitrievskaya, dosaaf, eeefff, Tatiana Efrussi, Max Evstropov / party of the dead, Lucy Ferrum (Minsk), Ilya Firdman (Saint-Petersburg) / researcher at Fundamental Minimization of Action Department of n i i c h e g o d e l a t (SRI for doing nothing), Flying cooperation, Choterina Freer (Glasgow), Choterina Freer (Stockholm), Netzwerk für revolutionäre Ungeduld // FUTUR3 festival-crew, The Future Body At Work, GRECHA (Moscow), Mikhail Gulin, Sonia Hedstrand (Stockholm), Uladzimir Hramovich (Minsk), Anna Huana, Anna Huana , Elena Ischenko (Moscow), Nadezhda Ishkinyaeva, Three Julietttes (Uliana Bychenkova,Janna Dolgova, Inna Krasnoper), K_Super (Stockholm), Nikita Kadan, Nikolay Karabinovych (Odessa), Lika Kareva (Moscow), Karen Karnak, Andrei Karpeka (Minsk), Maksim Karpitski (Minsk), kassandra, Vera Kavaleuskaya (Minsk / Helsinki), Pavel Khailo, Kimchi Eukimchi, Anna Kinbom (Stockholm), Anastasya Kizilova (Saint-Petersburg), Lena Klabukova (Moscow), Masha Kotlyachkova (Moscow), Yuliya Kozhemyako, Krёlex zentre, Irina Kudrya (Kyiv), Sasha Kurmaz (Kyiv), Anton Lapov and Larion Lozovoy, Matthieu Levet, Inga Lindorenko, Anya Litovskih, Anna Lok (Minsk), Marina Maraeva (Saint-Petersburg), Markéta Kinterová, Eugene Markin (Minsk / Stockholm), Masque Noir, Lina Miadzvedzeva (Minsk), Pavlo Mitenko (Moscow), MUTRO ART GROUP (London / Krakow), n i i c h e g o d e l a t (Research Institute of doing nothing), Gleb Napreenko (Moscow), Aleksei Naumchik, Arina Nesterova and Nikita Nechaev, Night Movement (Moscow), Virgile Novarina (La Giffardière/Paris), Alexandra Novozhenova (Moscow), obey-ne-robey, Alisa Oleva (London), Roman Osminkin (Saint-Petersburg), Palianina-Pchelka (Minsk), Andrew Paterson, Valentina Petrova (Kyiv), DJ pickpocket, Katya Pislari, Sasha Pistoletova, Vasilisa Polianina, Postanatomical theatre Maailmanloppu (Saint-Petersburg), Problem Collective (Minsk), Nataliya Protassenia and Sergey Babkin, pshkn, Sasha Puchkova (Moscow), Oleksiy Radynski (Kyiv), Natalia Rebelo (Stockholm), Christopher Roth (Berlin), Marina Russkikh (Saint-Petersburg) / researcher at Delay Department of of n i i c h e g o d e l a t (SRI for doing nothing), Maria Rybka and Yuriy Kuzmenko (Omsk), Frida Sandström (Stockholm), Maksim Sarychev, Maria Sarycheva (Moscow), Daria Sazanovich, Jean Seban, Maria Semenenko, Tanja Setsko (Minsk), Anna Shcherbyna (Kyiv), Vital Shchutski (Paris), Polina Shilkinite (Moscow), Jura Shust (Minsk / Brussels), Peter Sit, Sasha Smirnova (Minsk / Barcelona), Egor Sofronov, Anton Sorokin (Minsk), Olia Sosnovskaya, Antonina Stebur, Jozi Stolet (St-Petersburg), Mia D. Suppiej (Berlin / Venice), Aliaxey Talstou (Minsk), Techno-Poetry, Anna Tereshkina и Helga Zinzyver, Cara Tolmie (Stockholm), Ju Toman, TOYBOY, Tonya Trubitsyna, Alexandra Tryanova (Odessa), Nastia Tulayeva (Minsk), «Union of convalescents» and playfellows, Jury Urso (Minsk), Anastasia Vepreva (Saint-Petersburg), Pyotr Vladimirov (Kyiv / Wroclaw), Vox Studio, Andrey Vozyanov, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Welcome to the Doll House! (Saint-Petersburg / Kyiv), Xin Xin, Your mother’s maiden name (Anna Tereshkina, Araik Vietinghoff) (Saint-Petersburg), Vova Yuzhny, Vita Zelenska and Marina Israilova, Rut Karin Zettergren (Stockholm), Alesia Zhitkevich (Minsk) , Dzina Zhuk, Helga Zinzyver (Saint-Petersburg) / researcher at Delay Department of n i i c h e g o d e l a t (SRI for doing nothing), Sasha Zubritskaya (Saint-Petersburg)
Website programming: Nicolay Spesivtsev
Website design: eeefff (Nicolay Spesivtsev, Dzina Zhuk)
Archivers: Aleksei Borisionok, Olia Sosnovskaya, Nicolay Spesivtsev, Dzina Zhuk