One of the key, but often overlooked, values of documentary filmmaking is its potential to create knowledge sharing and solidarity networks in the most adverse situations, either as part of the process or in the afterlife of the film. The research project will flip this arrangement and explorehow this “byproduct” of documentary could become the centre of production and a method of research. The inextricable connection between the climate crisis and capitalist modes of production warrants a further study and a careful investigation into the interconnections between labour and climate concerns, that have a history and tendency of being forced into separate silos. Towards futurity, a qualitatively different time to come, how can labour be re-imagined under the conditions of the climate crisis?
Prerna Bishnoi is a PhD candidate in Artistic Research at Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, Norway. Her topic of research explores how labour concerns intersect with climate crisis and what role documentary practice – informed by documentary filmmaking – can play in making these interconnections visible to make labour-climate justice imaginable. Her interest is in the agency of grassroots organizing and the potential of (creating) knowledge-sharing networks within this framework. She is a board member of the Norwegian visual artist union, Young Artists Society (UKS) and is a part of the steering group of Verdensrommet, an advocacy and mutual support network for 170+ non-EU/EEA creative professionals in Norway.
Artistic Research Autumn Forum 2025
3rd presentation
Ways of Re-imagining Labour in the Climate Transition
The solidarity alliances building GKN for Future
*This presentation was first given at the Ethnography Research Conference at the University of Trento, in June 2025, under the panel ‘Environmental labour ethnographies of workplaces and working-class communities’.
For self-management to have liberatory potential it needs to fulfil at least two criteria: it must transform work conditions and power relations within the factory, and it must expand its horizon outside the factory to change social relations.
– Michael Hardt, The Subversive Seventies, 2024
An audio-visual presentation maps the network of solidarity alliances forged by the ex-GKN workers in Campi Bisenzio, Florence, in their struggle to create the cooperative, GKN for Future. My starting point is that these alliances have been an integral force in building and sustaining a strong environmental-labour movement. What can be learnt from the convergences emerging in this movement, displaying the potential to create a blueprint for future worker-led transformations in the climate transition? How does it offer ways of re-imagining labour, from industrial to knowledge and cultural work? I will reflect on these questions with my ongoing art practice-led research, through the lens of narrative construction, image-making and imagination, framing and re-framing.
On the 9th of July 2021, 422 workers of the GKN Driveline factory were fired by email (Gabriellini, Imperatore, 2023). Their response went far beyond reacting physically, by occupying the factory premises, and legally to the dismissal: by exerting their agency, mobilising their knowledge, skills, capacities and creativity, they took an anticipatory, dis-alienating stance to re-invent their work in a time of unprecedented climate crisis. In the past three years, a reindustrialization plan has been developed that enables to transform production from axle shafts for luxurious cars to solar panels (production and repair) and cargo bikes. A regional law has been passed that would make it possible to form an industrial consortium to facilitate the process of constituting a cooperative and starting production (Gambirasi, 2024).
How are they managing to do this? The armoury of strategies deployed is vast: from mass demonstrations and a persistent flow of communication through social media to critical readings of the legal, astute analyses of industrial policy, identifying the technical, social and economic skills needs and renewing the legacies of the labour movement in Italy. But the one thing that stands out as the consistent thread connecting all the above is the dizzying network of solidarity alliances they have activated and initiated. The movement’s strength has been to realise that such a transformation could not be done alone. Who constitutes these alliances, what brings them together? And how can we understand their solidarity as concrete actions?
The Collectivo di Fabbrica joined forces with a range of environmental and climate groups, like Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, Bologna for Climate Justice and Ecologia Politica -Pisa. Knowledge alliances were formed with them, PhD students, professors, engineers, and legal scholars who constituted the wider solidarity research group that have been working tirelessly on the reindustrialization and business plan and anticipating the legal and policy changes required to make this a reality. Furthermore, cooperation with cultural workers - artists, filmmakers, theatre-makers, musicians, publishing cooperatives, archives – has been consistent and unwavering. These cultural alliances were not merely considered as part of campaigning and communication but have been fundamental to shaping the narrative of worker’s agency. It was this importance of art and culture in the movement that drew me to it. My entry into this struggle is, in fact, both as a PhD researcher and an artist – a knowledge and a cultural worker – at a critical moment when many artists are re-thinking their relationship to society’s challenges and art’s role in the climate transition. What are the qualities of art, as an aesthetic work, as affective labour and as a research methodology that can contribute within a network of solidarity alliances towards a socio-ecological transformation?
In my interviews, the ex-GKN workers articulated that in the climate and ecological crisis, owning the means of production implies (the possibility of) deciding on what is being produced, how, how much and for whom. The product is not a product, it is the creation of a social project – to paraphrase Dario Salvetti, the spokesperson of the Collectivo di Fabbrica, who invoked a different value of production within a capitalist system. Solidarity is central to this vision. In fact, the plan for the formation of the cooperative itself, with public shareholding and a repurposed factory space, gives their allies a continued role, an official responsibility and accountability to the sustainability of the cooperative and the surrounding region. This resonates in the slogan of “socially integrated factory” which is painted on the boundary wall of the occupied premises.
Whether artist, academic or automobile worker - we are in an existential conundrum of questioning the value of our labour, and we have to seize this moment to re-imagine it. Even as it unfolds, disrupted by numerous political obstacles, the ex-GKN workers’ struggle presents justice, agency and, I would add, creative confidence, as essential for a transformative climate transition. If the Just Transition slogan, “no one left behind” is to be taken seriously, it echoes as an urgent call for a network of solidarity alliances.
Encoded in this ethical script, could there be an aesthetic strategy for a future film?
References:
Gabriellini, Francesca, Imperatore, Paola 2023 “An Eco-Revolution of the Working Class? What We Can Learn from the Former GKN Factory in Italy” in “Allied Grounds” Berliner Gazette, visited 5/8/2024
Gambirasi, Michael 2024 “Gkn: approvata la legge sui consorzi industriali” in Il Manifesto, visited 24/12/2024
Artistic Research Autumn Forum 2024
2nd presentation
In this presentation, I would like to share my approach and methods through two case studies/contexts I am involved in: GKN for Future Cooperative, Campi Bisenzio, Florence + Workers as Agents for a Green and Just Transition (Umeå University) and LAB Genalguacil, Andalucia.
Artistic Research Autumn Forum 2023
1st presentation
The presentation will be an introduction to the status and the context of the research. The focus will be on clarifying the understanding of the documentary method, sharing ongoing and tentative case studies, and presenting the key concepts that the research engages with.