Working Conditions by Alina Lupu is a two-part public programme on class, labour and culture, accompanied by a temporary library, parallel to the exhibition Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie 2026: Class Hegemony in Contemporary Art. What do we do with an eight-hour day when we are not working for a wage? And what happens when we have to?

This eight-hour film programme and pizza party about class, work and not being there, unfolds at de Appel, while artist Alina Lupu is absent: she will be working a shift at the pizza restaurant where she earns part of her living.

Throughout the day, a film programme selected by Jeffrey Babcock will be screened on the topic of class and collective struggle. The cinema is informal and porous: watch a film, leave and return, join a conversation, have a snack, or spend some time reading from the temporary Class Library.

Meanwhile, Lupu is at work. During her shift, pizzas made by the artist at the restaurant will travel from one workplace to another, arriving at de Appel. The artist’s absence is not a performance but a working condition: while the party takes place, she has to be somewhere else earning a wage.

Over a period of nearly five years, Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie interrogated how class structures shape the production, presentation and reception of contemporary art. Initiated in 2006, the project asked complex, unresolved questions, such as: How does class impact who becomes an artist or curator? Can contemporary art itself be seen as a privilege of the middle classes? Twenty years on, we return to these questions and ask why class continues to be so easily overlooked in the production and presentation of art—even at a time when matters of political equality are far more prevalent than before.

Alongside the public programme, a temporary Class Library brings together materials from two sources: Alina Lupu’s ongoing Art Workers Library, and a selection of publications sourced from the bookshop San Serriffe. Rather than proposing a comprehensive bibliography on class, the Class Library is conceived as a small, temporary working collection. Available to consult on site during the programme, it invites visitors to browse, read, (dis)agree with and make connections between its materials, extending the programme through potential collective and individual reading.