Life, Labor, Looking.

17. April 2015, 16:00 Uhr.
Life, Labor, Looking.
Vortrag von Dieter Lesage (auf Englisch).

From the 1960s onwards, an important shift in the composition of labour in western countries took place. Whereas manual labour had been ‘dominant’ (in its position of exploited labour, that is), cognitive or affective labour gained prominence. Today’s proletariat, which under the industrial mode of production ‘possessed’ nothing but its offspring (‘proles’), has become a digitariat, possessing nothing but a computer and an internet connection. As computers became ever more weightless, from laptops that became ever thinner to tablets that became ever tinier to smart phones that became ever, well, smarter, and as the internet became ever more wireless, and wireless internet covered ever more space on earth, and became available on airplanes and in high speed trains, there is no longer any excuse ever and anywhere for the digitariat not to work. As you can work everywhere, you have to work everywhere. Your life on earth is under the total obligation to work. Whereas in the sixties, the idea to conceive life as such as a form of labour could celebrate itself as an exciting avantgarde artistic experiment in the works of Allan Kaprow, its perverted realisation in today’s society leaves us with the question of how to consider our labor still as a form of life. Is there any life left beyond labour, if life has been entirely subsumed under the category of labour, that is, the whole set of operations that produce value?
[Dieter Lesage: Life, Labor, Looking]

Im Rahmen der Ausstellung LIFE’S FINEST VALUES, 16.April bis 30.Mai 2015.