Event overview
Taking Romana Schmalisch + Robert Schlicht's 2019 film as point of departure for thinking throug technology, corporeality, work, performance
"People with their own wills, interests and desires are being equipped with the different physiological, cognitive, psychological and social core competencies to transform them into human resources. Meanwhile, the management is introducing new methods to enrich the products with the innovative features of “self-evaluation”, “self-optimisation”, and, most importantly, “self-fulfilment”. A series of interventions are performed, leading to an assembly that may appear strange at first sight." -- Schmalisch and Schlicht, 2019
Involving two parts, a Film Screening (12am-2pm) and a Small Group Forum for Presentations and Discussion (3-6pm), this MARs Session will take Romana Schmalisch and Robert Schlicht's 2019 film Labor Power Plant as matrix and point of departure for lines of thought moving through technology, corporeality, the organisation of work, performance, and quantified subjects.
The film showcases a number of exercises in a hypothetical French training centre, and is itself an exercise in how to bring labour to the screen, finding a welter of ongoing problems under the current conditions: how to mediate spectacle and instruction, discipline and expression, individuals and metrics? Labour in, as, or no longer subject to, representation?
These are problems of aesthetics, of theatre, as much as they are of labour and economy, and perhaps testify to how radical projects of movement and behaviour often found their mirror in labour in modernist avant-gardes. Yet this legacy finds itself in a problematic (non-) place when futurity has abandoned both the body and the machine.
Part 1: Film Screening of Labor Power Plant (Romana Schmalisch and Robert Schlicht, 2019)
Time: 12am-2pm
Location: Laurie Grove Baths Seminar Room, Goldsmiths College, Laurie Grove, New Cross SE14 6NW
Map: https://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/places/laurie-grove-baths-lgb/
Part 2: Small Group Forum for Presentations and Group Discussion
Time: 3-6pm
Location: MARs Research Hub, 43 Lewisham Way, London, SE14 6QD
Map: https://goo.gl/maps/urEZpxE2VCoLrme7A
Presentation Schedule
- Romana Schmalisch and Robert Schlicht, ‘Introducing Labour Power Plant
- Marina Vishmidt, ‘Some Reflections on Abstract Labour’
- Elena Vogman, ‘The Mise-en-Scene of Disenchantment: Eisenstein's Glass House and the Dream of Transparency’
- Diamond Ashiagbor - ’Telling stories about labour, law and development’
- Bahar Noorizadeh - 'After Scarcity'
- Short Break
- Group Discussion
MARs Sessions bring together researchers within Art, across disciplines, between institutions and beyond higher education for intentional, concentrated discussion and sharing of research. Each small-scale, curated event spans a single afternoon and engages around 10-12 people in conversation, all of whom share a research interest in common. Sessions are run by Department of Art at Goldsmiths, keying into specific research interests.
BOOKING ESSENTIAL
Mountain of Art Research, Goldsmiths
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 31 Jan 2020 |
12:00pm - 6:00pm Film screening 12am-2pm Group discussion 3-6pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
