Exhibition
Be a Happy Worker: Work-to-Rule!
Helmut & Johanna Kandl, "Your Way to the Top",
2001-2006
Opening: Thursday, June 26th, 2008, at 8 p.m.
>> Photos of the
exhibition
Participating artists
Zbynek Baladran | Tanja Dabo | REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT & Miklos Erhardt |
Igor Grubic | Sanja Ivekovic | Helmut & Johanna Kandl | Kristina Leko |
Pavel Mrkus | Societe Realiste
Curators: Ivana Bago & Antonia Majaca / Non-Alligned CF
Wikipedia describes work-to-rule as an industrial action in which employees do
no more than the minimum required by the rules of a workplace. While still following
safety and other regulations, working-to-rule is a deliberate slowdown in the
production process as a form of protest. This procedure, also known as ‘white
strike’, simply slows down production: an action less disruptive than a
strike and less susceptible to disciplinary action as the elementary rules are
being obeyed.
Along with alluding to a need for a general slowdown and the question of the existence
of ‘surplus labour’, the exhibition title additionally derives from
a possible misreading of the phrase. Today, in the matrix of advanced neo-liberal
capitalism, the title could be read in the instructive mode as ‘work to
dominate’ or ‘work to succeed’, referring to the models of subjectivity
and flexibility characteristic of late capitalism.
The exhibition Be a Happy Worker: Work-to-Rule! considers different perspectives
and concepts of work and labour, the ‘slowing down’ of work, the quality
of work and life in past and present working conditions, the global division of
labour and creative reflections on industrial and postindustrial labour. On the
other hand, the exhibition touches upon the nostalgia for a time of belief in
industrial modernization, in the light of the destinies of workers after the transformations
and dissolution of the factories in East Europe. Furthermore, the exhibition presents
works of artists from the wider region that deal with political and social aspects
of the recent transformations in the time of wild capitalism in Eastern Europe
and the glorification of the West as a heaven of entrepreneurial possibilities.
The continually relevant issues of gender division of labour, the ‘invisibilty’
of women’s labour and the ever more complex relation betwee n labour and
leisure are also addressed. Mapping different perspectives, artistic strategies
and the heterogeneous ways they have dealt with this complex subject from the
perspective of ‘New Europe’, Be a Happy Worker: Work-To-Rule! reflects
the history of work, the aspects of the transformation of past working conditions
and a wide range of issues regarding the immaterial labour that concerns us all
today.
Duration of the exhibition: 27.6.2008 - 20.7.2008
Opening hours: TUE - FR, 12 a.m. - 7 p.m., SA, 11 a.m. - 1
p.m.
Address: g-mk | galerija miroslav kraljevic, Subiceva 29, 10000
Zagreb, Croatia
Further information: www.g-mk.hr