Reports from the strategic sanctuary for the destruction of free will
- Submitting institution
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The University of Reading
: A - Art
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory : A - Art
- Output identifier
- 84441
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- Creative body of enquiry
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- These exhibitions emerged from research into physical and psychological environments of control. The work addresses the environments in which subjectivity is produced and the way in which, under neoliberalism, this becomes a form of valorised labour. Here, group therapy room and prison cell, workstation and recreational spaces merge into each other in an architecture echoing a white padded cell. The sculptural installation, film and performance establish a relation to interiority by referring to pharmaceutical ‘mood stabilizers’ and psychodrama. These questions have been explored in relation to artistic production and a range of innovative performative techniques have been used to remove markers of individuation, from the use of pre-recorded tape in lieu of dialogue to masked boxes replacing facial expressions.
Research embedded in these exhibitions relates to an urgent political question regarding the pressures placed on the worker to develop a ‘unique voice’. It reflects themes explored in group several exhibitions in which we participated and the Bureaucracy conference we organised at the ICA. This scholarly activity around these themes demonstrates their centrality to the research of post-Fordist conditions.
Since our work is collaborative, it starts from dialogue. In this case discussions of production of subjectivity and post Fordism formed a part of our PhD and fed into essays and book chapters. However, our gallery work also responds to conditions of artistic labour. This site-‐specific installation, produced away from studio and using light materials such as cardboard alongside ‘real’ bodies (of performers), thinks through these abstract conditions in concrete form. Despite making reference to many historical antecedents, from Richard Hamilton to R. D. Laing, the exhibitions embodied the precarious, yet heavily controlled, spaces of post-Fordist production in entirely new ways. Materials, structures and scripts reflected directly the tensions between flexibility and surveillance, subjectivity and collectivity.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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