Our digital labour economy introduces increasing forms of virtual capital, labour that is both immaterial and yet almost always contains physical forms of oppression lurking in the shadows, and as such, a reliance on more outdated forms of labour, and with this, various forms of exploitation.
By revealing how creativity is used in our current labour-world, and by tracking forms of labour in contemporary art, based on historical and cultural depictions of the past, we can bare the underlying structures of both capital and economy, and in doing so, open windows to alternative forms of capitalism.
Art can enable critical discourse on the dismantling of the seemingly inescapable frameworks we now find ourselves in. It is in this enabling that I felt motivated to bring this platform into being.
This project is not a commercial one. It can be seen as a labour of love.
This platform is a prototype of platforms to come, as the potential for, and our experience with, art and discourse move increasingly toward a virtual realm. It is intended as an accesssible database for the representation of the worker and forms of labour in, and of, contemporary art.
Despite the virtual, art is often a physical, laborious act, as is the act of writing.
As we fly ever closer to the sun in our Anthropocene era, it is necessary to look back and reflect on the fruits of our labour, both ripe and rotten, that have shaped, and will continue to shape us, as a society.
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Image credit: Pieter Bruegel The Elder, The Harvesters, 1565, Oil on wood, 116.5 x 159.5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art