Image copyright the artist: Task Rabbit worker Sakti N.
in heaven people play peacefully sometimes people helping each other love making and working together peacefully
A performance (with informal labourers and 4-channel surround sound)
Task Rabbit is an app that allows people to outsource part-time jobs, or tasks. The company proposes “We do chores. You live life.” Tasks commonly include cleaning, walking dogs, building furniture and waiting in queues. Workers are able to fit their work to their lifestyle; working when they want, where they want. The apparent freedom offered by employment platforms of this kind has seen their popularity explode. But as the workforce has inflated, so an increasing dissatisfaction has appeared with the terms of employment. The alienation hovering beneath the surface of this labour model is becoming manifest in lawsuits, class actions and strikes.
Over the past few months, Jeremy Hutchison has used the Task Rabbit app to employ groups of micro-labourers in his studio. Rather than walking dogs, they have been tasked to imagine ways in which solidarity might be applied to their fragmented labour conditions. In a recent example, he assembled four workers for an interview. This interview operated within the conditions of a verbal game, which required the four workers to respond as if they were a single subjectivity.
For this durational performance elements of this research will be presented, while the group will rehearse new manifestations of solidarity between labour, bodies and space.
Where: Studio4, 1st floor @ Chisenhale Studios.
Cost/Booking: Free, drop-in, 6-8pm 20th Oct
This event is part of our Without Walls programme.
Running at the same is an open studio with Seth Pimlott, recipient of the current Pete Lloyd Lewis Studio Award. This takes place across the hall in Studio 3.