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• Blessy Augustine, University of Western Ontario

Perhaps we can think of our time as characterized by precarity. From ecosystems to economic systems, everything that once appeared solid is now exposed as delicately balanced, on thin ice. Within this situation, we find our own individual lives overtaken, threatened by that which has come to define us—our labour. At one end of the spectrum is the precarity caused by the constant pressure to perform and at the other end is “poorly paid, unprotected, insecure work.” From Santiago Sierra’s “Twelve Workers Paid to Remain Inside Cardboard Boxes” to Mika Rottenberg’s “Dough,” artists have looked at different systems that exploit the labouring body, while others have emphasized the right to be unproductive. This session invites papers from researchers and artists who look at the issues related to labour and work, especially how precarity is created through movement (economic migration), work permits, productivity, exhaustion—of both human and natural resources.

keywords: labour, precarity, exhaustion, productivity, migration

session type: panel

The Blur of Twilight Labor: Sabelo Mlangeni’s Invisible Women Series

• Sophie Lynch, University of Chicago

This paper considers the photographic blurs that emerge across South-African photographer Sabelo Mlangeni’s Invisible Women works, a series of black and white photographs that foreground the movements of women cleaning the streets of Johannesburg between dusk and dawn. Photographed over an eight-month period between 11 pm and 3:30 am, the blurry photographs express the motions of exertion through hazy long exposures, poetically portraying the everyday movements of usually unseen physical labor. As a visual effect, blur is often an indication of movement that could not be apprehended: residue of that which eluded the speed of the shutter. In contrast to the indistinctness of early photography’s blurred “accidents,” Mlangeni’s photographs embrace indeterminacies and temporal complexities to challenge commonly held assumptions about photographic fixity. By failing to depict labor through legible forms, the series questions the ability of a photograph to function as evidence, shining a light on the socio-economic conditions of nighttime street sweepers who often remain unseen. In these works, photographic blurs emerge as visible manifestations of what is “in-between,” leading to considerations about the boundaries between representation and abstraction, visibility and invisibility, and day and night. Through a focus on relations between blurred photographs and nighttime labor in Johannesburg, this paper argues that blurs caused by the movements of working women come forth as sites of temporal disruption, fugitivity, and resistance.

keywords: South Africa, photography, blur, opacity, labour

Exploring Mexican Labour in Canada through Visual Narratives

• Anahí González, University of Western Ontario

This proposal examines the intersection of Mexican labour, migration, and visual representations within the Canadian context, specifically focusing on decentering the United States' narrative concerning Mexican migration. Drawing on my project, The Other Neighbour of El Otro Lado, a simultaneous exhibition in two locations: the Artlab (London, ON, Canada) and El NODO (Saltillo, COAH, Mexico) in 2021, I aim to shed light on the cultural encoding of migration paths and labour struggles within visual histories of the Mexican community in Canada.

As a Mexican photographer based in London, Canada, my experience of emigrating to Canada has prompted an examination of the economic relationship between Mexico and Canada, mainly through the lens of Mexican labour and representation in migration photographic imagery. I question whether the United States stereotypical construction of Mexican labour influences such labour. Moreover, the economic and labour relationship between Mexico and the United States has a long history. Still, the increased trade and emigration between Canada and Mexico since the implementation of NAFTA in 1994 has shaped a newer migration history between Mexico and Canada.

Through this session, I seek to explore the politics of Mexican identity and representation abroad, the historical and cultural transformations that have shaped the Mexican identity and continue to influence how we are perceived internationally—and internally—as well to present photographic, installations, and video works shown at The Other Neighbour of El Otro Lado simultaneous shows. Finally, I aim to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of Mexican labour and migration within the North American framework.

keywords: migrant labour, Mexican Workers, photography, visual culture, identity

Tremor Archive: Visualizing Precarity Through Particle Systems and Kinetic Sculpture

• Andreas Buchwaldt, University of Western Ontario

Art that engages with contemporary labour issues often runs into the hurdle of visualizing precarity, both in terms of representation and affect. This paper outlines one possible methodology for accomplishing this task through the metaphor of particle systems and the physicality of kinetic sculpture. It begins by briefly recounting the history of western labour movements, and how these events have been recorded via photography and to a lesser extent film. “Iconic” imagery emerges as both descriptive and reductive symbols for the people and histories involved.

Fast forwarding to the present we can see many of these hard-fought-for labour rights being eroded in the face of precarity and neoliberalism. Black and white photos of striking union members carry the nostalgia of a past golden-age of unionization. Here, precarity is a pulling-apart, a fragmentary force that divides social bodies and puts individuals into a position that Hito Steyerl refers to as negative freedom: the involuntary experience of being free from state support, with little control over one’s future. A technique for visualizing this phenomenon is to apply this fragmentary force to iconic images of dissent, relating past to present. If we imagine a photograph as a container of visual elements then when the image is cut up the parts become like atomized particles. They are free to wander beyond their previous borders but still subject to the rules of a larger system, i.e. capitalism. The notion of particle systems has a long history in visual culture, and this paper compares the acoustic experiments of 18th century German Physicist, Ernst Chladni, with digital visual effects used in news media and the entertainment industry.

The above ideas crystalize into the author’s artwork, Tremor Archive, an installation that places cut up prints from Canadian labour history on top a room filling vibrating table. The kinetic forces embody both the energy of bodies in protest and the chaotic forces of precarity. It also produces an anachronistic by-product, creating new assemblages when disparate visual elements collide. Tremor Archive is slated for exhibition at London Ontario’s Satellite Gallery in July 2023. The UAAC conference in October 2023 would be the ideal setting to present the results of this research.

keywords: kinetic art, installation art, precarity, archive, particle systems