Playbour
Curated Exhibition, Co-Creation Lab, Commissions & Podcast.
Furtherfield, 2018
Playbour – Work, Pleasure, Survival, was an art and research platform dedicated to the study of the worker as they are asked to draw on internal resources and self-made networks to develop new avenues of work, pleasure, and survival. It was designed as a platform for supporting collective research, shared learning and co-creation, developing interdisciplinary public situations and encounters for thinking about how we value the convergence of work, play and well-being, and the contours of work and play itself as they are being redefined through data and neurotechnologies.
The exhibition offered glimpses into the gamification of all forms of life, where the audience were players asked to test the operations of the real-world, and, in the process, experience how forms of play and labour feed mechanisms of work, pleasure, and survival. The show featured works that asked audiences to perform in unwitting data extraction in exchange for public services, learn from hostile designs, and create value by monetizing their social relations. Newly commissioned works by Arjun Harrison & Benjamin Redgrove, Marija Bozinovska Jones, and Michael Straeubig, came out of a 3 day co-creation lab and accompanied existing work by Cassie Thornton.
The project was curated by myself with concept development by myself and Cecilia Wee.
Images:
Steven Ounanian's performance workshop co-creation lab, as part of 'Playbour: Work, Pleasure, Survival' curated by Dani Admiss and Cecilia Wee. May 2018. The project was commissioned by Furtherfield Gallery, London.
Michael Streaubig’s ‘Hostile Environment Training Programme’.
Playbour, Work, Pleasure, Survival was commissioned by Furtherfield Gallery and was supported by Arts Council England and has also been co-funded with support from the Creative Europe programme. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. It was realised in the framework of State Machines, a joint project by Aksioma (SI), Drugo more (HR), Furtherfield (UK), Institute of Network Cultures (NL) and NeMe (CY). This project has been funded with the support from the European Commission.
