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(waiting for) The people

2012, Genk | for exhibition “The Machine – Designing a new industrial revolution”

Z33, Center for contemporary art and design

*Presented at: C-Mine, Genk (2012); Gemeentemuseum, Helmond (2013); Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam (2013)

New production methods construct new socio-political systems. From the development of guilds in the Middle Age’s to the labour unions of the 20th century, workers have always regulated political power. The project questions the demise of the workers voice and proposes ways to reinstate it within our post-Fordist society.

New manufacturing techniques are likely enable a re-structuring of our economic and political structures. ‘(Waiting for) the People’ is a set of 14 protest signs, each hung in the exhibition space. The signs act as a provocation for change. Each sign containing an image that hints at a possible future, where the home has become the site of production (The availability of 3D printers at home is near; decentralising the production of physical objects). The documentary image on the reverse of each sign depicts a workers protest from the industrial era – proposing a link between production methods and socio-political change.

Curator: Jan Boelen

Coordinator: Matylda Krzykowsky

Texts