Retro-idlenism
Installation e performance, 2022
Screen led, Synthetic jackets, coat stand, bike, Desert Golf video game, COIN360 web page, rain sound
Variable size
Performer: Jiabin, Maxcel e Zahra
"Retro" is a retrospective moment from the future; "idle" is the retrospective scenario, a waiting scenario; "-ism" is about a social movement.
The work is composed of several fragmented parts: The continuous sound of a thunderstorm in the interior space; Two screens showing cryptocurrency exchange rates and a "meditative" game of golf in the desert; Three performers represent riders from "different food delivery companies" killing time with their cell phones between jobs, as if they were "suspended (idle)" on the platform.
The table shows hundreds of cryptocurrencies in real time. When Desert Golf scores a goal, all performers turn to the screen displaying cryptocurrencies. Every now and then, at random intervals, 3 people switch places and give looks to the audience around them.
When we researched Chinese labor in Prato, we found that some workers, or subcontractors, are investing in blockchain. They take what they earn from their manufacturing work and seek a kind of refuge to decrease the risk of the loss with which the cryptocurrency communities of Chinese immigrants from faraway China or scattered around the world. They also believe that the textile industry, based on exploitation, is faltering.
On the other hand, Chinese food delivery platforms, or Australian or British multinationals, attract young urban workers. The city intervenes with takeaway platforms, and the riders watching from the square gather, wait, disperse, and gather again. They are the wandering occupiers, the observers of the city's mutations.
Whether it is the manufacturing workers roaming the digital financial system or the platform workers around the world roaming the city, we want to imagine a moment: the scene on the eve of the awakening of a new subjectivity of workers. We imagine a future in which current emerging capitalist structures become the norm; when we are nostalgic for a vision that, in our view, might be one of waiting/suspense.
They are workers (and sometimes investors) in a state of "wait(suspended)." They are an integral part of the urban landscape. It may be a state of waiting or an underlying radicalism.
They are workers (and sometimes investors) who are in a state of "waiting(suspended)." They may not know what they are waiting for. But they are an integral part of the urban landscape. It may be a ready arrow in the bow or an underlying potential radicalism.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)