Factories leaving the worker
Moving-Image work. Running time 7mins
Cut/Copy/Remix II, 2022
Commissioned by Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and Vivid Projects
‘Factories Leaving the worker’ draws on archival materials from the Trade Union Resource Centre, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery’s digital collections and contemporary footage of demolitions in the West Midlands, UK. The work explores the promises of nationalisation, the fight against privatisation of public services, alongside the legacies of Trade Unionism in the UK. The work is rooted in the concept of 'Ruins in Reverse', working with this method as a way to question the present moment: how the ‘cost of living crisis’ is intrinsically connected to neoliberal policies reaching back from the 1970’s. The work seeks to collapse temporalities and challenge the present narrative which posits our living conditions as an inevitability, but one we must continually challenge.
Archive footage:
‘Our Jobs Are Not For Sale’ (1984).
Made by Unlimited Vision for WM County Council YURC Video (TURC Vivid)
‘Put People First’ (1982).
NALGO's campaign against privatisation of public services (TURC Vivid)
‘Avtar Singh Jouhl on the IWA and the Trade Union Movement’ (1991-92)
Birmingham Black Oral History Project (BMAG Digital Archives)
Video Extract of Factories leaving the worker
Cut Copy Remix II at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 2022. Photo Credit
Marcin Sz
Cut Copy Remix II at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 2022. Photo Credit Marcin Sz
Exhibited at ‘Staying with The Trouble’, Vivid Projects. December 2022. Photo Credit
Marcin Sz
Exhibited at ‘Staying with The Trouble’, Vivid Projects. December 2022. Photo Credit Marcin Sz