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Visual Sociology project 2019:
The Two Competing Forces of Waste and Production as Felt and Lived by Artists:
Between the Pressure to Create Work and the Fear of Wasting Time Under the Neoliberal Gaze.The participating artists are Gwenllian Spink, j.b. glazer, Alice Cocks, Jakob Buraczewski, Johnny Izatt-Lowry, Alanna Blake, Luke Jordan, Max Grau, Laura Yuile, Alex Frost, Marc Blazel, Anna Kolosova, Rory Beard and Rita Aktay. With thanks to Molly Chapman and Dr Jay Watts whose voices appear in the second part of the video and who aim to render visible how mental health in neoliberal society is commodified through products that promise release from the overwhelming and 'always on’ pressure to be productive.
More about mindfulness and how it is "sold as a force that can help us cope with the ravages of capitalism, but with its inward focus, mindful meditation may be the enemy of activism", on the link below uploaded to The Guardian website on 8 July 2019:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2019/jul/08/the-mindfulness-conspiracy-podcast
The work was presented in the exhibition 'Residual Matters' at Goldsmiths, St James Hatcham Church in New Cross, London, from 5 until 6 April 2019 and was screened as part of F(r)ictions on 9 December 2019 at DIY Space for London.
https://diyspaceforlondon.org/event/frictions-3-film-video-screenings-at-diy-space/Here are the links to the portfolios of the participating artists:
https://cargocollective.com/alannablakeart
https://cargocollective.com/alice-cocks
https://www.jakobburaczewski.com
http://lukerichardjordan.blogspot.com
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Photographs taken by Anna Boylan at the MA Visual Sociology exhibition, ‘Residual Matters’ on 5 April 2019 at St James Hatcham, Goldsmiths, with the trap representing a social trap.
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A video compiled of footage filmed for the MA Visual Sociology project on waste in 2019 at Goldsmiths College, London.
With the voices of George Clooney as Danny Ocean and Andy Garcia as Terry Benedict in Ocean's 13 (2007) and Dr Jay Watts in the lecture Mental Health & Neoliberalism, 2018, organised by New School Economics, at Goldsmiths College.
Dr Jay Watts
http://www.jaywatts.co.uk
Consultant Clinical Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Writer and Activist"How can we address the current changes in our societies and lives? Some say that we have come to inhabit the post-industrial condition—but what does that mean? One thing seems certain: after the disappearance of manual labour from the lives of most people in the Western world, we have entered into a culture where we no longer just work, we perform. We need to perform because that is what’s asked of us. When we choose to make our living on the basis of doing what we want, we are required to get our act together and get things done, in any place, at any time. Are you ready? I ask you and I’m sure that you’re as ready as you’ll ever be to perform, prove yourself, do things and go places." (Verwoert, 2008)
Are you ready? is the question you must be prepared to answer positively: As ready as I’ll ever be. A whole etiology of high-performance culture could be based on studying the current use of this term. (Ibid.)
"“Are you ready?” asks smooth operator Danny Ocean (George Clooney) in the blockbuster Ocean’s 13 (2007), to which self-styled gentleman criminal Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia) promptly replies: “I was born ready.”" (Ibid.)
"[...] Its demand to be ever-ready relies on the assumption that you could be. It is based on the illusion that each individual should be able to generate an inexhaustable potency solely from his own resources. This illusion is as self-aggrandising as it is fatal, because it is only through assuming you had such inexhaustable potency that you willingly accept the request to prove it, then take it to heart when you are reprimanded for failing to do so." (Ibid.)
REFERENCE: Verwoert, J. (2008). Exhaustion and Exuberance: Ways to Defy the Pressure to Perform. Available at: http://whyiseverybodybeingsonice.deappel.nl/concrete/index.php/chapters/exhaustion-exhuberance/ways-defy-pressure-perform [Accessed 17 March 2020].
