Immaterial Labour Isn’t Working is a series of talks, workshops, texts and online contributions from key voices – artists, activists, technologists and writers – examining how digital technology is changing our political selves.
Everything has changed. A technological revolution and an economic crisis have combined to reshape our world. Today, we live, work and play online, and yet we are often still stuck in ways of thinking that belong to an offline world.
Over 40 years information technology has transformed our working patterns. Today, our productive capabilities are harnessed in all our waking hours as the boundaries between production and consumption transform into a pixelated blur. The way we produce, disseminate and consume culture is now almost totally mediated by the online space, but there’s also an increasingly fluid relation between ‘creative industries’ and the working practices being imposed upon other workers. The aesthetic and technical structures of online space are becoming the prism through which we visualise and conceptualise our everyday lives, yet technological developments in the workplace are being structured for the benefit of employers rather than workers.
How does living online affect our mental health? Are we working too much? Is the boundary between work and play too porous? How does political organising happen when we never meet our colleagues? What does culture look like when the tools to make and broadcast exist on every laptop?
Accompanying the programme of events is the launch of Metahaven’s new book with Deterritorial Support Group (DSG), VOID MYSTIQUE DNA. Visitors can browse this unique ‘split-EP’ monografesto and pick up a copy of this profoundly limited-edition book free of charge. Commissioned by Auto Italia, this collaboration is the first joint project by two of the most exciting design thinktanks working today.
The first project to be presented at Auto Italia’s new King’s Cross space, ILIW13 will be physically situated within this area of industrial and social transformation, occupying an uncertain landscape now claimed as a site of cultural production.
Immaterial Labour Isn’t Working is a project by Auto Italia in collaboration with Huw Lemmey. Contributors include: Alex Andrews, Hannah Black, Jessica Bland, James Bridle, Joanna Figiel & Stevphen Shukaitis (Metropolitan Factory), Mark Fisher, Larne Gogarty, Alex Hern, Dougald Hine, Dave King (Luddites 200), Ed Manley, Metahaven, Novara Media, Michael Oswell, Jay Owens, David Rudnick, Jay Springett, Kerstin Stakemeier, Kieran Startup Alex Vasudevan, Ben Vickers, Georgina Voss, Josefine Wikström and Will Wiles.