The New Meetings

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  The New Meetings | 2014

16mm film, digitized, HD projection, 05'39'', sound, loop, 2014 Part of the exhibition project "Funny Business", Mali Salon, MOCA Rijeka, Croatia The film "The New Meetings( Busting Zombies of Immaterial Labour)" is based on fictitious scenarios created through an appropriation of photographic material documenting different activities of artists and non-artists through recent history. These activities are joined in an effort to elude the standard forms of public protest and resist the dominant model of work. "The New Meetings" shows several young people that may be described as a carnivorousness group of characters coming from different historical periods. For example, there is George Grosz as Dada Death from 1919, and the Metropolitan Indians from the 1970ies. This unusual combining of forces takes place in the contemporary world, when the excessively increased working dynamics may be said to turn into zombism. The group ‘fights’ back, by employing measures that are also extraordinary, but in a different way: their measures include leisure, meaningless work, humor and silly attempts of improving psychophysical stamina. For example, a female character does abs, while Dada Death plays the role of her fitness instructor. We may say that the gathered characters, together with death, practice survival, preoccupied with possible ways of counter-attack against the unstoppable labourworks. The film’s slapstick includes different elements of humor and absurd, as well as luddistic use of errors. This may suggest a departure from urgent and pragmatic applications of creativity and autonomy, and a quest for free and enjoyable creative practice that examines the possibilities of resistance to the exploiting working conditions hidden under the late capitalism mask of progress. text by Ksenija Orelj