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  Funny Business | 2014

Funny Business: No Collar Work , 2014 is an installative work made of textile objects, wood and prints. It focuses on altered perceptions of labour and the position of an artist as a worker in the so-called post-industrial period, which is characterized by a shift to the service sector that had taken place back in the 1970ies. While the main characteristics of the former system, Fordism, were seriality, physical exertion and monotony, post-Fordism is generally denoted by a flexibilization of labour, an overuse of mental and creative capacities and an increased self-discipline. In the period heavily affected by preference of immaterial labour, the image of an ideal worker largely corresponds to the image of an artist. Artists are innovative, movable, and flexible, always prepared to embark on risky ventures, without making clear distinctions between free and working hours. In order to be visible in the hyperproductive cultural domain, they need to be networked and have entrepreneurial qualities. This makes them much like real entrepreneurs, whose figure, together with the establishment of analogies between art and business, have come from the West, but often with unclear labels and loose seams. However, by pointing to limitations of working conditions, artists are the ones who oppose the mythologization of labour. They harbour suspicions as to the new ideology of creativity, the ideology that often ends up serving market commodification. Perhaps the current model of labour can be viewed through the prism of its bizarreness and flaws, from a humorous aspect? The over-sized collars of different colors play with the ever-present logic of branding and marking art with the language of entrepreneurship. The collars look like they have swallowed their wearers, the bodies. This may imply that the classical image of worker, such as the blue collars, is eliminated from the current perception of labour. It also connotes a blurred position of the increasing workforce, of creative workers or the so-called no-collar workers, whose capacities have become a very important fuel of neoliberalism. Another interesting element are photomontages that are inserted into the collars. These photomontages consist of covers of fancy art magazines, such as the Monopol, redesigned using the techniques of image and text shuffling, while the lead contents are replaced with images resembling children drawings. text by Ksenija Orelj