Nyx a noctournal

issue 4

work

editorial
The deadline is upon us, other work can wait. This issue of Nyx appears as thousands of students, pupils, teachers, academics and artists stand up against the coalition governments plan to further the marketisation of higher education, and to simultaneously withdraw vital funding from the arts, humanities and social sciences. These protesters join with the growing multitudes across society threatened with losing the jobs, welfare support and local government services on which they depend. Once upon a time opposition movements on this scale might have been inhibited by the perceived gulf between workers and intellectuals. But as more than one contribution to this issue suggests, modern neoliberalism, by subjugating all cultural practice to the conditions of capitalist economy, has made us all workers, even the unemployed. Some of the pieces in this issue highlight the strange logics by which contemporary capitalist society seeks to re-colonise every aspect of our creative and productive activity. Others remind us that the questions of capitalist division of labour, domestic labour and domestic work, female labour and feminisation of labour, are as pressing now as ever. Nyx was named after the Greek goddess of night in order to designate this noctournal as a space for work removed from the conditions of production and the particular demands (of structure, function and value) that shape the labour of the working day. The risks of a certain strategic romanticism in this gesture seemed worth running, given the supposed alternative of capitulating to a certain capitalist realism. Several imaginative pieces in this issue defy the established logics and choices, which circulate around the concept of work and its value, creating alternative ways of thinking, imagining, working. This kind of enthusiastic commitment to alternatives characterises the opposition to the government spending cuts. The recent and ongoing protests, uniting an extraordinary array of people from different backgrounds, age groups and professions, are unprecedented in their scale and yet they extend far beyond the number and diversity manifest on the streets. The events and interventions that accompany the rallies and marches aim to produce new ways of thinking about teaching and learning, acting and creating. As the snow falls and Siberian winds rush through an increasingly discontented social landscape, the boundaries between day and night, work and study are more precipitous than ever. The game of appropriation and re-appropriation is unending, yet we continue to look for new, uncolonised pockets of the night, and invent them when they cannot be found.

ISSN 1758-9630 2010 Nyx, a noctournal All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Nyx, a noctournal Editorial Board.
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work/issue4/autumn10
Nyx is Alice Corble Claudia Firth James Burton Joanna Figiel Leila Whitley Rory Cobar Tamsyn Adams Vikki Nousiainen
Contributions Claudia Firth Joanna Figiel Federico Campagna Rory Cobar Phil Sawdon Dan Taylor Tamsyn Adams Abla Kandalaft Amedeo Policante Alice Corble Becky Aizen Andres Anwandter For contributions and info noctournal@gmail.com www.nyxnoctournal.com Buy Nyx Student Union shop in RHB, Goldsmiths, University of London Thanks to The Centre for Cultural Studies and the Graduate School, Goldsmiths, University of London, for their financial contributions Layout Vikki Nousiainen Cover Images Claudia Firth

index
Tools : The Edge of Apprehension
Claudia Firth
6 11 14 21

Internship : A Periphery
Federico Campagna

Sold Out?
Dan Taylor

Joanna Figiel

The Clerks of Penge Christmas in the Midlands : A Work in Limbo

Tamsyn Adams

28 36 42 46

Its a Free World of Work

Abla Kandalaft

Note on Labour
Amedeo Policante

Fish

Federico Campagna

Powerful Imaginings : A Conversational Review

Alice Corble & Becky Aizen

58

Wordswork : A Prelude to Nightshift in Hindsight

Phil Sawdon

64 67

Cap It All

Andres Anwandter

Tools
The Edge of Apprehension
text & images: claudia firth

started making these drawings about three years ago when I could hardly use a pen or pencil due to Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), caused by a combination of computer use and stress at work. About a year before getting RSI, I had taken a permanent part-time teaching job to assuage my precarious creative lifestyle, but as with many part-time jobs there was far more work than could be done in the allotted hours. It started to take over and when I
6

took on a more demanding and stressful role I developed RSI about three weeks into the beginning of the autumn term. In the USA it is more accurately called Repetitive Stress Injury. I stress the stress. I carried on working but eventually, as the RSI was not getting any better, I decided I had to give up work. The drawings are of tools, instruments used for work in office or domestic settings, for writing, cooking or communicating.

They are very different images of tools than those for example in Diderots Encyclopaedia. Rather than precise technical illustrations these are more personal depictions of objects that I have a particular relationship to. Diderots Encyclopaedia catalogues the mastery of skills, techniques and knowledge whereas at the time when I drew them, these were all objects I had difficulty using. Tools are designed to make particular tasks possible or easier and we relate to them primarily

through their usefulness. What interested me was that because of my health condition, caused by my reaction to particular working conditions, they had lost their usefulness and become redundant to me. What I was left with was limited use of my hands which to some extent had also become redundant. Faced with a level of disability, the drawings came out of the desire to translate it into something positive. As I couldnt use a drawing implement I drew them with my
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fingertips, using black gouache and water. The process of drawing involved a very different way of relating to the objects than if I could just reach for them and use them without thinking. Drawing requires looking and studying. It is an examination, a mode of knowing the thing being drawn, a way of apprehending it. Apprehension links mental grasping to our ability to physically explore the world outside of ourselves with our dextrous, prehensile hands. It means both knowledge and fear. When something can cause pain there is a level of apprehension involved in approaching it. This was my day-to-day experience in relating to these objects, one which alienated me somewhat from the majority of people. This apprehension is embedded within the drawings though not explicit until stated in this text. While writing and thinking about writing this piece I have been intrigued by Derridas assertion that drawings potency always develops on the brink of blindness [1993: 3]. That is, that as well as seeing, drawing is related to unseeing, at the moment when we look away from the object and towards the paper. We see in the minds eye and translate it onto the page. We are turned inward for a moment, relying on memory at the point at which we draw. In his assertion disability is bound up with the activity of drawing. In his text the disability affects the eyes, in mine, the hands. A brink is an edge, like that of a cliff, a boundary where something begins and something else ends. The drawings make concrete a confrontation between myself and the objects. They exist at the point at which I apprehend the objects in all senses of the word. They turn an impotence into something more potent. Through being represented singularly on a page the objects are given an importance not usually associated with a mere screwdriver or pen. Without knowing the cir8 9

cumstances of their production we know something is important about them. There is some kind of symbolic value, some kind of poignancy being expressed. Once the narrative is told and a picture drawn of the apprehension involved, the mind can add these more personal and emotive elements to their perception and understanding.
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Heidegger has been a presence throughout writing this piece, particularly his thinking on equipmentality and the present-at-hand (vorhanden).

References: Derrida, Jacques. Memoirs of the Blind, The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell, 1962. Heidegger, Martin. The Origin of the Work of Art, in Basic Writings. London: Routledge, 1993.

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text: federico campagna

There is a place, at the periphery of the work market, where many of us are still held. It is a space that resembles that of the sweat lodge, the tent at the periphery of the village where teenage Lakota Native Americans used to spend a few weeks of sacrifice and purification before entering the adult age. This place is now called internship, and, like all peripheries, it is a grey limbo, a space of suspension, where the laws of the centre do not apply and the freedom of the terra incognita remains only as the memory of a mythical past. Lost in this limbo in between workers and students lives, interns experience periphery as an existential condition. Their bodies, their names, their skills and emotions everything in them must be emptied and filled again, in order to make them suitable to enter the promised land of adult civilisation By its nature a place of transit between borders, this and every periphery are also places of selection. Only a few will be allowed to pass beyond, while all the others will be pushed back to the suburbs that surround the walls. And here, at the periphery of the work market, like at any other border, there is a customs office too, and a passport control. Class, Race, Gender and Citizenship: these modern Four Horsemen are the guards at the gates to the work market. Their selection is silent better, unspoken but its results are loud and clear. Take the cultural industries, for example: only those who can afford to spend long enough in the periphery will gain their passage to the golden land of cultural production. Unsurprisingly, such people are also those who hold the right currency to bribe the four guardians at the gates. All the others, those who didnt tick the right boxes or lacked adequate supplies to survive long enough in the limbo, will be destined forever to occupy the digestive role of the cultural consumer. And yet, not all of those who have been rejected surrender to their fate of blind cultural bulimia. Some of them camp for a while along the walls of the periphery, gathering together, sharing their angry joy, talking of oases in the desert that surrounds them. They are those who had been rejected and decided to turn their unsuitability for the work market into a mark of freedom. They are those who wont spend too long around the periphery and the walls that protect it. One day, as if overnight, they will suddenly decide to disappear. We will hear of them only years later, in confused stories about splendid towns built in the desert, autonomous zones hidden by the palms, or pirate utopias sailing across the sand. One can only hope that they will never come back here, to the grey land of the Four Horseman, but that they will keep sailing, further and further away, feeding the dreams of those who are still stuck in the periphery, waiting for their lives to be emptied and then filled again.
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what does it mean to sell out, what does it mean to be a culture industry worker?

Sold Out?
a brief commentary on culture industry work
text: joanna figiel

he culture industry, the new creative economy, creative labour, cultural workers - these are all terms that over the past decade have become ubiquitous in the media, political discourse, and academic theory. There are even a number of university degrees utilising one or the other as their theme and course title, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in universities across the UK. Interviews with those who, according to the public and academic discourses, are associated with such terms, are the starting-point for this commentary. They are Richard Floridas creative class, Angela McRobbies cultural industry workers, Charles Leadbeaters independents, Richard Sennetts risk economy workers... One could go on listing the various attempts at describing and capturing what this group actually does and what it means to the rest of us. Most of all they are creative workers within what is described by the British government as the Creative Industries. Based on conversations with these workers I attempt to examine, briefly, the notion of the creative industries, the policy moves inspiring/inspired by it, and the way in which we talk about these issues, especially now, in the prevailing climate of the global financial crisis. Shortly after the neo-liberal Labour government came into power, cultural and creative work appeared and promptly rose to prominence on the agenda of the policymakers. In 1997, the Department of Culture, Media and Sport was created in order to better deal with the dynamics at play in the field of so-called cultural work, covering thirteen different sectors: advertising, architecture, art, antiques and crafts, design, fashion, film and video, computer games, music, performing arts, publishing, software and computer services, TV and radio. The goal of the government was to

pursue a knowledge-based economy and in effect, to rely on its revenues and move away from the failing industrial sectors. A knowledge economy, as described by Leadbeater, is one based on ideas and innovation, rather than low-cost labour, and its success very much relies on an emphasis on education across all levels (Leadbeater, 1999). So, the meritocratic model of the new creative economy was meant to provide a new way of supporting the economy through creativity. Key to this new model, for the DCMS, were enterprises having their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent, and which have a potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property (DCMS 2001:3). These sectors none of them strictly new, in fact were from then on increasingly publicised. As a new, mobile, and multi-skilled workforce was attracted to them, there was an avalanche of new job titles or occupations, coupled with new ways of working and often extreme (at least according to the norms of wider society) strategies for survival (in the past the exclusive domain of unskilled, immigrant, illegal workers, as well as women). The old school, first wave (stable, permanent, institutionalised, elite) creative/cultural work rapidly morphed into the harsh reality of its second wave highly charged, unstable, deinstitutionalised work (McRobbie 2002). When it comes to higher education, a different set of equally significant issues that has emerged over the last couple of decades can be observed. Creative education is plagued with the ever-increasing number of students embarking on university education. The institutions are overcrowded, there is less physical space and teaching hours, and it seems that due to lack of time and money on everyones part, the possibilities of forming valuable academic relation15

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ships with staff and lecturers are slowly, but surely, being placed out of reach for many students. Recently, a debate surrounding the announcement of the Byam Shaw School of Art merger with the University of the Arts London was carried out between students, teachers and artists, on the pages of the Letters Section in Art Monthly (May 2009). While UAL has always taught some fine art courses, overall it is an institution in which design and applied art degrees outnumber them. The incorporation of Byam Shaws fine art teaching practice into the structures of the design-dominated UAL resulted in transformation of the former approach of Byam Shaw into a project-based culture and a profit-driven managerial style, characterised by a desire to quantify the unquantifiable. Teaching hours were cut and resources and access to studio space became limited. The open rationale of the Fine Art education process has been undercut with strategies of target-driven learning and teaching. This is but one example of the worrying, countrywide, systemic failures of the higher education system, which, to the tune of the governments calls for more and more people from across all different backgrounds (and age groups, despite the fact that funding is being phased out, meaning that many adult creative education institutions are gradually closing down) to aim for higher education, is turning into a target-driven business enterprise where concern for the authority of knowledge seems to be gradually taking second place. This, coupled with the increasing course fees (and the prospect of the capping policy for university fees to be soon overturned) and steadily diminishing funding leads to the production of high numbers of young people to enter the oversupplied job market, facing the prospects of low wages and selfexploitation (Ross 2003), in the hope of
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achieving job satisfaction, fulfilment, and joining the minority group that makes it within the creative professions (McRobbie 2002). To them, to sell out means to give up their artistic practice altogether, rather than to make a living from a different/parallel form of employment few can survive on their artistic practice alone and having a bill-paying job alongside has become the norm. Although recent research suggests that if necessary, many could be (potentially) able to (successfully) transfer their creative and artistic skills into other professions (Oakley et al 2008), this is not a route that creative workers, such as my interviewees, would necessarily like to follow. The optimistic reports suggesting a successful tranfer of skills seem to be an attempt, on the part of policymakers, to put a positive spin on the dire circumstances that artists and cultural workers increasingly find themselves in, and an economic justification for fine art education overall. People I interviewed represent creatives from a host of different national, cultural, and educational backgrounds, generations and practices. They share common, unstable career paths some work a few different jobs at any one time to make a living, others try and avoid the taxman. Some find parttime or temporary jobs in order to sustain their practice, others come with training in what could be called sacrificial labour (Ross 2003) in order to achieve fulfilment. Despite the many differences between their strategies for survival and the outlook they have on their creative and professional lives, a pattern emerges which points to the two main problems the policymakers and the industry will be forced to deal with in order to make the creative industries the success story they make them out to be. These are the issues of language, and the ways in which it is (or is not) used in the discourse surrounding the creative industries, as well as of education,

and the contradictory way, in which they simultaneously democratise and reproduce divisions within society by reinforcing the phenomenon of free labour of the creative workforce. The interviews also point to the often discussed and highlighted (by Ross, Leadbeater, McRobbie, Hesmondhalgh and others) conditions of creative labour the long hours, juggling of multiple projects, project-to-project work, the importance of networking and informal relationships in order to gain work, the uncertainty and intermittency of employment. The challenge of the language used to describe such pursuits can be summed up by saying, simply, that the word creative often appears where most of the interviewees would use the word cultural. As far as these two terms are concerned there has been, under the rule of subsequent New Labour governments, a change of terminology what used to be described as culture industries came to be creative industries and, on the policy level, now includes a wider range of professions such as technical staff, IT developers, or caterers serving the film industry, as well as the entire field of fine art practice that was not included in the definition of culture industries before. As used by the government, the term creative industries means very little to workers now described by it (and the wider public, I suspect), who in turn do not see themselves as a part of the bigger picture. By something cultural, most of my interviewees (who are not concerned with policy documents) understand something symbolic, something lived and felt. The word creative evokes in them connotations of something useful such as a product, something new, valuable, for sale. Such an understanding of a word that has rather different meanings linked to artistic inspiration has emerged from, and has its roots in, management discourse, by which it has been appropriated to describe processes

leading to creation of new (profitable) ideas, commodities, and production of value. The way in which the government and policymakers use the term creative can be seen as an attempt to bring the economic terminology into the sphere of cultural policy, and vice versa, simultaneously making culture seem quantifiable. The strategy of commercialising and quantifying creativity fits into the ethos of consumerist society, and somewhat adds seriousness to the debate. Yet, this is not how my interviewees, occupied with artistic and cultural practice, seem to look at these matters. Some, despite having heard the terms, admit to not knowing what they mean exactly, when used by policymakers and in public discourse: I dont really understand what either of these terms are, they mean nothing to me. Others have had no exposure to, nor any understanding of these phrases or hearing them before (being interviewed). Some express their discontent with the language being used, exposing the inevitable conflict between creativity (...) and the economical side of things. To the majority, creativity is a way of working, thinking and seeing the world, which can be applied to any profession (one) can be a creative plumber, mechanic, sandwich maker, road sweeper - but not necessarily one that is concerned with creation of products intended for sale and profit. For my interviewees, creative (in the way the policymakers use the word) came to mean the final, useful product that can be subsequently packaged, marketed and sold. There remains a gap between the two, and it seems to me that this certain deployment of terminology and buzzwords has a result opposite to what was presumably intended the detachment and alienation of the creative industries workers from the public and political discourse on the subject. The picture arising from the interviews reveals a dispersed profession unaware of discourses
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that may in the future have a strong effect on its conditions. The second set of problems has to do with the ways in which education is handled and the effects this has on the conditions of work and unemployment for those engaged in creative practice. Decade-long efforts of policy-makers to encourage more people to go to university that resulted in a job market oversaturated with qualified individuals, paradoxically makes it even more difficult for those with work experience to get onto the career ladder. Everyone has work experience these days, says one of the respondents, pinpointing one of the biggest problems of the creative industries at the moment the phenomenon of free labour. Those desperate to get into a profession are encouraged to take up unpaid work (often full-time, for long periods of time, and often very unrewarding) disguised by attractive (again) terminology - work placement, internship, work experience. Those from poorer backgrounds, who were (just about) able to make it through university very often cannot afford to commit to such free labour as it is simply impossible to survive on the travel reimbursement and lunch expenses that are offered in return and therefore are excluded from the game, reproducing the pattern that previously referred to higher education, i.e. that only those from a privileged background stood a chance. This situation poses a challenge to the policy-makers who, simultaneously (and yet again) seem to be sending out mixed messages. The government first separated the creative industries from others set to receive vital financial help towards organising internships, and soon after launched the new (although very limited) Creative Apprenticeship Scheme (2008). Yet it has since been announced, that recent, unemployed graduates who undertake unpaid
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work placements will be allowed to claim jobseekers allowance for the duration of the placement (Lipsett, 2009). The plan, which was communicated in the media as aiming to reduce long-term unemployment and its scarring effects on young people, can be seen as a move that will in fact institutionalise free labour to an even higher extent and encourage employers to exploit creative workers surely it makes sense to employ less people on a regular basis and take advantage of those desperate enough to work for a pittance? Considering the picture of how vital the creative industries are to the UKs economy that is presented by the government, it is a far cry from what is being practiced across other industries, where more paid internships and apprenticeships (that actually lead to valuable skills and qualifications) are on offer in sectors such as construction, for instance (Kingston, 2008). What the interviews also show, is that the recent changes to unemployment benefits (or rather jobseekers allowance as it is now called) with their outsourcing to private companies and the unemployed being effectively forced to take up volunteer work in order to be able to receive the benefits mean that creative people on the dole will not be able to take advantage of it in the way that previous generations did, i.e. sign on in order to make time for pursuing their artistic practice. There are groups emerging, such as the Carrotworkers Collective, Internocracy, Intern Aware or Interns Anonymous that aim to take a stand against, and conduct in-depth research into the matter of exploitative employers approaches to free labour. They have already been successful, to an extent with the publication of the Institute of Public Policy and Research and Internocracys Why interns need a fair wage report, the Are you free? policy paper and a wide media discussion of current legislation and

its limitations, even leading to the removal, by the Arts Council England, of unpaid positions from its weekly Artsjobs newsletter, as well as the recent London Dreams tribunal ruling. These are positive actions that could benefit greatly from a larger number of creative industry workers getting involved and time will tell whether these will result in any real change to the actual policies and employment law. For now, although the current outlook on the cultural sector rights remains grim, the optimism seems not to have vanished completely - all those whom I spoke to remain positive about their individual practices, taking place somewhere on the border between cultural life, economic policy, and so-called real life and express

no intention of such involvement. While I do understand (and empathise), that this might be a necessary survival tactic after all, in a working day filled with earning a living and meaningful work, there can often be little spare time for critical thinking and protest. Yet, isnt this quiet, keep calm and carry on-style compliance with the prevailing conditions a sort of sell out in itself? With the next set of economic and policy changes, the middle ground may well disappear altogether, the nature of cultural and artistic practice might be tested beyond the question of how to pay the bills. It might be worth, while remaining buoyant, beginning to question the in between position that we find ourselves in.

References: Anon. Letters & Comment Art Monthly May 2009, pp. 14-15. Anon. Editorial Art Monthly June 2009, p. 16. Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society. London: Sage, 1997. DCMS. Creative Industries: Mapping Document. London,1998. DCMS. Creative Industries: Mapping Document. London, 2001. DCMS. Creative Britain: New Talents for a New Economy. London, 2008. DCMS. Economic Estimates Bulletin. London, 2009. Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Hesmondhalgh, David. The cultural industries. London: Sage, 2007. Kingston, Peter. Is the Government missing its own point? Tuesday 3 June 2008, available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/jun/03/furthereducation.uk1 Leadbeater, Charles. Living on thin air: the new economy. London : Viking, 1999. Leadbeater, Charles and Oakley, Kate. The Independents. London: Demos, 1999. Lipsett, Anthea. Graduates on internships to be entitled to jobseekers allowance Tuesday 28 April 2009, available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/apr/28/graduates-unemployedjobseekers-recession McRobbie, Angela. Clubs to Companies: Notes on the decline of political culture in speeded up creative worlds, Cultural Studies 16(4), pp 516-531, 2002. Oakley, Kate et.al. The art of innovation. How fine arts graduates contribute to innovation (Research Paper). London: Nesta, 2008. Ross, Andrew. No-collar: the humane workplace and its hidden costs Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 2003. Sennett, Richard. The corrosion of character: the personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. New York; London: W. W. Norton, 1998.
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The Clerks of Penge

text: dan taylor

he licked the gummed paper of the Rizla, and with awkward movements repositioned her arms over the barren window box and sallow stalks of a dozen dead tomato plants. A colony of seagulls flew overhead, their black forms contrasting against the milky silver of an evening sky, thick arsenic-blue clouds looming over the faint twilight. YOUR ACCOUNT SUMMARY FOR 21ST JUNE WHATEVER YEAH CAN FUCK RIGHT OFF HA HA

She sparked up and looked down at the car park and the corner where the betting shop met the high road. An orange car pulled out too quick, almost hitting a fat old woman dragging an exhausted shopping trolley. She cussed and swore. Stomach rumbled. On another balcony below, a foreign brogue babbled up, a deep-voiced man arguing against invisible demons. He thinks hes a big man, well Im not fackin avin that SON! St. Georges crosses with JJB Sports logos in the bottom corner flapped against bedroom windows. Behind each window possibly lay the citizens of a new nation: obese passive resignation addicts. Ganja haze from the balcony below and squawkish laughter. I used to be, but I aint into that no more. The audience cheered on. Television sets and children wailed and gurgled from distant open doorways, competing for growth, the hope and misfortune of their owners. Having another drink isnt going to make any difference now. But its not my fucking fault. Jim was crying again in the back room. Alrightah! Mummys comin! YOU AIN EVEN LISSNIN THOUGH

June
Her computer wheezed on the other side of the bedroom. The evening sky faintly illuminated the pine shelves and desk, whilst the bed and dresser were obscured in the growing darkness. Some vanilla incense burned to mask the smoke smell. Did her universe know goodness? Facebook and eBay were open. The briny laughter of the gulls plunged her wandering thoughts to a weekend in Brighton several years ago, a waste of time. All time is wasted. A waste of emotion. A text from Martin, that posh bloke at Amys. Getting a bit sexy ah. I did not love him when I first saw him. There was no blinding lust or premonition of a predestined encounter like light ning ripping through the sheets of a night sky. There was nothing particularly noteworthy or classically handsome about his face. Until the end I could never precisely define what made me so fond or protective of his memory. I associated
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his face with an oxygen-deprived nausea. I often felt like I was going to fall over if I looked in his eyes for too long. The computer was only ever switched off when she left the flat. DELTA CLERKS ONLY EFFRA CLERKS ARE NOT FOR HIRE Youve got to put yourself first, a friend ushered, one wine-weary night. Youve got to know what you want in life. Work it out. We all want to be happy. We all want to be loved. Its up to you innit. Aint no-one gonna show you the way. Oh shit Ive run out of fags. 4 am. Too late to sleep, too early to get up. And do what. And go where. And say what, to whom? Late summer sunlight was already starting to seep through the net curtains, bleeding into the bedroom, snuffing out the chance of sleep. Another data entry job through the agency tomorrow in Wood Green. Six weeks minimum. The dynamic go-getting Andy with excellent interpersonal, liaison and team-management skills told her on the phone that this was the role that would lead her to big things. Document Controller with a little more experience! An excellent Council client with a wide array of housing stock! Helping out the little man! You can do it darling! Her hand reached out for the inhaler on the adjacent dresser and she sighed, in a way that if her life were the subject some banal Freeview flyon-the-wall documentary, would signal to the viewer and narrator that this was not quite the lot shed picked in life, but bereft of alternatives, one she was impotent to complain about. Being a clerk, ah youre free! Even if youve spent all your dreams on some unlucky star. Restless in bed, she flitted through the carpetless corridor halfstuffed with uncomfortable limbs and doorless chambers where nightmares emerged out of creaking doors and holes in the walls, unlit and unending corridors, intersecting at the same distances like the # key over and over and over. Perhaps it was the new sleepers, but one nightmare was extremely vivid and disturbing: of Jim, my Jim, growing and growing, swelling far too big each time she looked away and back, he was taller, wider, almost like some grotesque inflatable, his skin and kids features stretching without growing old, becoming more and more lurid. MAMA WOSAPPENIN TO ME Just be quiet Jim! But for all the tongues flapping, the lungs remained paralysed. She was only awoken by an anxious heaving that announced the onset of another panic or asthma attack. NO WE ARE NOT BLOODY AMUSED iPhones. 2-week holidays in the Mediterranean. Pissed after work, jowl
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in hand, turned on by vicious gossip and talk of old lives lived through in the same bleary half-considered manner as today, this day, any other day. Anything except happiness is called being depressed. We want to be loved without the terror of loving someone else firstwith loving them more. I loved you once, safe in the misery of non-requitement. A martyr to the heart. A sorry saint, bones buried in a motorway now. Bitter and black. Her bitterness was beginning to affect her body. Fluoexetine daily like all others. Nauseating heart shakes, physical tremors, were something shed had since March that year, a product of extra stress on at work. Shed been having episodes where her right arm would go completely limp and prickly and numb, pins and needles that would last for what felt like hours. She could not remember the first time it started. The nights were long. She didnt have the patience or time to really look at the reasons why she couldnt get to sleep. Whilst Fluoexetine numbed the anxiety she felt in bed, she found she was just staring at the ceiling for most of the night. The GP helped with that. A crude description of the symptoms ensued. Jim was at his Dads. After sinking a bottle of wine, she decided to write a letter to her Step-Mum. The early onset of dementia meant that thankfully she wouldnt understand any of it anyway. Her confessions were safe. A message in a bottle. She sparked up and looked down at the car park and the corner where the betting shop met the high road. The universe was growing by 71 kilometers per second. Planet earth was four and a half billion years old, Homo sapiens 200,000 years old. No, things will not stop moving my dear. These facts were meaningless but all the same terrified her. Each day was one less lived, one less she had to live through. In a couple of years she would be 30. She was in a job she despised. She no longer fitted a size 14. Everyone was fucking up. She had not found anyone to settle down with. Life was a series of problems. Anxiety in sequence. In collars. Things obeying the cruel stipulations of undrawn schedules of time. On time, on time. WE ARE NOT BLOODY AMUSED, a hysterical man bawled down on the phone. She wrote it down on a post-it note. She collected these insults in an office diary that otherwise was rarely used, a compiled list of indictments of her sleazy bastard boss. Clusters of collared baldheads, blinkered by headphones hissed across traffic lanes overseen by small red men. Talking relieved time. There was never enough time. All it takes is a touch//I go back to black.

September
It is possible that July and August had already passed. The holiday period had been and gone, a week in Ayia Napa with her old college pals getting
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pissed in overpriced clubs, weeping over old cruel lovers. Her brother had two teenage daughters that he rarely saw. In a Primark suit, he preached the gospel of hatred according to the British National Party, trash-troubadour trawling through the pub car parks of Essex and Kent. Then there were middle-aged office managers who drank too many bottles of white wine on Thursdays and Fridays and started slagging off their female underlings in the office. Who is fat, and who is a thief, who is a homosexual, and who is mentally ill. Speculators of sorrow. There was nothing wrong with the occasional spliff but the drinking was really causing problems with her grip. She could hardly hold a glass of half-full wine without spilling some as she brought it to her lips. The numbness was becoming more and more widespread, affecting her right arm almost every evening, after 6 PM. She had no idea what to do. The GP made a referral for counselling. MADAM, YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHO I AM Confidence is an act that is assumed, a costume stolen from the back of someone elses door. Eventually you hope your performance will become so convincing that no one will notice that you are not the person who you hope you are. In moments of silence, she hid in the toilet and stared into her hands. Wheres your nails. Wheres your nails. Fuckin ell mama wheres your nails gone? The GP said it was an overactive thyroid problem. Shed been on Citralopram, something shed more or less forgotten about. She was given pills. She went to the Chinese herbalist. For a few weeks Jims dad Ryan was staying over until things picked up. Jim was happy having his dad around. She was drinking a lot. They got back together for a bit. She was still in love with him, somewhere. He got plastered and moved on. Everyone was moving on. She sparked up and looked down at the car park and the corner where the betting shop met the high road. They were building a Tesco Express. She spied Del cross the road with a double buggy. His crackhead bitch girlfriend was back inside. Alwight Julie. Amy Winehouse played on in the background...I cried a hundred times... sisters house party, a real Grimey affair, a lot of pills around, theyre all bloody kids but so was she... the depths of nighttime bedrooms, absent eyes lit only by single lighter flame. Blem! Blem bruv! Boys who simply stare into hazy air. Her cousin Remi beat his girlfriend up. When his mates found out she was pregnant they all went mad and went for him.

the top of Whitehall, three men were attacking a ticket machine with screwdrivers and boots. An empty brown bottle of Tyskie beer snapped against the back of the head of a vagrant who had made the misfortune of asking someone for a cigarette. Bang im bang im they cheered on, ancient blood-calls echoing around blistered city facades, their girlfriends and whoever else looking away in embarrassment. For Gods sake Dave leave im alone, yull get herpes har har har. One man in their number looked up at her, his fat yellow eyes lit with trangressive thrill. Alwight sexy. She broke into a run, fingering a small can of hair spray at the ready for defence.

November
Cold and dark again. Another year passed by too quickly. The only thing anyone could really look forward to was the prospect of an unmade, receptive bed, of rolling round in warm sheets, half-asleep and dizzy on strange dreams. To punctuate the boredom she thought about eating chocolate pastries or getting drunk. These pleasures and desires had not developed since the age of four. PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE AS BAD AS THATCHER After a particularly doleful mothers day, she realised she was a happy child. She, her brother and her friend Gemma from school playing on Box Hill: memories now artifically sepia-tinged as time and incongruity burnt their edges. She had to reconstruct memories now: 30-second featurettes directed around one central emotion, either happiness or loss, that more resembled early 1990s British Indie films.

April
A call from her sister informed her that her ex from college, Adam, had jumped in front of a train. Apparently hed been sectioned a couple of times since and nothing had been heard of him. For many nights after he haunted every quiet space. Horrible black hole. Selfish bastard to the last. I knew he was alone. I could hear his restless sighs into the night. I could hear his voice, trapped again in the tube of my telephone, I heard his voice calling again, the echo of his mobile, the sound of some whining music in the background, choking tears held back, Im alone, Im alone.... Adam was one of the ones she had been closest to. He had been more possessed by his positive side then, wild, brash, confident, arrogant, racist, dumb. A brilliant musician, though the self-thwarting kind that quits bands, records whole albums in afternoon bedrooms, expects world to sanctify them, never plays life, never is known. He was stupid at times, but a considerate lover, unlike so many others. Then one massive row and the bastard poor bastard disappeared, back when before
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March
In the midst of a freezing cold witching hour, she stumbled from Seven Dials to Westminster Bridge in search of the correct night bus stop. At
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people even had mobiles. Just gone. I didnt go to look, my nerves were thrashed. I never reckoned hed even be able to cope on the streets for that long. Jesus wept, Nan said. YOU SHOWER OF BASTARDS No pity. Now were all Caesars and Christs. This city becomes a kind of hell. The gold burns like fire. The smell of skunk and crack, everyone divided, everyone guilty, tainted, fucked. Simmering violence under the guise of the need for survival. Remembering the last unity when? School days, all in one class. Silly days. Her book of collected insults was becoming fairly extensive. It was still a secret. She wondered whether to present it to her boss, or post it as an anonymous tribute. Did her universe know goodness? Seeing Ryan still on an occasional functional basis meant possibly not. So wrong but so right. FOUL LITTLE PLEB. In some ways she enjoyed being insulted. It offered a way of counting the days, rather than simply counting them off. It provided something to feel. I never expected a lot of things. Ive always had an image that personality was plastic and that I could always be the person I wanted to with just the right will and desire. Now they tell me Im too passive, and colourless, and altogether strange. She started seeing a man, Colin, someone shed met at a work party. He was nice. Like Adam he was an unknown, inactive yet apparently brilliant musician. He also DJed occasionally on different radio stations, though mostly his cousin Waynes pirate station in Tulse Hill. He also surprisingly believed in the Occult, angels haunting every noble gesture in his webbed world. Gods in little things, demons and vampires emerging in his path when he was trying to get his housing benefit paid, for instance. Whole world is vampire, he said one time. Becoming wretched caricatures of the types they assumed were the adult world: self-righteous small-minded consumers the people of Croydon, Bromley, the Medway spill, all the new towns. But they werent all adults, just people who had responsibility kind of foisted upon them. Blank persona to brush off the world. Where is my persona? Just turn up, clock in, switch off. Politeness is a uniform. Uniforms are safe. Children, a thoughtless legacy. But I can give him a better life. There was still rent to pay, and debts owed to friends and family. It was postponed and dissipated in the ebb and flow of the work and the booze. I wish I had asked him what he wanted from life, what his dream was. In fact I never said anything to him. But I carried the memory of his face wherever I went, silently appealing to it, conversing with it, confessing to it. Stale disappointments and sexual frustrations sweated into the grey and black suits of the commuter congregations. Youd only be doing
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this for a little while, just for the money, before writing your novel, getting your music out there, starting your own shit business. Ambulances rhythmically pushed down these pebble-dashed side streets in the suburbs of Southeast London, to collect the elderly who had fallen over or passed away in the night. Buses ran with a brutish lack of precision. Babies bawled and screeched. A woman was shouting in the distance. I dont fucking give a fuck. Do I look like I fucking give a fuck? Do I though? I told you before, it does not even fucking matter. Arguments in stairwell balconies, a farewell 5 oclock cacophony. Swimming in a black sludge. Its not oil, its called ECTO FUCKING PLASM. The fact that there was no longer anything worth discussing was not perhaps significant. She went to sleep at 1 oclock and rose at half six punctually. She was paid to work as a Client Support Assistant at a housing office for a North London council. She had a son aged seven years old. She had been collecting abuse for two and a half years, meaning shed been there for four years. The miserable racists loitered outside the main entrance of the housing office. Men spat out cigarette stubs. Placards with misspelt slogans were brandished like pitchforks, a fattened mob growled and brayed for more milk. Amidst all those ancient bodies and faces flushing out of Liverpool Street Station, she felt that nothingness most clearly. A grain of sand. Subtle as salt. Long thin white man; gaunt nervous woman with tan, scarred, hooked nose, big belly, stub-eyed, not looking; bearded browshifting strutter with probably dodgy views on race. White shirt, grey shirt, white shirt, black suit, grey suit, black suit: downward glances, head-phoned, muttering to themselves silently whilst crossing roads, harried but hurrying like ancient Athenian slaves. Winking windows, dust-topped bus stops, bustling betting shop, the same beggar, same jacket and strung-out stupor, gladly unaware of his own pissed-on trousers, shoes stolen, hair sometimes getting longer. A morning that aches like rotten meat in the gut. The loneliness of very inefficient cogs, the cogs that are there but never used. Spare parts. Redundant in the exhaustion of employment. Suspicious leering. The march of the middle classes, the uncivil servants, the reckless traders, pear-shaped, trainer-tipped. Love neurotics. Immobile. Integrated into systems. Late as usual. MINDLESS COMPUTER WOMAN, YOU ROBBED ME She licked the gum paper of the Rizla, and with awkward movements repositioned her arms over the barren window box and sallow stalks of a dozen dead tomato plants.
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Christmas in the Midlands: a work in limbo

text and images: tamsyn adams

n December 2000, I travelled from London to South Africa to spend Christmas with my family. In the course of that visit, I started a photographic series, which I continued to supplement over the course of several years. The photographs were all taken at the same time of year in Estcourt, a small town on the outskirts of the region known as the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands in South Africa. The series is an extension of earlier work, which also focused on family snapshots and the temporality of the photographic artefact in particular. In this project I was interested in addressing representations of family life and how these personal photographs reflect a broader social context.

Starting points
Family photographic albums tend to promote an illusion of the ideal family, avoiding representations of conflict and discord. The mechanical aspect of photography supports this endeavour by appearing to provide objective proof of this life, but it also simultaneously undermines it. One of the characteristics of the camera is that it indiscriminately records what is in front of it, including aspects that were not necessarily intended by the photographer - providing a substrate or margin of excess (Pinney, 2003: 6). This can provide a way of unravelling the image and, by extension,
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the social context in which the photograph was taken. Two snapshots from my grandmothers childhood provided a starting point. They were taken in the same location as my photographs though many decades earlier, probably in the early 1930s. I had looked at them many times, always focusing on the subjects in the foreground putting names to faces I had never seen in the flesh, engaging in the family narratives that photographs are wont to give rise to. I felt that I knew the photographs intimately. A few years later, I found the corresponding negatives in an old suitcase. After scanning and viewing them on a computer screen, I noticed for the first time the people in the background of each image. These images were interesting for several reasons. Technically, they demonstrated that what the photographic process can give (in terms of Pinneys notion of excess), it can also take away. The figures inadvertently included in the negative had once again been excised by the prints blown out in one, and obscured by shadow in the other. The images also have a political potential. In retrospect, one of the most incomprehensible things about growing up in South Africa in the 1980s was the extent to which apartheid was normalised by a large part of the white South African population. In stilling the flux of our everyday lives, the

camera can make explicit certain social situations and dynamics, to which the subjects of the photographs no longer consciously attend. In this way, photography makes the familiar strange. Although photographs always represent specific circumstances, they also have the potential to function metaphorically. These images were taken in the period between the Union of South Africa and the start of the apartheid state a time when increasingly repressive laws regarding the countrys black population were being implemented. The marginality of the figures in the images

reflects their increasingly marginalised status in wider society. The contrast between the foreground and background subjects suggests the growing economic and social distance between white and black sectors of society.

Framing the series

These visual metaphors informed my own series. Taken during the Christmas holidays in the context of a white South African home, I was interested in showing a particular way of life, with all its concomitant strangeness. The Midlands of the title
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refers to the actual location, but also to the English Midlands, to which the landscape and vegetation bears a resemblance, and to which many of the rural, white, Englishspeaking population have a historical connection. None of the photographs were staged. However, in framing them, I focused mainly on scenes that juxtaposed members of my own (white) family with the (black) people working in the background, and on images of my family, while on holiday. Combined, these suggest that the way of life in this particular social microcosm is not that different
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from the one shown in the earlier images. On a superficial level, this is true. The legacy of more than a century of systematic racial discrimination continues to inform post-apartheid South Africa. However, in retrospect, the terms in which I framed my original intention fall perhaps too easily into visual dichotomiesbetween white and black, foreground and background, work and leisure, privilege and lackthat lend themselves so well to the camera. This is not to say that these contrasts do not exist. Despite a growing black middle class in South Africa, the black population in gener-

al remains very poor, especially in rural areas. But within this there are other complexities. To start with, the reference to the Midlands is misleading, suggesting an ongoing affiliation to the colony. However, my family consider themselves South African, and of the eight, I am the only one not currently resident in South Africa. As such, they have a vested interest in the countrys future. The photographs were also all taken over the Christmas holidays, which is the only time that the whole family returns to Estcourt. For the remainder of the year, they are working or studying elsewhere in South Africa. However, the way in which these images work as a metaphoric substitution for the entire year suggests a constant life of leisure on the part of the white family, and permanent toil on the part of the black workers. In many ways this isnt a representative view of the family or the people closely associated with it. The reference to domestic workers is also layered. As an institution, it has a long and exploitative history in South Africa. To address this, the post-apartheid government has put in place a minimum wage, together with other legal and administrative requirements. Other kinds of assistance (transport, accommodation, medical) are also provided by the employers in this particular instance, and the earned income supports extended families. However, domestic work is an institution that remains complicated by its past and by the circumstances that make it one of few viable means of earning a living for many people. This complexity extends to the personal relationships involved. I am very wary of the phrase part of the family, often used by employers in South Africa to describe their relationship with their employees. There are a number of reasons why this is problematic; not least the obvious disparities between the different subject positions. However, shared

history and shared proximity can and often do lead to a closeness that is difficult to define outside of this specific context. The black subjects shown in these photographs are not mere background figures, but people with names and histories. The white family is not a symbol of apartheid hangover, but my own family. In focusing only on the political aspects of this relationship, I risk doing a disservice to both black and white subjects, making them into anonymous racial ciphers. After several years, I stopped adding to this series. Ethically, there were too many questions that I wasnt able to resolve. I was also concerned that the binary terms in which I framed the project at the start compromised not only the subjects, but the integrity of the photographs. Returning to Pinneys excess: the point about it is that it is unintentional. By framing my images intentionally and consciously, I invalidated the basic premise of my argument. Despite my original intentions, however, there are images in which some of the subtleties I described above do begin to emerge. In figure 1, for example, Dunsu Khanyeza occupies the focal point of the image. In contrast to the two foreground figures, which are in flux, she stands still and facing the camera hardly the background figure shown in the 1930s photographs. If this photographic series is to continue in future, it needs to build on those images that address the tensions and nuances of these relationships, avoiding stereotypes, and thereby extending the terms of its original premise.
More images are available at http://tamsynadams. org/personalprojects/ChristmasInTheMidlands References: Pinney, C., ed. Photographys Other Histories. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
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Its a free world of work

text: abla kandalaft

s it becomes evermore popular, creative work increasingly follows the neoliberal model, governed by entrepreneurialism and reliance on commercial sponsorship. Is the precarity that it involves sustainable? What happens to those 25-30 years old, multi-skilled, flexible, psychologically resilient (Ellmeier, 2003), who do not fit the template of the ideal knowledge worker? Is the idea of pleasure in work a myth, upheld to deregulate the workplace and allow the state to disinvest itself, or is it a genuine desire that is being responded to? My aim here is to map out the consequences of precarity in the theatre sector through the lived experi-

ences of a number of respondents. Running through this account of workers in Britain are elements of comparison with respondents with similar occupations in France. The comparison is pertinent because of the history of state funding and the status of intermittence for theatre workers, the only example of such an arrangement in Europe that offers some form of job security. In contrast, Britains laissez-faire approach to creative work might suggest precarity is more of an expected state of affairs. I chose to interview a selection of people engaged in a creative activity within theatre; performers, directors and playwrights. The only criteria were that all respondents should be out of full-time education, they should have some sort of creative input and this should constitute their primary occupation. I limited the age group so that all respondents would have started working in roughly the same economic context. Considering the personal focus of the interviews, I decided to conduct them in the manner of an informal conversation and included specific points I wanted my interviewees to elaborate on. The interviews started with a definition of the intervieweees respective occupations. Considering the new career descriptions in the creative sector and the number workers have to balance, it comes as no surprise that job descriptions are difficult to pinpoint. Maria describes herself as a creative producer, freelance marketing consultant and an actress. She describes her time as being 75% directing performance workshops, and 25% writing short stories, performing and consulting. Before the workshops took off, she was combining activities: I was working for a publishing company on the side, did a series of things, short films, childrens shows, produced plays. I worked backstage in a pantomime, a mixture of things to pay the bills. Julia, 26, is an unemployed the-

atre director, however, she also does some other bits and bobs. Ryans occupation sounds equally multi-disciplinary. At 25, he describes himself as a performer, playwright and poet. I do live shows with lots of different acts, kinda wondering around. Ryan defines himself by what he is passionate about and only mentions his current job (at the Curzon cinema) halfway through the interview. Fay is currently unemployed, although she has worked as an actress and volunteers for local radio. By contrast, Valerie, 31, and Olivier, 34, both intermittent, describe themselves as comediens (actors). They find it easy to give their occupations a title. Agnes, the third French respondent, is a voice actress, a singer and a radio presenter. She also attends various drama workshops. Multiple job titles have a lot to do with their simultaneous jobs and projects, both within the world of theatre and outside. All these examples illustrate the increasing blurring of barriers between work and life. What comes across from the onset is the enthusiasm the respondents have for their work. This is an obvious trait of artists and goes some way in understanding how they deal with precarity. A year after graduating and thanks to her language skills Maria found a job in Frankfurt. Although she wanted to remain there, the job was boring and [she] was itching to go back to performance. Ryan tells me: you end up putting in much more work, you think, I would have done this for free. Theres so much enjoyment in it (). The respondents are still relatively young, aware of that fact, and still see themselves as experimenting with something. This helps to understand their optimism and the sacrifices they are prepared to make. Maria, 33, concedes: Its easier to be poor when youre young. Julia adds, I dont expect to be wealthy. No field is very secure. This is something that regularly came up - as everything has
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become precarious these days, one might as well do something one enjoys. None of the respondents had expectations of fame and fortune and were realistic about their chances. Yet, one of Julias main worries is that she will not be able to provide for the children she hopes to have. The French respondents are less optimistic. Valerie talks about the intermittent status as one of privilege that is close to disappearing. With the changes brought in, many of her friends are now unemployed or have left the sector all together: If I was 18 today, I dont think I would chose to go down that road. Both she and Olivier pinpoint the degradation of these conditions as the reason for their pessimism. In order to find jobs, the workers have to keep themselves constantly updated on opportunities, frequently moving from project to project. Because of the short length of each project they constantly have to look for the next one, not only for financial reasons but to increase the number of contacts they have in the sector. Julia claims: I throw myself at any opportunity. You have to keep yourself involved. Indeed there are opportunities to be found. Julia had obtained a New Voices contract with the Old Vic to help her adapt her own work on stage. Maria benefited from funding from Brighton Council to produce a play. They all admit this career management is very time-consuming. Julia feels it takes up the time she could be spending on her project. Valerie, despite her teaching job, spends two hours a day on the web, phoning old contacts and tweaking her CV. Ryan adds, You have to be strict with your time. Its personal administration. An application takes an hour. I am constantly applying for things. Self-discipline is a requirement. Agnes shows me her diary - no hour is wasted. Olivier has secured contracts with a number of theatres, but these need to be sustained regularly. The motivation this
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requires is not for everyone. Fay, the youngest of the respondents, is still unsure as to where to start. Furthermore, she happens to be the only English respondent not currently living in London and doesnt want to commit to anything in the hope of going back. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the other three are in London and the French are in Paris: they all claim the capitals are where it is all happening. Networking is of the utmost importance. In Marias experience, its who you meet, its about communication. The majority of the respondents developed their work on the back of events, such as the Critical Incident Event in Brighton, a showcase exemplary of how all-encompassing cultural work has become. Indeed, it is presented as a fusion of art, innovation, change, creativity and rational madness, where anyone that considers themselves to be a creative thinker, an innovator, a manager or leader, a trainer or educator, an artist [can look] for a chance to gain some inspiration and personal challenge (See: www.thecriticalincident. com). The event is made up of a confused collection of workshops and art shows, but mainly provides a chance for people to network. Most of them typify Charles Leadbeaters new cultural entrepreneurs (2000): young, motivated and marketing themselves to potential clients. Yet, relying on these events is extremely precarious as very few people truly benefit. Marias participation was worth it. She adds, many people exchange contact details but they never get very far. Most of the respondents use the Internet to join networks, with mixed results. Julia claims, Im on mailing lists, I spend a lot of time getting emails but no offers. For Ryan, who has found a stable group of like-minded poets and performers, as opposed to a fluid network, this is proving a positive experience. Fay had potentially useful contacts at university:

one of the course leaders is a prominent director, he worked on Eastenders, another is a drama teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, an absolute fountain of knowledge but you really need to go out of your way to make contacts. Such networks, by their very natures, are notoriously fickle and unstable. Networking is an ongoing process that needs to be sustained and it is notably superficial, networks are constantly made and unmade for the durability of a project. Moreover, many people are left out of the circuit, they might be older and less inclined to go out, live in a more remote place or simply, as in Fays case, they might be too shy. She went back to Norfolk and lost her contacts. According to Richard Sennett (2006: 94-5), precariousness at work is due in part to skills extinction. Most theatre workers acknowledge that continuously learning new skills has become necessary. The increasing popularity and commercial success of musicals mean that actors have to develop singing and dancing skills. On a less creative level, they have to acquire transferable skills in order to manage their careers or to increase their job prospects. Maria has booked sessions with a career coach as she believes it is a good idea to develop career goals. Valerie and Olivier benefit from the advantages that come with being intermittent, one of which is funding to attend workshops. Valerie has recently attended acting for the camera classes. The end of a job for life, as Bourdieu (1999) and Sennett (2006) argue, has led to an end to politics in the workplace. Workers know they will not stay long in a job and are often reluctant to join a union. In this case, there isnt even a workplace. Things such as equal opportunities laws do not make sense when people work by themselves. Aside from the two intermittents whose status defines and defends their rights and entitle-

ments, I wondered how the others dealt with problems. Performers benefit from a strong union, Equity. Maria is a member and tells me: I feel I can go to them if I have an issue with a contract or a booking. But its protection only extends so far. They wouldnt help me if there was an issue with my job in marketing though, which luckily there hasnt been yet. A lot of the work is done under personal, sometimes tacit agreements, which mean the terms of the contract can change easily. The sense of failure that one derives from not being able to cope with the demands of this entrepreneurial lifestyle is expounded on in Sennetts work. Motivational speeches about meritocracy and personal responsibility leave workers feeling they have no one else to blame but themselves for struggling to make ends meet. The English respondents were optimistic and any setbacks where described in terms of hurdles that were tackled and many stressed that this is part of life, it is to be expected (Ryan). Maria accepts that people in the arts make the sacrifice. It is never easy for someone to admit failure so it was difficult to assess how much respondents would focus on the successes. The way Fay describes it: going about finding work has become as fickle and hazardous as finding a partner. The French respondents blame was not directed at themselves but at the government and market forces. They are pragmatic and can pinpoint specifically what it is that is making their work precarious: Now, only commercial theatre is allowed to survive (Valerie). Continuously taking risks can leads to disorientation and there is an unsurprising correlation between rising levels of stress, illness and mental health issues (Sennett: 1999, 125). Ryan tells me: Everything I do is a constant balance. So I do get quite scared that I might let something slip. More seri39

ously, Agnes suffered from depression when she was only 24: I wasnt doing well financially and a deal with a producer fell through () I started seeing a psychiatrist. Another consequence of this instability is the precariousness of relationships and the loosening of bonds of trust and commitment. David Harvey (Davies: 2005), talks about the erosion of existing social relations [and] ways of life that comes with neo-liberal reform based on individual entrepreneurial freedoms. Maria explains that balancing such demanding projects required her to devote all her time to them and prepare herself to relocate. Ryan was positive about sustaining relations with friends, although they tend to be fellow artists. None of the respondents who did unrelated work felt they had friends amongst their colleagues. Julia, Ryan and Fay said they still kept in regular contact with friends from university, but the numbers had dwindled from sheer lack of time. Many hold ambivalent views on relocation. Maria has lived in South London for three years and really feels part of the neighbourhood: I think its important to feel you belong. I have moved around a lot and the times where I was happiest were when I felt settled. In The Corrosion of Character (1999), Sennett discusses the disruption to lifes trajectory caused by precarious labour. Workers cannot plan ahead or build on previous experiences. The respondents all have vague long-term plans. Maria wants her workshops to grow to occupy 60% of her time. Julia says she will dabble about in theatre or she might teach. Fay tells me she wants to go back to London. Olivier and Valerie worry about the increasing difficulties, yet, he relies on the name he has made for himself and she knows that she can go back to teaching. In both countries, cuts to culture budgets have rendered this already insecure
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sector much more precarious in terms of sustainability, employment and innovation. In France there was a clearer break with the past 25 years, in which an annually increasing budget had been introduced. In Britain, where in recent years culture has become such a pole of attraction for recent graduates, the proclaimed growth of this industry is hard to ascertain. Statistics are unreliable; the DCMS definition of the cultural sector encompasses information technology, which accounts for a staggering 90% of the overall growth, overshadowing the relative stagnation of other branches. As a form of open-ended conclusion, the question here is, within this context, what is being done to deal with precarity? I asked the respondents what initiatives they would suggest. For the French interviewees, the intermittent status, although not perfect, provided some breathing space. When I described intermittence to the English respondents they all agreed on its merits. In 2004, massive strikes took place all around France to defend the intermittent status. These gave rise to associations defending the prcaires and various schemes to remedy the disappearance of intermittence. Acting schools have taken it upon themselves to come up with measures to give their actor graduates some form of stability. They provide a network of practitioners who help each other out to various extents. The English respondents all stressed the potential of smaller networks and theatre companies, both of which should be better organised. Overall, all agreed reforms were needed. In Ryans opinion, there should be some sort of nationwide or European-wide regulations for cultural workers and artists so they know where they stand, echoing Alex Foti, a founding member of Chainworkers, who said that reforms should be undertaken on a global level, as we cant go back to a job for life (Oudenampsen & Sullivan, 2005).

References: Bourdieu, P., 2000. The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Stanford University Press Davies, A., 2005. Take me Im yours: Neoliberalising the cultural institutions. Mute Magazine, [online] Vol.2. Available at: http://www.metamute.com/Precarious-Reader Ellmeier, A., 2003 Cultural Entrepreneurialism: On the Changing relationship between the Arts, Culture and Employment in The International Journal of Cultural Policy 9(1): 3-16 Leadbeater, C. 2000, Living on thin air: the new economy. London: Penguin Sennett, R., 1999. The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. Norton Sennett, R., 2006. What do we mean by talent? In Dench, G., ed.The Rise and Rise of Meritocracy. Wiley-Blackwell Terkel, S., 1974, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. New Press Oudenampsen, M. and G. Sullivan, 2005. Precarity and n/european Identity: (an interview with Alex Foti (ChainWorkers). Mute Magazine, [online]. Available at: http://www.metamute.com/ Precarious-Reader

A u n i v e r s i t y b a s e d o n t h e p r i n c i p l e o f f re e a n d o p e n e d u c a t i o n , a re t u r n o f p o l i t i c s t o t h e public, and the politicisation of public space.

h t t p : / / u n i v e r s i t y f o r s t r a t e g i c o p t i m i s m . w o rd p re s s . c o m

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Dear Nyx,
I swear I intended to write an article on work and labour. As an academic - not even that: someone pursuing a doctorate - I have no real idea about labour. I am desperately ignorant of wage labour, long hours, union struggles and productivity-on-demand. At the same time, I am so far removed from money and finance that even the exploitation of labour seems to me a gargantuan task. The idea of extracting surplus value from a resistant body reminds me too much of those long months of total and absolute madness when I attempted to be a rancher up in the Alps; waking up early in the morning, the disheartening task of milking a multitude of apathetic cows, their worn-out, enervated, generous tits looking at me, the smell of rotten time. I do not know anything about work and the less I know, the better. And yet, despite this natural repulsion, I swear I really wanted to write this article on labour - I knew it was an opportunity to capitalize on the evenings spent reading Marx. I have hours of fertile conversations with all sorts of hard-working men to draw upon. For me, to be fair, labour is mainly an issue of personal pride and family tradition. Essentially, if I was lucky and I had carefully followed Bordigas advice - write of labour, as labour, for labour! - I could have finally made an impression on my two gigantic grandfathers, who always rightly looked down at me with ill-concealed spite. I really wanted to write an article on work and demonstrate to them that after all, I am not that lofty dreamer, and lazy rascal they consensually decided I must be. I want to stress consensually here, that we are talking of my grandfathers, who still barely talk to each other, who have never accepted the end of the cold war, who still vote DC and PCI (the Christian Democrats and the Italian Communist Party) although neither of these parties actually exists, since they both disappeared once and for all around twenty years ago. The 20th century may be finished, but they still periodically engage in a silent domestic class struggle, right in my kitchen, with little consideration for my opinions. In fact, the only thing on which they ever agreed, the only element on which they could base a bond, a mutual trust, a national alliance, was the cult of labour, the respect for the sweat of an honest worker, and an equal hatred of laziness, parasitism, aristocratic idleness and feminine softness. I have always been, you see, instinctively lazy, even before reading Goncharovs Oblomov or Melvilles Bartleby, but, no matter how

Note on Labour
11.40 pm 8th of February Flight FR4197: Milan - London

text: amedeo policante

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spontaneous and juvenile it may have been at the start, my refusal of work has always been quite uncompromising, although moderated by a certain sense of guilt and regret - a sense of guilt echoed daily by my elderly authorities. Certainly capitalism is in itself a blaming rather than a repenting cult (Benjamin) but, looking back, the ruthlessness of my communist grandfather Ginos work ethic always scared me the most. I could still shield myself from the bourgeois tale of thrift and success: if hard work and an ordinate life was the way up in society, I simply wasnt interested. I would have been happy to be an industrial worker, like my father, and actually, I did not want to be anything else. What was so hard for someone like me was to stand idle in the face of provocations of the two actual working class men in my family. The official party line of the Italian Communist Party on the issue of laziness was the following: chi non lavora, non mangia! This may be roughly translated as: who doesnt work, doesnt eat! - a slogan replicated in an even more menacing popular song of the 1970s: who does not work, does not make love. Now this sort of working-class pride, even celebrated by the national holiday of the 1st of May and in the first article of the constitution Italy is a republic founded on labour always left me quite curious. Wasnt work equal to exploitation? Wasnt the process of labour nothing else but the process, through which the working class reproduces itself exactly as working class, that is as expropriated class, exploited class, subaltern class always already caught within the endless circle of capitalist accumulation? And why then was the source of the highest pride and recognition to wake up and go to the slaughterhouse every morning? This has never been clear to me. What is clear to me is that throughout modernity, the idea that work is not only the condition of political citizenship, but in fact the very criterion of normality, has grown into a discursive regime more deeply rooted in individual subjectivity than in an ethics; more embodied in daily practices than in an ideology. It is a norm of behaviour and judgement that has been assimilated to the point of functioning on a procedural level. Work is not only the natural imposition of the worldonce one would have said of Godupon men. It is in the very nature of Man to work, so that whoever refuses to work refuses his very nature. Who refuses to work really refuses his or her humanity. In betraying society, he really betrays himself and reveals a lack of rational-

ity, a lack of an understanding of what is natural and simply cannot be refused. I am tired! And yet, there is something untimely in these reflections. It is as if the work ethic, this proud enthusiasm for a life founded on early mornings and honest labour, the lack of which caused me so much trouble and distress in the past, was now little more than a tired, consumed ritual, a melancholic display of faith performed day after day by men whose beard grows old and whose God would not perform miracles any longer. Even if the priests repeat their sermons and no one dares to mouth blasphemies against work, merit and economic growth there is something new in the eyes of the old: not a doubt, but an anxiety and a vague nervousness now that one of the most cherished, ingrained and familiar certitudes, the blind faith in the value of work, is found unexpectedly in crisis. Maybe, and this is a simple but an arresting prospect, having the will to work, having the ability and the energy to work, is not enough anymore. Maybe the effects of digitalization, feminization and relocation of labour have transformed the experience of working in an office in Milan into something different from what it was working in a FIAT factory in Mirafiori or in Turin. After all, it is only in the last half of a century that war has been devalued as a human activity and as a formative experience. We know that something in the nature of warfare has changed, something that made the Futurist exaltation of war to be embraced throughout Europe in the 1920s or for that matter the Homeric exaltation of the warrior in the Iliad as an absurd and repugnant madness. Isnt something very similar happening when we think about work? Isnt the fact that the exaltation of work and the epic of the worker have been embraced with such enthusiasm and have been the real foundation of welfare democracy vaguely unreal, absurd, even ridiculous? Maybe the crisis of the working class, of its particular culture and political perspective, conceals and opens up another crisis, even more radical and disquieting: the crisis of labour as a value and as a real historical process. Do not ask me anything about the celebration of Labour Day. I dont know anything about labour. You see that man with the hat over there, ask him, they told me he made an awful amount of money with it! - Edgar Malaiville, anthropologist and poet, to a Labour Union journalist, 1 May 1961

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text: federico campagna

F
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placed a cigarette between his lips and turned on the radio. A talkshow was on. Its been a long time since the oceans and seas have been empty. Our parents could have never imagined this. No more fish. And forests of seaweed invading the water day after day, without any creatures left to eat it. Do you think that this is going to be an irreversible trend, Professor...? Radio 4. Definitely the wrong

choice. F took the incandescent cigarette lighter and changed the station. Michael Jackson. Unbelievable. They still played Michael Jacksons songs, so many years after his death. F dragged on his cigarette, looked at the traffic lights and tapped the accelerator. The stiff collar of his shirt was starting to annoy him. Considering the total price of the shirt, that strip of fabric must have

been worth at least ten pounds. More or less the reimbursement fund for a whole day spent at work. And, at work, there wasnt a real uniform, apart from the price-tag of the clothes. His work was at Sketch but it wasnt a real job. At Sketch, no one considered themselves to be workers. They were all organizers, facilitators, designers, artists. Sketch wasnt just a luxury restaurant and a private club. It was a lifestyle. An exclusive one. F, for his part, was even less than a worker, as he wasnt even paid. What he was doing at Sketch was an internship. An initiation to how gods live. The day they gave him the order to make this trip, he was called into the directors office. The directors assistant walked him through a large suite lit by neon sculptures. The director was sitting on a corner sofa and with a movement of his hand invited F to take a seat on a stool placed between the window and a four-poster bed. You see, son, what I would like to talk to you about today is something rather private, started the director, crossing his legs. F remained still, suddenly realizing that he had been allowed into the directors work bedroom. It is a very innovative project. Experimental, I might say. I will not hide that there could be some risks involved in it. But, as you know, we at Sketch dare to take risks. The director stopped and his eyes wandered along the luxury of his bedroom, as if pointing at every detail. As you can see, he concluded, softening his voice, taking risks pays back. He smiled, and F started to relax. He had never been given so many explanations before receiving an order, and being the object of the seduction and of the time of the director almost made him feel in a position of power. It was as if he was finally worth a price - a high one. F accelerated and the industrial ware-

houses scurried away faster out of his car windows. The beauty of London is that factories had always been built relatively centrally, and the suburbs quickly turned into open countryside. English people have always been quite honest with themselves about work. In the city centre there werent as many cathedrals as there were factories. At least, that had been the trend until the age of places like Sketch. From then on, the difference between factories and cathedrals had become just an academic controversy. Their meeting only lasted a few more minutes. The rest had only been technical details. The directors assistant led him out of the suite and walked him to the kitchen, to meet the Chef. The Chef looked at him witheringly, then started talking in a loud, slow voice. It is very important, he said, that the goods are not contaminated by external agents. Thus, no stops in pubs are allowed, no alcoholic drinks or coffee. The goods can only drink water for the entire duration of the transportation. Is that clear? F found the whole thing rather amusing. Not just the fact that the old fisherman was considered goods, but more this obsession by the cleanliness of his bowels. The old fisherman lived in a small cottage on the beach of Auchmitie, a tiny ex-fishing village in northeast Scotland. A place where people only remained to die, now that the sea was empty and the boats rotted in the harbor. The old man had been selected from several candidates, in consideration of the years he had spent on fishing boats and of his past diet, almost entirely composed of fish. F thought about the look on his face when he received the confirmation letter. His heart must have been bursting with joy. We are glad to inform you that you have been selected for the talk show that will be recorded in our London studios. One of our assistants will come to
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collect you by car and will take care of your comfortable travel to our studios etcetera. F had sent that letter himself, on one of the days that he was on mail duty. He didnt find much irony in the fact that the old man had put himself forward as a candidate. Many people would have willingly offered themselves to be slaughtered just to feature on a TV show. Certainly, the old man believed that he was really going to be on TV - but, rather than in the eyes of masses of common people, was it not more of a privileged destiny to end up in the bowels and veins of the most exclusive members of the most exclusive club in London? Still, what F was struggling to understand was how the clients of Sketch could have managed to really believe that the old man would taste like fish. On the other hand, what F was able to understand, was that his very inability to believe was the true difference between him and the clients of Sketch. F just didnt have enough faith. That was the reason why he could never be like them. That was the reason why he would never become rich, or famous. F obeyed the orders, without complaint or rebellion. But he wasnt able to believe. F passed a cheap car decorated with LED lights and shiny alloy wheels. Even to be poor you need faith. Otherwise you end up being a tramp, and dont get anything out of it. No tranquility, no happiness. All in all, if you really have to believe, youd better make an effort and try to believe in the faith of the wealthy, rather than in that of the poor. But how to give yourself faith? The morning slid into afternoon and F turned to the exit lane of the highway, towards a gigantic service station built of glass and steel. The rickety sun of the Midlands was frantically shining on the roof of the structure, as if it had been paid for by
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the owners for some extra effects. F steered into the entrance of the car park. You dont buy a luxury car to drive it, but to park it, he thought, leaving the car loaned to him by Sketch between two miserable pieces of junk. The food in service stations had always been a big passion of his. He always had the impression of having landed in an oasis in the desert, where people looked at each other just as survivors would do, with natural hostility. The guy behind the counter gave F a quick glance and asked him what he wanted, while hysterically washing some cups and continually wiping a sleeve on his sweaty forehead. Amphetamine, F thought. Then he moved a hand to the breast pocket of his shirt, felt the thickness of a small packet and ordered some chips. Before motioning him out of his suite, the director had smiled again and told him that there would be a surprise for him. He didnt add anything else, but, when the assistant came to meet F, the two of them exchanged a look of complicity. F was hoping for some money, but the surprise was going to be less surprising than that. Five grams of cocaine. Some for your trip and some for when you get back, said the assistant, trying to mimic the directors voice. F took his tray and sat at one of the plastic tables lining the window facing the car park. Maybe thats how you get some faith, he thought, mulling over his five grams. But thats too much of a shortterm faith, and way too expensive to keep up. Maybe you can get some girls out of it, at least? he wondered. Nah, that doesnt last too long, just the time for her to find someone else with more coke, or with more faith, which is the same thing. He chewed a mouthful of chips, soft like worms, and considered the evolution of his thoughts.

F left the frantic cafe assistant behind and went back to the car. Maybe that guy is enjoying himself now, he thought, lighting a cigarette but when the amphetamine wears off, it must be really shit to have a downer in a place like this. He leaned both elbows on the roof of his car and looked at the landscape of industrial chimneys, fields and warehouses spreading to the horizon. The rest of the U.K. is like a downer from London. Thats why London keeps expanding. Its like an addiction. F pressed the alarm button and the soft beep of the door reminded him that he was driving a luxury car. It was only a slight annoyance that it would never be his. The highway passed a succession of identical towns. Mono-family square houses, train stations, shopping malls. The sky started to darken and, at the sides of the road, large fields surrounded by hedges started to open, and, from time to time, a grazing cow or a few scattered sheep. It was even difficult for him to believe in those rectangular green expanses, in the lines of trees, in the rare, wooded hills. It wasnt just the fact that everything there had been planned and designed by someone. The problem is London. This place is like it is because of London. Without London, there would not be a highway here, the cows wouldnt be locked in these enclosures and, at the end of the day, it wouldnt be too bad a place to live in. Without London, all the rest of the island wouldnt be leftovers. And yet, cars and trucks ran back and forth along the highway, shipping designer clothes, tabloids and the inferiority complex of small town life. The sun nosedived in the exact moment when the highway curved on the top of a hill and, for the first time, the sea appeared on the horizon. The light dimmed softly, as if there were someone turning a dimmer

switch, and the water took on the color of the golden sofas at Sketch. As he drove further, the sea turned suddenly red and filled the car window with its blinding light. F saw again the restaurant at Sketch and its walls, covered in sparkling crystals, shining like the light of the sunset, that makes everything invisible but itself. F turned the steering wheel to the right and long lines of hills took the place of the sunset, while the air itself seemed to become heavy and green. Gradually, the cars disappeared from the highway and on the sides of the hills fields gave to forests. A fog bank covered the road, turning the headlights into long, phosphorescent stripes. F turned on the heating, lit up a cigarette and rubbed his eyes. He couldnt help thinking about that deserted sea. The voice on the radio that morning had talked about the forests growing under the sea. Since there were no more fish left to eat it, seaweed was free to fill every available centimeter of space on the sea floor. That must be a very, very different spectacle from these forests. No highway in the middle, and no signs warning about roaming deer. No signs or animals at all, for that matter. Nothing at all, only microorganisms and miles of seaweed, up and down submarine mountains, in the caves, in those valleys, down there, large as the whole of England That could be a safe place. No predators there. He would have liked to lay on his face some of that terrifying silence he was driving through and rest for a while. At that moment, in London, people were roaming the streets with their ties undone, looking for a beer. Outside the pubs, crowds were busy networking and shouting themselves to exhaustion, while underneath them; bodies were squashed against one another, silently standing in the thundering trains.
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Had he been in London, F would have gone to buy himself a ready meal from Marks and Spencers. He would have looked at the prices, chosen the cheapest option and felt like a loser. Once out of the supermarket, he would have taken a couple of pounds and thrown them in the first bin, just to feel better. A few thin towers appeared in the distance, studded with lights. In the lightening air at the end of the forests, F recognized the industrial suburbs of Glasgow. The cars seemed to appear all together out of the blue, as if from some hiding place beneath the road, filling that piece of night with sounds of overtaking and hammering radios. The enormous billboards that surround every city appeared also, like an updated version of medieval walls. The suburbs started to take the shape of long lines of houses spaced out by pubs, fairy lights forgotten from past Christmases, flowerbeds growing broken glass. F switched on the position indicator and slowed down. A few old people were shuffling back home
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along the pavement, holding plastic bags in their hands as if they were weapons. F pulled over and switched off the engine. He rubbed a hand on his face and massaged his arms, stiffened by the long drive. Outside the car window, the neon lights of a kebab shop were staining the pavement with green and yellow flashes. Those lights must have been designed by the same people who made this techno music theyre playing. F squinted and stumbled towards the counter. There was something reassuring in the trays overflowing with garnish and in the shiny meat spinning around the roaster, and F stared at the food while ordering a lamb shawarma from the man behind the counter. He followed his hands moving along the meat pillar, slicing it thinly and letting the slices fall on a plate. The man opened the pita bread and added some salad and onion rings, green chili peppers and garlic sauce, two slices of tomato and a cascade of lamb meat. Three pounds fifty. F paid and withdrew towards a corner of the shop, cradling the warm
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bundle in his hands. The first bite is always somehow awkward and shy. You open your mouth too wide or not enough, and the fillings escape between your lips. The steam coming out of the lacerated pita spreads over your eyes and takes over your breathing. The meat softly surrenders to your teeth, mixed with the cream and for a moment covers the walls of your mouth, becoming flesh itself, just slightly sweeter, slightly more tender. And this is all true, theres no need to imagine anything. Not like with that flies shit caviar or those hymens of salmon on canaps. Thats just money pretending to be food, food for those who have faith. But this one...three pounds fifty and it wouldnt taste any better had it been one hundred pounds. F caught his breath, wiping the oil from his lips with a tissue. Between the folds of meat, the tip of a chili pepper was peeping, bright green, doused with the white of the garlic sauce. F opened his mouth again and closed it on the wet paste of the pita bread. I wonder how much they will make them pay for those fisherman steaks. A few thousand pounds and the effort of sitting all together around a table, looking at each other simulating orgasms. More than once, he had slept with girls loaded with cocaine. He never took much of it, but from time to time he really had to take some, just to bear those hysterical fucks. Memories of those nights were still clear in his mind. It made no difference at all who she or he himself were. Not even whether their bodies were dead or alive. She was fucking the coke, not him. He was fucking like an accountant, calculating and piling up self-esteem. He came out of the kebab shop, lit up a cigarette and opened the car door. And now, he was in the suburbs of Glasgow, in a luxury car that wasnt his, traveling to pick up an aspiring suicide
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case. He was stuck in an eight-hour drive on behalf of the bowels of Sketch, and all that self-esteem and a shirt worth two hundred pounds were not being of any use. He switched on the engine, turned on the lights and curtly re-entered the traffic flow. The highway skirted the city without getting too close. From that distance, Glasgow showed herself shiny and heavily made up, as if in a peep show set up for drivers. The cars seemed to slow down for the spectacle, and even F threw his share of glances to the lights of the skyscrapers and deserted office blocks, while the darkness was taking the street back again and dragging it towards the north, towards the sea. As the miles went by, the traffic thinned out and the fields started to swallow the gigantic sarcophaguses of abandoned factories. Even from inside his car, F could feel the sky broadening and the horizon becoming flatter around the rough plateaus of the north. I dont give a shit about that old man. Not that I need a justification. That guy saw the world when things were better. He has had way more than I could ever hope for. And yet, all the old man really wanted was to go to London, he said with a grin. There he goes, whats waiting for him is London indeed. He wanted to be eaten, and he will be pleased. F squinted and looked at the headlights trying to defend themselves from that immense darkness. The tiredness concentrated at the bottom of his shoulders and from there it slowly started to melt into adrenaline. F realized he could keep driving for hours, until he fainted. Those who go to Sketch, I know them well - skinny faces, swollen stomachs, agonizing eyes. All their money will never be enough to keep at bay that disease that they all share. What it is, is of no interest to me. Like its of no interest to me the drunken-

ness of the workers at six pm and their tabloid-tailored hopes. Their depressions, their complexes, their hard-workers anxieties, theres nothing for me in there. Whats left for me, then? Perhaps to become a hermit? And where could I? Is there a hideout left outside Google Earth? Judging from the non-existent landscape and the sparse villages, rhythmically appearing and disappearing, F couldnt have said whether he had gone through hundreds of miles or if he had not moved at all. Slowly, the road signs became more detailed, making the highway fray into a number of side streets. In a climax of silence, F followed the signs to the coast and soon afterwards he found himself busy disentangling the curves of a countryside road. The sea. In that darkness increasingly filled with wind, the sea could have been everywhere. He could fall into it at any time without realizing. And then, he could finally rest a bit. F thought something, then his thought wriggled out and he looked for another one that could keep him awake. He switched on the radio and switched it off again. His cigarettes were running low and the one he lit had the delightful taste of scarcity. Is he a smoker? That old man probably smokes some of those stinky, old cigarettes. Or maybe not. The Chef at Sketch would never serve a smoker to his clients. Time started playing its usual nighttime tricks and F gave up trusting the clock. It couldnt have been only eight hours. He was feeling as if he had been traveling for an infinite time and as if he had never really started. He couldnt remember the last time he had spent such a long time alone, without a computer or a TV to get distracted. Sure, if anybody had listened to his thoughts, he would be labeled a monster. But, all in all, he hadnt found himself too bad company. The revealed monster he was didnt scare

him nearly as much as the camouflage of the others. To his utter surprise, F looked at the road sign at the end of the curve and saw the writing Welcome to Auchmitie. It took him a few seconds to realize that he would have to slow down and stop. Auchmitie was a slope with a few detached houses at the sides of the road and half a dozen street lamps. At the end of the road, a flat sandy expanse disappeared into the depth of a darkness that was probably the sea. Only one house still had its lights on and F didnt have to double-check the address of the old man. He turned off the headlights and stopped in the middle of the road. He didnt feel quite ready to meet the old man and to swallow his stupid excitement. He remained sitting still, with the seat belt on and his stare trapped by the reflections on the windscreen. He could feel the level of adrenaline in his blood lowering until it almost disappeared. He didnt even want to smoke. Slowly, he ran his hand along the fabric of his shirt, as if it was someone elses hand. The downer had come anyway, in another one of the thousands of deserts that spread outside London. His fingers slipped inside his breast pocket, randomly moving around like a hermit crabs legs. The bag was still there, compressed and warmed up by eight hours of tight contact with his body. F kept his stare on the windscreen while taking the bag out of his pocket, putting it on his leg, grabbing his wallet from the dashboard and taking out a debit card and an Oyster card. His hands were moving autonomously and precisely, like a doctors hands. He needed to sleep or to snort a line, and he was too exhausted to sleep. Now that the engine was off, from inside the car he could hear the waves bashing back and forth on the beach. Some53

where, a dog was half-heartedly sticking to his role, barking from time to time. F carefully poured the coke on the side of the Oyster card and tidied it up with the debit card, making the plastic tick in imaginary rhythm with the waves. It didnt take long for expectation to wet his mouth and take the place of his tiredness. F threw a glance at the white, plump line just before moving his head closer and snorting it up. Then he squinted a couple of times, cleared up the last crystals with a finger and licked their bitter taste. At the end of the darkness theres the sea, he said, resting his back on the seat and looking hard beyond the windscreen. There are no directors in the sea, no manic chefs, cannibals or old men. He was craving a cigarette. Cocaine could well kill him, but was so good for him. Anyway, better to be killed by charlie than to end up in those drooling mouths at Sketch, he said, taking the last cigarette. As my best case scenario is that I will manage to get old too, I will have to consider this option at some point. Maybe by then there wont be any coke left in the world and they will want to try its taste, F laughed, lit up and took a hissing drag. Theyre better off eating one of the girls at Sketch, theyd get much more that way. Yeah, but those girls, skinny as they are, are not even good to eat. God, a line was just what I needed. This shit journey maybe has been one of the best adventures Ive ever had. Why kill it now? Going to bed in the mans house and tomorrow driving back to London. Him, going to be cooked. Me, going to be buried again under twenty million people. Too many people, Christ. On the street, only the wind was left. F was still inside the car, feeling his mouth getting drier. His thoughts were loud and he was trying to speak them out, to lower their volume. What a crazy situation, I really needed it. God, this silence... They can keep
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playing their minimal techno at Sketch, but this is much better. He sucked another drag of smoke. Shit, now its all clear! It doesnt make any sense to go back to London. It doesnt make any sense to go anywhere, except into the... He threw a glance toward the lit windows in the old mans house. What shall I do with him? Should I tell him? Should I tell him, man they want to eat you? No way hes gonna believe this. And even if he believes it, I bet hed be happy to get killed just to get to London anyway. Idiot. No, I wont tell him. But Ill sponge a cigarette off him, even one of his stinky ones. And a glass of water. My mouth is so bloody dry. I must be fair, that whore of the director gave me some really good shit. With all his sleazy moves, his sofas, his silky bed. That guy spent a lifetime just to build his brothel room. But now I can see. He wants me to smell his sexy life just to make me go a bit further, a bit further, until the bottom. Until the bottom of the sea. F stopped talking and half-grinned. The bag came out of his breast pocket again, and another line rolled out on the oyster card. The old man had dressed up. He looked slightly nervous, but with the eagerness to please typical of a small town person who deals with a Londoner. Please, come in, I was waiting for you, he said towards the shadow immobile in front of the door. F opened his eyes wide and rubbed his nose. Good evening, Ill stay just a second, can I have some water please? Yeah, just some water, I wont stay long. The old man seemed to be taken aback for a second. Sorry, you are the person from the TV, right? he asked. Right, thats me, they sent me here to pick you up, but theres been a change in the plan, but can I have some water fist? Of course, sorry, just one second please, said the old man, as if afraid, dragging his cheap suit through the two rooms
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on the ground floor. F followed him, quickly glancing from the plastic furniture, freshly dusted, to the huge television in front of the sofa. It was turned on the same talk show the old man thought he was going on. And so you work for the TV, my compliments sir, he said on his way back from the kitchen, holding a pint glass filled with water. F dipped his mouth and nose into the glass and drunk greedily. Coughed, goggled and awarded the bewildered old man with a smile. Yes, I work for the TV, and I know the presenter very well, you know? Were very close, the other day he even showed me his bedroom. Maybe youll get to see it too. But thats not what I have to talk about now. F could feel his teeth creaking for how they were scratching against each other. To get to the point, F continued, waving the glass in front of him, outside theres the car that will take you to London. I left you a note with the address on the dashboard. The place is in the city centre, you wont get lost. Theyre waiting for you in the early afternoon. I am afraid I wont be able to come with you this time. Tell them in London that I went to the source, they might understand. Anyway, Ive been here too long. Here are the keys, F said, stretching out his hand, I have to go. He caught his breath, looked at the stupefied face of the old man and added Have you got a cigarette? The old man stood at the door, looking at the silhouette of F disappearing towards the beach. I almost forgot! F shouted from the darkness, dont drink any beer or coffee or the TV people will get indigestion! The dog started barking again and Fs laugh mixed with a series of wind bursts that sprayed the street with salty water. F was walking fast on the beach, stumbling on the sand, determined as if he had really realized something urgent. He was breathing deeply the humid air that was

soaking his clothes and his sweaty forehead. Even in those thousand, growing layers of waves, wind and swarming sand, F could hear the sound of his heartbeats. He got closer to the undertow and slowed his pace. The sea in front of him was hiding a darkness even more dense than that of the air. And forests, and billions of empty dens and infinite spaces of peace, without predators. He moved his arms forward, moving through the darkness as if looking for a glass wall. The waves withdrew a few meters and when they moved forward again, they did it with a special care, almost suspiciously. They coiled around Fs feet and moved back again, and then forward, this time more bravely. F stopped, tightened his breath around his hammering heart and let the water explore him. The reflections of the sea foam impressed themselves on his shrunken pupils, like sudden shades of fear. While taking off his shirt, he felt relieved by not having anyone to say farewell to, and nobody to say hello to, in his new life. No predators, no predators... F repeated to himself like a mantra, his eyes made shiny by the wind, while the water was rising to his belt. Hours later, hundreds of miles south, in the twilight of a room wrapped in silk, a dozen evening dresses looked at each other, excited. Some soft electronic music in the background was spreading around, filling the silent air and the empty plates on the big black table. One of the dresses moved on its chair, took its breath back and coughed gently. Isnt it incredible, it said, to think that there will not be any more fish in the sea ever again? We are going to taste the very last sea creature left. The other dresses smiled indulgently and didnt reply. Perhaps, in the secret place where truth hides, even in the emptiness inside dresses, they inexplicably knew that that was not the case.
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Powerful
icture the scene: a classroom full of females. Female A takes a slim, pink, tote-worthy accessory out of her bag, aware of the power of the item in her hand. Female B catches a glimpse of said item, her eyes alight text: alice corble & becky aizen with recognition as she extracts the same product from her bag. We are not talking about two little girls and their Hello Kitty pencil cases here, nor two big little girls and their iPads, vibrators or whatever society has deemed necessary to be a complete woman. The classroom is the Feminist Library, the two women the humble authors of this review and participants on a radical libraries training programme. The item is Nina Powers One Dimensional Woman, published in 2009 by Zer0 books. Why are we excited by this book? Because it is different, challenging, angry, funny and critically meaningful in a way that many of the recent new feminist texts seem not to be. It may be pink, compact and handbag-sized, but Powers book is no lightweight chick-lit commodity. It packs a concise and powerful punch against the One Dimensional Woman of its title: the branded figure of 21st century female emancipation who, under the omnipotent logic of late capitalism, is permitted to have her cake and eat it (just as long as she pays for it first. And exercises it off later, presumably). As unemployed women ourselves, we cannot afford this kind of feminism. One Dimensional Woman leads us on a concerted whistle-stop tour of enduring feminist issues including work, porn and monogamy. But rather than presenting these issues in terms of simple moral binaries, as so much contemporary feminist discourse tends to do, Power reframes them in the form of a radical critique of the way in which contemporary female emancipation is inextricably linked to consumerism and neo58

Imaginings: A Conversational Review

liberal political agendas. Power could be criticised for neglecting to consider the range of invaluable work currently being done by feminist activists. However, her aim in this book is not to survey the practical value of the new feminist movement (in the manner of, for example, in Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aunes recent Reclaiming the F Word), but rather to open up a new discursive space concerning what the vocabulary and ideology of feminism really applies to, namely, the material bases of our positions as women today. Through her accessible use of critical theory, Power offers us an alternative reading of society that implies a future feminism is possible, provided that women can extend their political and critical imaginations to different dimensions. This is no easy task however, as she reveals how the language of feminism has been co-opted by so many non-feminist discourses, from republican war-mongers to cosmetics companies, and how female identity has been hijacked by objectification from all angles, that there is no (or virtually no) subjective dimension left to be colonised (25). How, then, are we to effectively engage in critical thought on work, sex and politics? These questions and others have sparked the following conversation about our own subject positions as thinking women, and how we have ended up here at the Feminist Library. B A : What in the book had the most resonance for you? AC : For me it was definitely Powers polemic about the feminisation of labour. I know all too well how, particularly as a woman, you have to be a perky, walking talking CV the whole time, on an endless treadmill of
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skills-selling, up for anything (adaptability our key selling-point), like we are the perfect instruments of labour poised on the supposedly liberating horizon of flexible agency work, and if we fail at or oppose that in any way we are less of a person... B A : Timely for us, given our current status as unemployed women. Do you think this is a gender-specific issue? AC : Well, thats a big question, but one my employment adviser at the job centre felt qualified to answer last time I went to sign on. He reassured me that as a woman, I am much more likely to get a job than a man. He backed up his point by showing me (literally turning his computer screen and showing me its data) that the vast majority of his long-term unemployed clients were male. I asked him his views on this and he told me that women are far better communicators than men and therefore more employable. B A : It sounds like one of those bullshit Martin Amis If only women ruled the world arguments that rely on our better natures. The woman=multitasker trope is propaganda for us to do MORE work. AC : Yes this is one of Powers key points. As women we may be employed more of the time, but the majority of us are likely to be in short term, part time, non-unionised, lower paid, flexible posts, which are what keeps this whole capitalist ship afloat! This was the same employment adviser, by the way, who thought he was doing me a favour by suggesting that I do not put my current occupation as a feminist library trainee on my CV, to avoid being continually relegated to the reject pile! B A : That makes me sick. This is why we have to be more vocal, less concerned with what looks right and more concerned with what is right. Sadly thats not helpful as a jobseeker... Have you had other experiences that relate to Powers ideas about women and work? AC : Well Ive pretty much been a precarious flexible worker in traditionally female roles all my working life, mainly in the social care and charity/community sectors, and have always had to sell myself on the basis of my excellent communication skills. But Ive never really understood how I fit into the class of a professional, not having had any accredited vocational training. Back at the Job Centre recently, my adviser was obliged under government legislation to refer me to a private recruitment consultant to make sure I am doing everything I can to sell myself for work. (This is because employment advisers at local job centres are not qualified to advise job seekers who are graduates.) I was assured by this smarmy adviser not to worry: a professional woman like yourself will find the recruitment office quite an agreeable place to get advice you certainly wont encounter the great unwashed like you do here he snorted, gesturing towards the queues of disaffected men and
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women of all types waiting behind me. B A : The great unwashed?! AC : Yes he actually said that! On one level he was right the lumpenproletariat was not so conspicuous in the recruitment consultancy I visited, which was indeed a very different environment to Dalston Job Centre with its concierge, smartly dressed clients, air conditioning and 7th floor views of the square mile. But beneath its shiny exterior, agencies like these conceal a vast reserve army of flexible workers of the type that Power talks about in her book. Anyway, after my consultation, I was none the wiser about how to position myself as an unemployed professional woman who is doing everything she can to secure work that uses my professional skills (acquired through the largely non-vocational academic discipline of philosophy) but finding no success. So I was struck by Powers point that The professional woman needs no specific skills as she is simply professional, that is to say, perfect for any kind of work that deals with communication in its purest sense (18). I am considered a professional woman, albeit an unemployed one, yet this is a decidedly un-empowering subject position. The equation professional + woman does not refer to real liberated women in the world. Its a catachresis. We need to find a new way of talking about females and labour. Powers book provokes us to do this. B A : Its that sort of astute insight that really animates me its striking that even though Power, from the outset, warns us her book is not cheerful, I found it incredibly cheering in the way that she seems, by dint of her imagining of a non-capitalist alternative, to open up ways of seeing things. Whilst her views on work spoke to you as an unemployed feminist, her discussion of porn resonated with me both as a heterosexual woman born during the era of the mainstreaming of porn - the 1970s - and a feminist academic reading porn. AC : I agree that that is one of the most enlivening things about the book - that it stimulates desires for different political imaginings/realities. Im not sure what to make of Powers re-casting of porn though. B A : Given the size of the text (and I think its brevity is one of its appeals - I think a lot of writers confuse weight with gravitas!), I think it is a really powerful thesis. By extricating porn from the typical moral framework, she opens up the debate and releases us from that tiresome binary that I feel is responsible for a lot of unnecessary division among feminists. I am not refuting the importance of the role of sex (representational as well as real) in feminism but I feel a lot of potential for cohesion and actual movement in the movement is denied because we are at a stalemate with these internal sex wars. Also, given my background is in history, I love anyone who points out the historical variability of things - too often we
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see things in a fixed, predetermined way that limits our understanding of issues and thus our effectiveness in promoting any real change. AC : I agree, like the way she takes the vintage porn as a window onto new horizons on the subject but she kind of leaves us hanging there. I would have liked to see her pay more attention to the circumstances of production of that vintage material. Especially since shes so attentive to those considerations elsewhere. B A : Last year I co-authored a paper within Porn Studies (yep, it exists!). It is not my field but my interests include the representations of gender and ethnicity in popular culture and this particular topic was a good fit. I thought I was cool about it - after all, even though I know its a lightening rod for feminists, I am inherently anti-censorship, consider myself sex-positive and, from an academic perspective and as a concerned citizen, I feel we dont talk or write about it enough. Like Power points out, we are talking about a massive industry here (ten to fourteen billion dollars annually in the US alone) with revenues that are more than those for the film and sports industries COMBINED! And if you think about its prevalence, you cant undervalue what it represents about women to its consumers on a daily basis. How can that not impact on the status of women? How can we as feminists not subject it to critical analysis, decode it? But I felt really uncomfortable when it came to actually watching it and discussing it. I couldnt engage with it as just another text. As a woman, as a feminist, I was challenged by the material in a way that my male co-author wasnt. AC : I think its that kind of emotive challenge that continues to prohibit a non-divisive feminist/philosophical inquiry into porn. Do you think Power offers a way out of this? B A : By highlighting the historical variability of pornography and the tendency towards ahistoricism on the part of a lot of the anti-porn movement, I found Powers analysis quite reassuring. Its really important to take into consideration the fact that the sexual liberation movement itself took place at a specific socio-cultural moment in history, one where women had made far less gains in equality than now, and that what has since been sold to us as sexual fulfilment is intrinsically bound up with a hegemonic, screen-based culture that is still racist, sexist, heterosexist, homophobic, ableist, classist, etc. My difficulty with researching porn wasnt with porn per se, but with what it is now. AC : What do you mean what it is now? B A : Im talking about the lowest common denominator stuff, the films and clips that are the most accessible, both physically and culturally, to any ten year old with internet access. In the same way that Hollywood has its stock female archetypes (doormats, hookers and victims as
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Shirley MacLaine once famously opined), these largely American staple female characters are naughty babysitters, strict teachers or the graphic, siliconed largely American two-dimensional mainstream stuff. Of course this is a massive generalization and there is a lot of alternative porn that is non-hegemonic. Beyond the screen, however, no woman is truly one-dimensional, but you would hardly be aware of that from the monolithic image that contemporary Western society presents to us. This is precisely why One Dimensional Woman feels so timely and exciting. It is a feminist call to arms, arms laden with designer goodies, attached to an increasingly eroded self-esteem since capitalism requires from us a constant state of lack and discontent after all, why buy something BIGGER, BOLDER, BRIGHTER if you are happy with your lot? Powers voice is an important one, particularly because there are none of these commercial interests at stake with the book (admirably, all proceeds go to the Fistula Foundation), and therefore it is a vital addition to the feminist canon in general and the Feminist Library in particular.

References: Power, Nina. One Dimensional Woman. Zer0 Books, 2009. Redfern, Catherine and Aune, Kristin, Reclaiming the F Word: The New Feminist Movement. London: Zed Books, 2009 The Feminist Library (formerly the Womens Research and Resource Centre) is a large archive collection of the Womens Liberation Movement, particularly second-wave materials from late 1960s to 1970s, by and about women. The library recently gained Lottery funding to train 15 unemployed women in the principles and practices of radical librarianship. More information: https:// http://feministlibrary.co.uk. A shorter version of this article is due to appear in the forthcoming Feminist Library Newsletter, Autumn 2010.
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text: phil sawdon

W o r d s w o r k
Prelude to a nightshift in hindsight
OH Ren can you see me through your gentle breeze? Do you know what we should have done prior? Certainly even if I could find you and I remember you have a bow. You havent got a pencil well have to improvise Lets cobble those chronic motifs Can you see me in other words? Doubtful even during this long night; I will labour on the significance of these pen and ink drawings my instruments and precision tools they are capable of identifying and fixing a position through a conceptual visual language that incorporates the dates of the astrological signs. When you are ready I can be found in the [fictional] Museum of Drawing under an aeroplane. [Many concepts travel and most long to go on pilgrimages. Among them that night some arrived. They let it be known they had activities, and they said they could draw with the most accurate and positional precision ever conceived or imagined in nonverbal form. Not only were their lines fine and their coordinates uncommonly exact, but their drawings had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unsure of the point at which a drawing becomes something manifest.] Those are the drawings for me, if I read them I will be certain of where I am. [The Concepts set up supports and started to draw, though there seemed to be nothing. All the finest pens and the purest inks which they requested went into their travelling bags, while they worked the supports deep into the night.] Id like to know how they are getting on but I feel unnerved those who are sceptical and doubtful wont be able to see the drawings. Turn that racket down I cant hear myself think in here, on the inside speaking in tongues. Does that sound look like a drawing to you? I would rather send someone else.
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Ren Im in nowhere, some space where The Concepts are working. Now where am I? I cant see anything at all. But I dont think so. Where are you? Please be so kind as to come nearer to approve and situate. Be careful of the donkey that ate the pencil. I cant see anything, no one must know, it would never do to let on I cant see any trace, not even a shadow of a face. Dont hesitate to tell us what you imagine. Such precision and assurance Ill be sure to tell Ren how certain the coordinates have been assigned, drawn and marked. Were pleased to hear that, we will work on through the night and confirm all the dates of the astrological symbols and account for the intricate relationships. Thank you and Ill pay the closest attention, so that I can relay the content to Ren. [More and some more went into their travelling bags. Not a trace went onto the supports, though they worked as hard as ever. Ren presently sent another to see how the works progressed and how soon they would be ready. The same thing happened that had happened. Everyone was talking, and Ren wanted to see for himself. Accompanied by contemporaries, he set out to see. He found them. No thought in their head or nib in their pens.] Without peer, just look Ren, what esteem! I am pointing at the emptiness; I suppose that the others can see a trace. Am I certain that I cant see anything? Am I other than where I think I am? Am I out of place? What date is it? It has my highest approval. I will add my approbation to the emptiness. Nothing can make me say that I cant see anything. Lets use the drawings for scheduling a pilgrimage. The drawings are ready. These are here and there, heres the pen, and theres the ink. One would almost think there was nothing. Precisely! Rene, come along with us, the pilgrimage is around and about.
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[So off went Ren and the contemporaries in procession. Nobody would confess that they didnt think they could see anything.] Nobody is here and there is nothing to see. Did you ever hear such nonsense and noise? Nobody is here and there is nothing to see. Im wavering; I suspect the contemporaries might be right. This procession has got to go on, it is fundamental to this contribution to knowledge. [The contemporaries consult the drawings that might not be there.] I wonder whether Ren and the contemporaries have allowed and corrected for precession in the drawings astronomy, astrology, procession, precession, travelling concepts, hybrid methods, spelling The dates of the astrological signs of the zodiac no longer correspond to the times of year when the Sun actually passes through the constellations. The Sun passes through Leo from mid-August to mid-September, but the astrological dates for Leo are between about 23rd July and 22nd August astronomy, astrology, procession, precession, travelling concepts, hybrid methods, spelling source language because of precession, our framework of right ascension and declination is constantly changing. It is necessary to state the equator and equinox of the coordinate system to which any position is referred. Certain dates are taken as standard epochs, and used for star catalogues. To point a telescope at an object on a date other than its catalogue epoch, it is necessary to correct for precession. If you know the equatorial coordinates of an object at one date you can calculate what they should be at another date, as long as the interval is not too great. If the object is a star whose proper motion is known, then that should be corrected for as well Alternatively, the Astronomical Almanac lists Besselian Day Numbers throughout the year. Take a stars equatorial coordinates from a catalogue, and compute various constants from these, as instructed in the Astronomical Almanac. Combine these with the Day Numbers for a given date, to produce the apparent position of the star, corrected for precession, nutation and aberration. astronomy, astrology, procession, precession, travelling concepts, hybrid methods, spelling [The travelling concepts rolled up their drawings and precessed into dust, they were mindful that they may have changed but that we still use their old names and that drawing is becoming: an analogy.] Anon and on departing
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Cap it all
poem: andres anwandter

work force/forced work public sector/sector publicity proper privacy/private property real virtue/virtual reality

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