All the Girls’ Aprons Are and gendered technologies.
d technologies. In The last two also go under the idea shared central services.»7 Today,
The Fortunes of Feminism: From
Sparkling White Women’s Liberation to Identity
Giulia Colletti Politics to Anti-Capitalism, Nancy
Fraser points out a «shrinking of
I emancipatory vision»3 in the last
decades of the twentieth century,
It was 1984 when Miss Gabe according to which feminists
obtained the United States patent moved away from «attempting
4.428.085 for the first – and only – to remake political economy
Self-Cleaning Home ever devised. (redistribution) and towards an
«Housework is a thankless, effort at transforming culture
unending job» she claimed once. (recognition)»4 . This led to a
«It’s a nerve-twangling bore. Who reluctance in redesigning the
wants it? Nobody!». Her house household labour, in many ways
counted 68 inventions, including recognised as a Sisyphean exertion
a cupboard for dirty dishes, which – exhausting, unproductive, and
were washed and dried in situ. To uncreative. Despite of this, a
do laundry, Miss Gabe designed strong relationship entangles all
a tightly sealed cabinet, which the unrewarding jobs – like doing
could be considered to be her laundry or washing up – and the
masterstroke. Clothing was placed creative sector, to the point where
on hangers, washed and dried with we might think of the ‘domestic’
jets of water and air, and then, still as a site from which to launch
on hangers, pulled by a chain into emancipatory artistic projects.
the clothes closet1. Although her Both domains feed into the so-
dream was setting up entire villages called ‘social reproduction’, as
of self-cleaning houses, her wish Marx defines it in Das Kapital. The
was not to be. Maintaining a patent sociologist Christopher B. Doob
requires money, and Miss Gabe was states that this notion «refers to
moneyless. «For the most part, she the emphasis on the structures
paid me in Pepsi-Cola, Mr. Brown, and activities that transmit social
her former lawyer, recalled.»2 inequality from one generation to
the next.»5 It is Pierre Bourdieu,
II who then highlights the variation
according to which the social
Miss Gabe’s struggle is of these reproduction manifests itself:
days, as it speaks an urgent voice financial capital, human capital,
on reproductive labour cultural capital, and social capital.
of ‘labour of love’, as performed by
individuals – mainly women – who
are simply seen to work in a ‘self-
rewarding’ loop. As Helen Hester
suggests, there are still several
barriers to considering things such
as domestic labour as positive
elements in a counter-hegemonic
project, but re-thinking the usage of
sites where this reproductive labour
occurs, might shed new light on
alternative forms of empowerment.
III
Taking the cue from these
considerations, we conceived One
Missing Sock After Doing Laundry
as an exhibition, set in the frame
of a laundrette – the hidden urban
abode of reproductive work.
Unnoticed changes happened over
the twentieth century in this quasi-
public space. As researcher Sophie
Watson points out, «washing,
hitherto a relatively privatized
activity - consigned to the home
[…], and invisible like much of
women’s work, takes on a public
face, marking the high street with
its presence.»6 The egalitarian
environment that the laundrette
initiated, came to a standstill when
the rise of household appliances
and domestic technologies in the
mid-twentieth century «affirmed
women’s roles as consumers of
individual products instead of
laundrettes are still present
in high-density areas, mainly
being of service to low-income
individuals or students and run
by working immigrants. This
seems to turn her free-zone aim,
leading to dismiss the laundrette
as a class-stigmatizing enterprise.
Encompassing the original criss-
crossed essence of this space and
aiming to challenge the gendered
and class nature of doing laundry,
artists Elisabetta Benassi, Gabriele
De Santis, Tessa Lynch, Iftach Gazit,
Scott Myles, Jonathan Monk, Santo
Tolone, Alek O., and Alessandro
Vizzini attempted to re-think
the laundrette as site of casual
relations, but also as a 24 hours
haven that resists to the erosion of
engagement.
1. Fox, M. (2017, July 18). Frances Gabe, Creator of the
Only Self-Cleaning Home, Dies at 101. The New York
Times. Retrieved April 24, 2018, from https://nyti.
ms/2uwtrku.
2. Ibid.
3. Fraser, N. (2013). The Fortunes of Feminism: From
Women’s Liberation to Identity Politics to Anti-
Capitalism. London: Verso Books, 9.
4. Hester, H. (2017, Sept. 25). Promethean Labors and
Domestic Realism. E-flux. Retrived April 24, 2018, from
goo.gl/xciiPr.
5. B. Doob., C. (2003). Social Inequality and Social
Stratification in US Society. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson Education.
6. Watson, S. (2015). Mundane objects in the city:
Laundry practices and the making and remaking of
public/private sociality and space in London and New
York. Urban Studies 52(5) pp. 876–890.
7. Lupton, E. (1993). Mechanical Brides: Women and
Machines for Home to Office. New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 15.