"We want bread but we want roses too" was the slogan that accompanied the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike that took place in Massachusetts between January and March of that year. Led by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), it was dubbed the Bread and Roses Strike (a sentence that some attributed to labour union leader Rose Schneiderman, but that actually appeared already in a poem by James Oppenheim published in The American Magazine in December 1911). Labour in the textiles mills of Lawrence was hard and dangerous: kids also worked in the mills and many workers died before they turned 25.
The strike reunited workers from different nationalities, among them many Italians, and had a series of goals - a 54-hour week, 15% increase in wages, double pay for overtime work, and no bias towards striking workers.
Fast forward to our times and the situation labour-wise is still critical. Since last year when Coronavirus hit us, thousands of people lost their jobs all over the world; besides, with the global pandemic offices relocated at home and moved to digital spaces, and for many women the loads multiplied as they had to juggle working at home while their children followed digital classes.
Not to mention the conditions of front-line workers in the pandemic, from health service workers to couriers, riders from food delivery services and people working in supermarkets, just to mention very few categories of key workers.
As life restarted after lockdown and workplaces reopened, incidents also began multiplying: according to a research carried out by the Italian Inail (the National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work), 772 contract workers, among them men and women, died in Italy since January 2021. Coronavirus played an impact with people getting infected in the workplace, but most of these deaths refer to people operating machines, working in construction sites and in textile factories.
So, while over 100 years may have passed since the Lawrence Strikes, you get the impression that not much changed since then. That's why an exhibition that recently opened in Turin at the Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR; until 16th January 2022) and that focuses on labour and working conditions seems perfectly timed.
"Vogliamo tutto" (We want everything), it's an event suspended between disillusionment and redemption that invites visitors to move around the various installations and ponder about themes such as industrial, post-industrial and digital jobs, permanent jobs and temporary work.
The setting is perfect for such an event: located in the heart of the city, between the Porta Nuova and Porta Susa railway stations, the Officine Grandi Riparazioni (literally: Large Locomotive Repair Depot) are a monumental industrial complex from the 1800s, used to repair locomotives and wagons.
Closed in the 1990s, the complex was restored, requalified and reopened in 2017 to host a variety of cultural activities, from exhibitions to music gigs and events of performing arts. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Officine also turned into a temporary hospital.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by a novel by artist and writer Nanni Balestroni, published in 1971 and the event includes thirteen artists exploring the work theme and the contemporary labour scene.
One artwork on display, the "Vogliamo Tutto Brickbat" by Claire Fontaine, is inspired by Balestroni's book: it consists of a brick with the cover of the novel, a piece that could be almost used as a weapon to protest and destroy.
Insurrection is also echoed by Tyler Coburn's sabots, intended as an icon of the Industrial Workers of the World until 1918, when the organization publicly distanced itself from sabotage tactics.
Coburn traces the ethymology of the word to "sabotage", a term linked to the workers in the French factories that were known to "saboter," or "walk noisily" in their wooden sabots. Their unfamiliarity with modern machinery gave "saboter" an additional meaning: "to bungle a job." Another account holds that disgruntled workers actually threw their sabots into the machines, thus stopping production.
Coburn's sabots are 3D printed, though, and, while being a point of connection with the past and the modern history of industrial mechanisation, they also represent the emerging automation economy.
Industrial and post-industrial society is explored via Kevin Jerome Everson's video "Century" showing the demolition of a car. Everson picked a Buick Century as it was manufactured in part in his hometown of Mansfield, Ohio.
LaToya Ruby Frazier's "The Last Cruze" is a photographic social research looking at the consequences of the closing down of a car manufacturing company in Lordstown, Ohio, while the industrial archeology installation by Mike Nelson, "The Asset Stripper", incorporates pieces of machines that symbolize the last days of the industrial era.
Digital work and smartworking are explored in "Technologies of Care" by Elisa Giardina Papa, with interviews with online workers, and "The Manual Labor Series" by Sidsel Meineche Hansen, hinting at the loss of physical labour, while "In Real Life" by Liz Magic Laser analyses new jobs through the visual stories of five gig workers.
"A Call to Arms: Building a Fem Army" by Andrea Bowers is an ode to women workers and at their struggles for equality, while Jeremy Deller's banner stating "Hello, today you have a day off" is a reference to the text message sent to a zero hours (day labouring) contract worker telling him that his labour would not be required that day.
There's more to discover in Adam Linder's choreographies: Linder's "Choreographic Services" are designed to be performed outside of the theatre context; none of these works are for sale, but the performances represent a transaction between the dancers providing their services (the choreographies) and the institution hosting their performance and the cost of their labour (the dancing).
In 1912 workers asked for safer working conditions and better wages, but these are the same things people are asking for nowadays, despite over 100 years have passed since then and despite technology radically mutated and transformed the way we work.
Labour remains indeed a complex issue that poses quite a few unresolved questions, and, while walking away from the event, a few visitors will maybe remember Lulù's angry speech in Elio Petri's "Lulu the Tool" in which the worker felt as if he had lost his humanity while working in the factory and had become a nut, a screw, a transmission belt and a pump in a machine, and will question dehumanisation and alienation in the workplace and wonder in which ways the creative arts can help developing a debate about labour reform, stable and fulfilling employment, reasonable incomes and decent working conditions.
Image credits for this post
1. Kevin Jerome Everson, Century, 2012. Installation view of the exhibition "Vogliamo tutto. Una mostra sul lavoro, tra disillusione e riscatto" at OGR Torino, 2021. Ph. Hèctor Chico / Andrea Rossetti for OGR Torino. Courtesy OGR Torino
2. Jeremy Deller, Hello, today you have day off, 2013. Installation view of the exhibition "Vogliamo tutto. Una mostra sul lavoro, tra disillusione e riscatto" at OGR Torino, 2021.Ph. Hèctor Chico / Andrea Rossetti for OGR Torino
3 - 4. LaToya Ruby Frazier, The Last Cruze, 2019. Installation view of the exhibition "Vogliamo tutto. Una mostra sul lavoro, tra disillusione e riscatto" at OGR Torino, 2021. Ph. Hèctor Chico / Andrea Rossetti for OGR Torino. Courtesy OGR Torino
5. Mike Nelson, The Asset Stripper, 2019. Installation view of the exhibition "Vogliamo tutto. Una mostra sul lavoro, tra disillusione e riscatto" at OGR Torino, 2021. Ph. Hèctor Chico / Andrea Rossetti for OGR Torino. Courtesy OGR Torino
6. Andrea Bowers, "Call to Arms - Building a Fem Army"
7 - 8. Tyler Coburn, "Sabots"
9. Claire Fontaine, "We Want Everything Brickbat"
10. Adam Lindner, "Service N. 1 Some Cleaning"
11 - 12. Adam Lindner, "Service N. 5 Dare to keep kids off naturalism"
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