Working Conditions

<p>Ivan Illich imagines another world based on “conviviality” – on the ability to relate to each other and to things, to build the world with tools and to work together. Yet we do not live in a convivial society, but in a neoliberal world that promises fantastic infrastructures, while creating new conditions of exploitation based on algorithms. In this world we find ourselves increasingly alone in our increasingly unsafe lives. How can we imagine an alternative future in this world? Might it help to look at irrepressible relationships – the relationships we entertain with our tools and with each other in spite of everything?</p> <p>Without naivety or false promises but with persistence, two exhibitions by Emmanuelle Lainé tackled this question in summer 2017. <em>Where the Rubber of Ourselves Meets the Road of the Wider World</em> at Palais de Tokyo was a three-dimensional trompe l’oeil photograph that created a space within the space by expanding into a walk-in diorama. At first sight, it depicted a machine – a machine that produces tools. At the same time, Lainé presented <em>Incremental Self : les corps transparents</em> at Bétonsalon, on the other side of Paris, a cinematic installation that documents her encounters with three artists living in a retirement home and a specialised worker – people who entertain a strong relationship with the tools with which they work. Lainé used two different artistic approaches to look at our relationship to tools from two different angles. On the backdrop of the uncanny scenario that characterises the present world, she revealed to us relationships despite their becoming impossible in this world: in one case as an encounter with tools, and in the other as an encounter with those who work in a close relationship with them…</p>