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Date
Title
Source
Description
Tags
W4331
24.05.2011
PROJECT FOR EXCHANGE RADICAL MOMENTS - Andrew Stooke
WWW
PROJECT FOR EXCHANGE RADICAL MOMENTS While small shops, owned by large organisations, are closed for modernisation the staff are invited to collectively participate in a free visit to the Library at Alexandria. The visit only takes place if all staff, ...

PROJECT FOR EXCHANGE RADICAL MOMENTS

While small shops, owned by large organisations, are closed for modernisation the staff are invited to collectively participate in a free visit to the Library at Alexandria. The visit only takes place if all staff, full time and part time agree to be involved. Later documentation is produced as a book, the book is available at the counter of the store and a copy is given to the library. The staff can talk about the visit together and with people who come in.

The work engages with site as an emergent quality of movement. The work does not leave a tangible residue but is a passage of social unity and interaction.

In Alexandria the original library was a concept, collecting together, rather than a collection. The move from private knowledge coalescing but not housed or hosted for public access, to the contemporary ‘reinvention’ of the myth of openness and scholarship is incarcerated in the 2002 Bibliotheca. In the moment of radical exchange activated by this project the drama of this reinvention intersects with a social site, temporary wage labor.

This transaction is activated by the predilection for the engagement of an extended temporary work force by large-scale retail operations. These workers are, necessarily, a disempowered and non-hierarchical group. They are not a unified or categorised group. Individuals often only work a few shifts and this produces unpredictable patterns of interaction. When the retailers want to reinvent their shop, to make decorative of structural improvements, this whole group of temporary workers is laid off, unpaid, for about a week. This is the opportunity exploited in this interaction. The work takes place in the positionality of the group. It cannot be extrapolated from places. The radical moment is experiential both in interference, brought about by movement from one ‘depot’ to another, and in the interlocking of potential new social encounters within and around the group. The reopening of the retail space will, however, launch a public site for dissemination of evidence and this will be connected with a portal in Alexandria.

Negotiations with the retailer to achieve an advantage for their workers, while they are not needed, will also be a problematic energy in the movement.

The radical moment looks like movement

The radical gesture that forces the exchange takes place on two registers; The severance of the work group from the institution that appears to underwrite its unity. The characteristic of the group as a collective of individuals, rather than individuals who have been collected, inscribed in movement.

Andrew Stooke

PROJECT FOR EXCHANGE RADICAL MOMENTS While small shops, owned by large organisations, are closed for modernisation the staff are invited to collectively participate in a free visit to the Library at Alexandria. The visit only takes place if all staff, ...

PROJECT FOR EXCHANGE RADICAL MOMENTS

While small shops, owned by large organisations, are closed for modernisation the staff are invited to collectively participate in a free visit to the Library at Alexandria. The visit only takes place if all staff, full time and part time agree to be involved. Later documentation is produced as a book, the book is available at the counter of the store and a copy is given to the library. The staff can talk about the visit together and with people who come in.

The work engages with site as an emergent quality of movement. The work does not leave a tangible residue but is a passage of social unity and interaction.

In Alexandria the original library was a concept, collecting together, rather than a collection. The move from private knowledge coalescing but not housed or hosted for public access, to the contemporary ‘reinvention’ of the myth of openness and scholarship is incarcerated in the 2002 Bibliotheca. In the moment of radical exchange activated by this project the drama of this reinvention intersects with a social site, temporary wage labor.

This transaction is activated by the predilection for the engagement of an extended temporary work force by large-scale retail operations. These workers are, necessarily, a disempowered and non-hierarchical group. They are not a unified or categorised group. Individuals often only work a few shifts and this produces unpredictable patterns of interaction. When the retailers want to reinvent their shop, to make decorative of structural improvements, this whole group of temporary workers is laid off, unpaid, for about a week. This is the opportunity exploited in this interaction. The work takes place in the positionality of the group. It cannot be extrapolated from places. The radical moment is experiential both in interference, brought about by movement from one ‘depot’ to another, and in the interlocking of potential new social encounters within and around the group. The reopening of the retail space will, however, launch a public site for dissemination of evidence and this will be connected with a portal in Alexandria.

Negotiations with the retailer to achieve an advantage for their workers, while they are not needed, will also be a problematic energy in the movement.

The radical moment looks like movement

The radical gesture that forces the exchange takes place on two registers; The severance of the work group from the institution that appears to underwrite its unity. The characteristic of the group as a collective of individuals, rather than individuals who have been collected, inscribed in movement.

Andrew Stooke