With Every Fibre (2021)
By
Cultura Plasmic INC
A photograph of the spoof job ad. The text reads ‘Are you a passionate and empathetic carer concerned about the collapse of communication and capacity for dialogue? FNS (Flawed Network Systems) is looking for a new Connections Manager to help mend and heal the divides, polarisations and breakdown of exchanges that have occurred as a result of the commodification of all human interactions’. Image credit: Cultura Plasmic INC.
A project subverting jobs listings sites to comment on digital labour and the need to address social isolation and disconnect.
Traversing both city streets and virtual space, ‘With Every Fibre’ was designed during the COVID-19 pandemic and in response to increasing pressures on communications, social cohesion and the urgent need to mend disconnect and isolation. Subverting the format of a job advert, a poster advertising the new role of ‘Connections Manager’ was placed on job listings websites.
The advert reads: ‘Are you a passionate and empathetic carer concerned about the collapse of communication and capacity for dialogue? FNS (Flawed Network Systems) is looking for a new Connections Manager to help mend and heal the divides, polarisations and breakdown of exchanges that have occurred as a result of the commodification of all human interactions.’ In the small print at the bottom, it says: ‘Please note, despite this position playing an essential role due to a toxic capitalist communications infrastructure, corruptive profit motives and exacerbated social hierarchies, this role is unpaid and will be unrecognised with any renumeration.’
In place of applying for the role, it directed applicants to a page on the decentralised internet, a structure in itself that challenges the power of the mainstream web and its role in perpetuating social divides. Once on the page (accessed via Beaker Browser), there is a short film combining oceanic imagery with the submarine cabling aesthetic of communications infrastructures. The soundtrack combines water-based recordings with the sound of a marketplace and vendors vying for economic transactions and deals.
Through both imagery and text, ‘With Every Fibre’ highlights the importance of care work, empathy, healing and capacity for dialogue, and how the need for these has been exacerbated by the commodification of human interactions. This digital intervention was inspired by readings on post-media as an artistic movement, the work of Felix Guattari, and how forms of mass media and broadcast have the potential to be subverted for anti-capitalist actions. My interpretation is to use this media to reveal its role in constructing and reinforcing consumerist ideologies and our relationships to each other.
Guattari makes a passionate plea for a new social ecology to "guide these capitalist societies of the age of mass media into a post-mass medial age; by this I mean that the mass media have to be reappropriated by a multiplicity of subject-groups who are able to administer them on a path of singularisation" (1994, p. 64). Therefore in thinking about the space that this intervention might take place in, I came up with the idea that this was going to subvert the format of a job advert, using a poster advertising for a spoof role in the field of communications, which would re-direct people to a platform that challenges the monopolistic power of tech giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook etc.
This project was presented to a group at Art Lab where we discussed how the project might be extended to invite more participant interaction, perhaps a survey or maybe a space for comments on the value of certain jobs over others and what kinds of jobs are needed in our society right now. Art Lab is coordinated by Halifax based artist/curator/writer Alice Bradshaw and is a space for Artists’ Presentations & Critical Dialogue.
More information: https://cell-less.com/2021/05/25/with-every-fibre/
