Anti-work movements:

- Questioning the purpose of work

- Anti-work roots in anarchist and socialist economic critique, argues that the bulk of today’s jobs aren’t necessary; instead, they enforce wage slavery and deprive workers of the full value of their output.

- Burnout

- Alternative: self-organization and labour only as much as needed, rather than working longer hours to create excess capital or goods.

- Not against all forms of labour, but against jobs as they are structured under capitalism and the state.

- The point of antiwork is to start a conversation, to problematise work as we know it today.

- Workers have built a high level of tolerance for abuse by their employers, but the corona crises made them more conscious.

During my bachelors I had to work 3 days a week beside my studies in order to be eligible for Dutch student finance, on which i was reliant.

After three years, I noticed that the repetitive nature of my job was draining me more physically and mentally than my studies, so I decided to find ways to incorporate dish-washing into my art practice.

I photographed recurring compositions and patterns on the conveyor belt in an attempt to reflect on the repetitiveness and inhumanity of the working environment. (noise, steam, heat, toxicity, smell,obtaining the lowest position in the restaurants hierarchy, some of my colleagues did the job 40+ hours a week)

https://hkudoc.hotglue.me/?dishwash/

- juxtaposing photos - creating huge images, depressing, overwhelming, traumatic

- generating new photos from existing images by computer as a reflection on the trend of automating manual labor

- prolonging my manual labor without me - ai - alienation

- printing images - reproduction (back to manual?)

- generative images are less and less realistic - alienation, in(non)humanity

- incomprehension of modern technology results in loss of confidence, anxiety --- (Georges Sorel)

- rise of the ''useless'' ''non-working'' class. --- (Yuval Noah Harari)

first ideas on how to retouch the photoes

automatization - labour - poetry

Visual Experiments

Continuing the composition with Photoshop`s AI

(from left to right) → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → → →

Abstract patterns - bitmapping images - reducing information

(
if
you
feel
stuck
scroll
with
the
sidebar
)

empty plates_____________________________________________________________________________________________________empty artist

Automatic writings illustrated by an AI (robots take my illustrator job)

Cardio spectacular, consistent rate.
Rated, reviewed, starred.
All above clean lines in clean lines.

Too loud in the noise.
That is thick.

Taking a break at the hospital,
while not even listening to anything.
.
.
.
.
Talking to myself, hearing my voice,
filling my head, fulfilling the urge
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
to break the soft layers of the skull

I should have known.
I should have done.













Shiny eggs for breakfast.
My mother got sick.

''1 minute generation'' publication


I make a publication of my short automatic writings and illustrate them with AI generated images.

These are examples of how an AI interprets my writings.

To create images from my texts I used the ruDALL-E public neural network

The title refers to the amount of time the ruDALL-E and I spend with our art pieces as well as the accelerated media consumption habits of our ''swipe and scroll generation''.

It was there again without fulfillment.
Empty plates,
left me in front of the porch.
I can see it not coming, playing until we fall.
Never have eaten enough. Too many empty plates.
I left before we turned to each other.
The floor was cold, will not sit down again.

Leading them to mislead myself
to never find my way back,
so it is not true. Seemingly.
It is what it seems to be.
It is.
It is.
Is is.













Are you still listening?

Only once, it was told.
I listened hard and became soft.

Slides and swings, playing and climbing.
















Falling.
I should have eaten the vegetables.

My current working process began with an examination of my installation of automatic writings and drawings under the concept of "condition". By doing so, I began to see my work as a self-portrait, giving me a glimpse of who I am right now while also revealing the intertwined social, financial, health, and emotional conditions that shape this "me". It made me think further about conditions that are affecting me. As growing up in a post-communist country with a working-class background, I've been taught since childhood that I have to study and develop myself in order to get a good position on the labor market, rather than to grow into a more complex and happier human being. While not always consciously, being conditioned to gain and develop tradeable and ‘’useful’’ knowledge rather than interest or desire-based knowledge has influenced many of my decisions and choices in the past, and continues to affect many of my decisions and choices todays too.

This realization prompted me to examine how I relate to the concept of labor in a society that is designed for labor. I was also intrigued by the widespread existential crises caused by the devaluation of manual human labor as a result of technology, as well as the negative effects of constant internal and external pressure to perform.

While labor unions have faded in significance in recent decades, and workers have developed a high level of tolerance for employer abuse, it appears that the Corona crises reawakened public awareness of these issues, and people's voices have manifested in modern anti-work movements that question jobs as they are structured under capitalism and the state.

I created artworks centered on automatization. A crucial concept in the evolution of the job market as well as in my previous works (even if in a different understanding). As starting point I used photos that I took in a restaurant where I worked as a dishwasher. During my bachelor's degree, as a foreign student, I had to work three days a week beside my studies in order to be eligible for Dutch student finance, on which I was utterly reliant. After three years, I noticed that the repetitive nature of my job was draining me more physically and mentally than my studies, so I decided to find ways to incorporate dish-washing into my art practice. I photographed recurring compositions and patterns on the conveyor belt in an attempt to reflect on the repetitiveness and inhumanity of the working environment. As continuation of the project, I made experiments to prolong my manual labor digitally by using artificial intelligence to generate new images from the existing ones.


I took a critical stance while working on the project. I attempted to use criticism to fuel my art. It caused me to become stuck with my creative process. My artworks seemed less relevant as my conceptual background became clearer and more comprehensive. It felt that I work on a concept as an applied artist and my creative process turned into ‘’labor’’ that I forced myself to do. I was pressured by myself to make relevant art. This thought made me reconsider the role of my art practice, as well as the methods and means by which I create. I realized that I cannot work in a strict conceptual frame, I cannot make art to say something, I can only make art to see what I have to say.

At this point, I decided to abandon the idea of channeling my art into a specific framework and began to remix and mesh all my ideas in a playful and intuitive manner. The works evolved from this approach were concerned with the issue of ‘’pressure of performance’’. I experimented with a poetic 360-degree virtual space (ambient, static, abstract, place for contemplation, disembodied feeling, "escaping" or taking a break from reality) and an augmented reality performance in which my audience became the performer by walking around and observing my virtual presentation individually through their phones in front of each other.

Reflection - Lost in concepts

Stuckism is a global anti-art movement created by two British artist Billy Childish and Charles
Thomson as criticism of postmodern conceptual art. In their manifestos, Stuckists emphasize the
value of painting as a medium, its use for communication, and the expression of emotion and
experience – as opposed to conceptual art and postmodernism's superficial novelty, nihilism, and
irony and aimed to replace postmodernism with remodernism, a period of renewed spiritual (as
opposed to religious) values in art, culture and society. Although painting is the most widely used
medium in Stuckism, artists also use photography, sculpture, film, and collage.
I can relate to the Stuckist moment as a visual artist who is seeking to create aesthetic work that
affects the observer beyond the intellectual level and tend to be reserved toward modern
conceptual art that is made by artists to artist to nod and applause each other.

Reference artist practices

Stuckism

Dr Ken Libbrecht physician designs snowflakes on the computer by hand under specific
environmental conditions. Subsequently, all of his designs are as unique as those of real snowflakes.
While Dr Libbrecht is not an artist in the traditional sense, I had to include him in my list because of
his genuine enthusiasm for his study in a very special area. “-Why are you doing this? – I just got
into this” he says with a smile. Beside I am also interested how computer science and new media art
open new possibilities for expression and to recrate familiar spaces, feelings, gestures in a controlled virtual environment.

Dr Ken Libbrecht

Refik Anadol is a designer and new media artist. Data-driven machine learning algorithms are used in his work to generate abstract, dream-like settings. I find his immersive installations, abstract-digital visual language and the way he transforms and bends space by projection inspirative. In my new works I would like to experiment with exposing my audiences to different layers of space, “realities”.

New media art - Refik Anadol

disembodied experience, VR space - draft

virtual presentation - draft

Video/sound installation

I was looking for ways to refresh my ‘’automatic drawing’’ project in a way that I can implement my ideas about social and inner pressure to perform according to certain norms and expectations. I made short time-lapse animations of the drawing process of different images and played them in random orders.
The rapidly but gradually changing images reminded me of how we consume content on social media. (swipe-and-scroll, random images and news, huge load of (banal) information, fast content, Instagram reel, TikTok) As a powerful medium that constantly creates new social trends social media is also strongly linked to performance anxiety.

Many of my unconscious drawings revolved around topics related to the three primal human instincts (reproduction, social belonging, self-preservation).
According to evolutionary psychology, despite living in a society of space exploration and virtual realities, where technological revolutions follow each other, humans still have the ingrained mentality of Stone Age hunter-gatherers.
It also contends that our species has not had enough time, evolutionary speaking, to adapt to modern mass media. The primordial mind has a significant impact on the working mechanisms of social media as well as its user content. You can take the tiktokker out of the Stone Age, but not the Stone Age out of the tiktokker.

With this work, I want to contrast the primal human unconscious with the modern digital world in a way that I can also reflect on certain issues and concepts that came up in previous projects

Key concepts

absurd - banal

free association - non linear or non logical narrative

unconscious, primal, tribal, primitive

pressure, anxiety, performance, frustration, mental state

social media, information overload, accelerated society and media

evolutionary psychology falls behind – primal instincts in 21st century

SYP audience survey answers after first screening

*What did u see?

Image channels, fast rhythm, suspended in space, black surrounding, drawings direct style, personal, automated electric sound, repetitive beat, roof top (feet), drawings(future), 1 beamer 4 screen, merging images, storytelling, drawing/sound installation, tempo vibration of sound/ not corresponding but matching images, objects and bodies and their associations, pain of giving birth, story told by moments, birth, old age, sickness and death, four phrases of life,

*What feelings, emotions does the work communicate?

Shame, fear, desire, tension, connection (negative), disconnection, love, frustration, limitations, boredom, sadness, judgement, hunger, desire, joyful pain, stress, trauma, encounter

*What is the topic of the animations?

Family – relationships, trauma in relationship, gender relations mediated by sex/attraction/repulsion
Daily life events, non-hierarchical memories, social norms, political correctness, feminism, animal rights, history/archive, 2022 speed, human behavior, pain of giving birth, desire to be teased, consumption, four phrases of life, sex


*Name three keywords that describes the work

Rhythm, gender, sex, trauma, banality, mundane, honest realness, future, division, family scenes, movement, storytelling, analogue, sketches, broken narrative, screen composition, tempo, shapes, misanthropy, psychedelic trip, darkness, pressure to create, everyday life, body, affect

Inspiration, references, articles....

Kovasznai Gyorgy was a Hungarian animator. In some of his films he animates by recording his painting process frame by frame

Kimchi and Chips - Cardboard boxes, projection mapping (2010)
digital image on a simple, raw material , sculptural

Absurdity infiltrated the mainstream culture

''essential bleakness, surreal settings, chaotically strange plotlines and jokes that ring with an erratic absurdity.''

''Online, comedy has been evolving in double-time, twisting itself to fit the demands of the medium – namely its insatiable desire for immediate, easily digestible content. Gags designed to spread on social media are often single images, 140 character quips or seconds-long snippets of film. -A lot of comedy stuff that goes viral is very short and decontextualized – it’s just a five-second clip of something very strange, explains Brett Mills, senior lecturer at UEA and author of The Sitcom.''

''the idea of narrative disappearing”

In comedy

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/aug/13/how-did-millennial-comedy-get-so-surreal

In fashion

The existential crisis of the personality in the mid-twentieth century, were addressed by absurdist authors. Albert Camus defines the absurd as the futility of searching for meaning in an incomprehensible universe devoid of God or meaning. Absurdism emerges from the conflict between our desire for order, meaning, and happiness and the indifferent natural universe's refusal to provide them. In the fine arts, new forms were sought through the confliction of to conventional logic and common sense (dadaism and surrealism).

In recent years, among younger generations, absurdity as a specific manifestation of humor has entered the mainstream media and culture. Some argue that it is a reaction to a sense of rootlessness and to the new forms of identity crisis. These feelings commonly linked to, among other things, the unpredictable political and economic developments, the delayed economic milestones (marriage, children, home ownership), the fading external sources of meaning (religion, spirituality),the environmental consequences of previous generations, and the incessive merger of virtual and physical life.

in the meme culture