Project Proposal : This piece is an interactive piece that utilizes game technology to discuss issues surrounding gender, race, transnational labor and globalization practices. In the piece the participant is given electronic gloves and instructions on how to complete the day’s work. In the midst of the participant trying to get the work done the player is confronted with a myriad of different issues including supervisors who attempt to speed up the line, refuse promotion, sexually harass workers and prevent union organizing. The only way to advance in the game is to start working with and talking with the other players of the game “beyond the walls” and create an organized resistance to the owners of the sweatshop they work in. Players have to work together and agree to take part in most of the subversive actions. The actions range from fooling your supervisor to organizing a union and stopping the work line.
Answers to very good questions
• What is the role of personal identity and politics in your project? Of course this project has so much to do with my own identity and politics. My family live in Hawaii and nearly everyone I’m related to who are under 40 years old works in the service industry catering to tourists. It’s not hard for me to see that colonialism and racism are strongly linked to labor and tourism because I am descended from plantation workers.
• How does this work challenge hegemonic standards of art making? I could say easily that this project subverts hegemonic standards of art making solely by virtue that I’m making it. I also specifically wanted to make an interactive piece that wasn’t catering to a gallery. Because this piece is mostly a game there is the possibility that it could exist on a web platform and be accessible for an even wider audience.
There is definitely the possibility of creating different versions of the work to speak to more specific realities. I had the idea of creating a piece that would apart of this piece that deals specifically around labor, race, gender and sexuality issues in the United States that included sex-work as apart of its analysis. In conceptualizing this specific work I thought it was particularly important that we discuss conditions in factories in Pacific Rim countries like the Philippines as well as El Salvador and Mexico. There are a huge amount of Global South countries with corporate manufacturing outposts for the high-tech and a variety of other industries. Perhaps the piece could also be tailored for much younger audiences as well.
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