Ethics of Work, Production, Productivism, Performance
# Abstract
This workshop aims to collectively visualize the boundaries and the overlapping areas between the living for work and the working to live material and social conditions. Playing with parody and simulating our recurrent attitudes related to work, it is a way to subvert and transform our ‘natural’ and ideologically constructed relation with the impossibility of not working.
Ps. The workshop can be done as it is, however it is warmly suggested to take a second collective moment in order to organize the workshop: MAPPING THE INVISIBLE (link).
# Tools
Chair, Mattress, Candles, Paper, Pen, Dark Environment, 3 Printed Paper (3.PAPER-01; 3.PAPER-02; 3.PAPER-03)(link)
# Session tutorial
## Step 1: Introduction (10 min.)
Welcome everybody and thank them for taking this time out from their daily life-work routines. Ask participants to be silent, to sit on the floor or to lay down on the mattress, to brief in and out deeply. Guide the session.
## Step 2: Living for work or working to live? (15 min.)
Keep a silent situation, ask participants to think about the following three questions and to write down the answers on three different papers:
- Do you work more than what you could honestly do? (3.PAPER-01)(link)
- If yes, who/what is making you do so (anxiety, fear of losing your job, I like it!, I don’t know, …)? (3.PAPER-02)(link)
- Can you define which advantages your over-working is giving to the rest of your life (try to answer anyway)? (3.PAPER-03)(link)
## Step 3: Ritual n. 1 (20 min.)
Ask participants to parody the language associated with over working conditions. This should become a choir of complaints related to time, impossibility and anxiety (mainly Paper n° 2). Guide participants to open up their contributions with determination. Put rhythmic background music.
## Step 4: Ritual n. 2 (20 min.)
When the group is ready, ask participants to continue repeating the same complaints but as if they were having sex and/or an orgasm. This should become something like a porn film sound-track made by complaints related to time, impossibility and anxiety. Guide participant to perform their sex voice by doing it yourself loudly. Put rhythmic background music.
## Step 5: Let’s read (60 min.)
Bring at the centre of the room the suggested bibliography (whether are books or photocopies) and ask participants to look through and to choose a paragraph they will read to the group. After reading each paragraph take 5 minutes to discuss it.
## Step 6: Ritual n. 3 (15 min.)
Put all Papers n° 3 at the centre of the room and ask participants one by one to take a paper and read it aloud for all.
## Step 7: Ritual n. 4 (20 min.)
After having repristinated the situation, guide a discussion around the advantages written on papers n°3, analyzing the boundary between personal desires and expectations given by the context.
## Step 8: Conclusions (15 min.)
Ask participants how they feel about the workshop, share with them the bibliography by asking their mail contact. Say bye-bye to everyone thanking them for taking this time out from their daily life-work routines.
