Crossing the threshold it happens in an instance, all surroundings dissipate, sound vanishes, the experience of the body dissolves, momentarily all are replaced by a radiant white light, a secular experience of the divine. Some describe it as if they were communing with an omniscient algorithm. Those in the higher echelons of the company know better, the lens flare workers experience is actually a modified ocular response to a blast of calibrated sunlight and protein.
The idea originated when a board member's son suffered from the bends after surfacing too quickly scuba diving in the Bahamas. Sometimes the body needs a period of adjustment, however, waiting is antithetical to productivity, so the experience needed compression and importantly needed to feel naturalistic. Adapting household ‘sad lamps,’ with the latest biotechnology you can prep the body for a ten hour shift on the way in and decompress it on the way out, the employee hardly knows their biology has been temporarily reconditioned. It is almost a dose of amnesia making the reality of prolonged physical toil inconclusive to the experienced physical state.
In a new series of works created for The Terminal (2021), Erin Mitchell adapts her past investigations into corporate wellness brands, repositioning them to address the machinations of technology companies and their exploitation of workers. Situated as a cleansing break from chaotic interference, Daylight Simulation(2021) proposes a technological detoxification and administration of vitamin D for exhausted and sunlight deprived Fulfillment Center pickers. Imagined as a biopolitical alternative to clocking-in and clocking-out it envisions the expansion of corporate control into our very physiology. At the same time, within the 360° video it serves a practical purpose, offering breathing space between the onslaught of visual information.
The concerns articulated with Daylight Simulation (2021) play out in two new editions Mitchell has created for anonymous gallery that adopt customised product culture often found within corporate settings, conferences and trade expos. In Daylight Simulation (2021), the aesthetics of the detoxification chamber find themselves rearticulated up the corporate ladder, materialised on a white collar worker’s mouse pad. Geographically and culturally severed from his blue collar colleagues, for the desk worker the solar flash is decontextualized from its grim reality, instead blending in with a sea of branded materials that come as standard at every station. The underlying menace is lost by virtue of banal ubiquity.
Back at the warehouse, Mitchell’s Neo-Mantras for Human Automatons (2021) plays upon research into the jingoistic phrases stretched above the entrances to welcome shift workers. Borrowing the vocabulary of westernized yoga instruction, Mitchell’s banner attaches corporate wellness initiatives to the possibility that prolonged exposure to algorithmically instructed labour might render involuntary actions, such as breathing, voluntary. Addressing systemic failures of self awareness, Mitchell’s work reminds us of how phrases such as Amazon’s “Work hard. Have fun. Make History,” express a grim echo of “Arbeit macht frei.”
Erin Mitchell (b. 1989) is a Berlin based artist addressing the horizon of virtual nature and corporate notions of wellness. Past solo and duo exhibitions include: Wellness, Ltd., Galerie Manqué, New York City (2019); Floating Islands, Exgirlfriend Gallery, Berlin (2018); Next Nature, Institut für Alles Mögliche︎︎︎; and Uncanny Valley, SomoS, Berlin (2017). As well as group shows: Trust is the Ultimate Currency, Harlesden Highstreet Gallery with isthisit?, London; The Wrong Epicentre, Centre Del Carme, Valencia (2019); and Good Friends, Kunstpunkt Galerie für Aktuelle Kunst︎︎︎, Berlin (2017). In 2019 she curated the virtual speaking conference ▇ xTheWrong as part of The Wrong Biennale. Her work is held in the collection of Lawrence B. Benenson, member of the MoMA Board of Trustees.
The Terminal: Human Shaped Whole
directed by: Jason Isolini
featuring: Bob Bicknell-Knight, Ian Bruner, Joshua Citarella, Jessica Evans, James Irwin, Claire Jervert, Kakia Konstantinaki, Angeline Meitzler, Erin Mitchell and Neale Willis
curated by: Off Site Project
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Erin Mitchell .