Hazard Lights
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meditation on the world of work as a space of reclusion
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hypothesis formulated through objects and signs that prison has gone outside of its walls
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partial exploration of work as the inside of prison and of prison as the outside of work. Work as the reverse of the prison/ productive machine and the prison/ punishing machine as a consequence of the refusal of the logic of remunerated labour and of the economical logic in general.
Incomplete inventory of the works presented :
- PLEASE GOD MAKE TOMORROW BETTER, flashing neon sign that quotes an anonymous and generic
statement of political impotency
- Untitled, tennis ball sculpture that refers to the habit of relatives of prisoners to throw objects that wouldn’t go through the security control, by hiding them inside tennis balls and launching them over the prison walls.
- PLEASE COME BACK, K font sign. The K font is made from fluorescent strip lights normally used to light up
disciplinary places such as schools, factories, hospitals, etc. This system of assemblage represents the cheapest and
most accessible way to fabricate a large luminous sign. This sign reacts to the movement of the bodies in the space
and its meaning can be interpreted in different ways, from the parody of the message addressed to a consumer that
is leaving a shop to the melancholic impression left by the irreparable loss of a state of grace or of the beloved being.
- IL FAUT TRAVAILLER PLUS POUR PENSER MOINS, the tricolour French flag is embroidered with an
anonymous inscription originally made with a marker pen on an advertising panel in the Paris subway.
- J’AI DÉSAPPRIS LA NUIT is a white flag with an embroidered quotation taken from Jean Marc Rouillan’s book Je hais les matins. Rouillan was recently sent back to prison after giving an interview to L’Express magazine published during October 2008 where commenting on the murder of Georges Besse, he affirmed: « the fact that I don’t express myself about it is not an answer. Because it is clear that if I spat on everything that we have done, then I could express myself. But by this obligation to silence, they stop us also making a critical point on our experience. »
His elliptic declaration was judged by the court as a transgression of the silence that was imposed upon him during his provisional freedom.
- Untitled S.A.D. (Seasonal Adjustment Disorder) a work composed of anti-depressives lamps whose light has a frequency of optimal spring daylight that stimulates the brain to produce more melatonin during the cold and
sombre months.
- Untitled, a moulded latex arm used for fist-fucking ornate with a Rolex watch is a portrait of the mutilated life that we all live in the regime of contemporary capitalism. This sculptural gesture, close to the formal vocabulary of Bruce Nauman, is also a quotation of the use of the mould in the history of sculpture.
- Untitled, (Mugs) ready-made inspired by the crawling micro-fascism in offices and in the workspace.
- Optic, two water fountains normally used in offices, filled with vodka and whisky evoke the necessity of entering a state of altered consciousness when one is attending tasks that are hierarchically imposed.
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Every interpretation of the artworks quoted in this text remains subjective; the artist is in no way owner of the meaning of her work.
For the exhibition Feux de détresse we wish to suspend the ritual of the press release in order to communicate our intentions in the most basic way possible without coating them with supplementary information.
Thank you for your understanding.
Claire Fontaine, December 2008
