[iDC] WWWorkers of the World, Unite

[Laurel Ptak]

Hello all, am looking incredibly forward to the conference in November.

I'll be presenting on Wages For Facebook, a project I developed during a
fellowship at Eyebeam <http://eyebeam.org/projects/wages-for-facebook>
which has had a fascinating public life ever since its manifesto
<http://wagesforfacebook.com> circulated online in January 2014.
Immediately the text was graced with over 20,000 views (and counting) and
rapidly and internationally debated—clearly touching a collective nerve and
beginning a broader public conversation about worker's rights and the very
nature of labor, as well as the politics of its refusal, in our digital
age.

Like past projects I have worked on the Wages For Facebook campaign tries
to carefully navigate disciplines of art and activism. The manifesto text
itself builds directly on a brilliant text written by Silvia Federici for
the Wages For Housework campaign in the 1970s, chosen to illustrate the
repetition of capitalism's exploitative mechanisms where affective labor is
concerned, but also to offer an approachable, feminist, Marxist foundation
upon which to critique technology and social media.

Engendering much public debate, Wages For Facebook has been frequently
discussed on message boards, social media platforms, mainstream, left and
art press and is being taught and argued about at universities across
disciplines of geography, cultural studies, anthropology, art, public
health, labor studies, communications and more (an excellent recent example
here <http://blackwoodgallery.ca/events/2014/ReadingGroup.html>). At the
conference I'll be sharing Wages For Facebook's many unexpected outcomes
and key concerns as well as posing questions about the relationship between
artistic imaginaries and political realities—a long-term interest in my
work. Looking forward.

–Laurel

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Laurel Ptak <http://www.laurelptak.com>

Director, Triangle <http://www.trianglenetwork.org/partners> NYC
Part-Time Faculty, The New School <http://newschool.edu/>
Idealist, Wages For Facebook <http://wagesforfacebook.com/>
 <http://www.eyebeam.org/>
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