Immaterial labour and de-skilling, or, what is the work of the work of art and when does the work of the work of art work? (Matt Bowman)

• Fordism: the term is widely used to describe a system of mass production which was originated in the early 20th century by the Ford Motor Company.
• One of the effects that Fordism causes is de-skilling due to the heavy reliance on machines, leaving skilled workers redundant.
• One of the reasons behind it was to create more leisure time for people.
• "[Society] is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilised coal is burnt." - Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1905.
• "If we group services as personal (retail stores, laundries, garages, beauty shops); business (banking and finance, real estate, insurance); transportation, communication, and utilities; and health, education, research, and government; then it is the growth of the last category which is decisive for post industrial society." - Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, 1973.

Fordism:

• Material labour
• Sir Henry Ford assembled Ford cars all the same, machine made in the same colour, efficiently making them in mass as it was cost effective
• Machine work won't deteriorate
• More leisure time for people
• Workers were de-skilled and cheap labour 

Post-fordism:

• Immaterial labour
• Intellectual work
• Cognitive capitalism
• Knowledge economy
• Semiocapitalism
• Communication industries - always in constant communication through computers and phones
• Creativity is more highly accepted
• Indivuality - its trendy to be individual 
• Networking
• Flexible work
• Mass consumerism creating more work and jobs
• Social critique - using your work to make a statement, poverty, society etc.

Two 'modes' of critique:

• Social critique (which focuses on inequality, poverty, egoism, and exploitation)
• Artistic critique (which focuses on market domination and discipline of the factories)

"[Artistic critique] criticizes oppression in the capitalist world (the domination of the market, the discipline of the factory), the uniformity of mass society and the commodification of everything, and it valorises an ideal of liberation and individual autonomy, of uniqueness and authenticity." - Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism, 1999.

Allan Sekula (1951-2013)
Welder's booth in BankruptTodd Shipyard,
Two Years after Closing, Los Angeles Harbor,
California (1991)
From Fish Story, 1988-1995

"My argument here runs against the commonly held view that the computer and telecommunications are the sole engines of the third industrial revolution. In effect, I am arguing for the continued importance of maritime space in order to counter the exaggerated importance attached to that largely metaphysical construct, 'cyberspace,' and the corollary myth of 'instantaneous' contact between distant spaces... In the imagination, e-mail and airmail come to bracket the totality of global movement, with the airplane taking care of everything that is heavy. Thus the proliferation of air-courier companies and mail-order catalogs serving the professional, domestic, and leisure needs of the managerial and intellectual classes does nothing to bring consciousness down to earth, or to turn it in the direction of the sea, the forgotten space." - Allan Sekula, Dismal Science: Part 1, 1995.

The lecture by Matt Bowman and following seminar with Gill Morgan presented interesting issues and debates, all which are potential contributing factors to the development of my own personal philosophy. As designers we are faced with the dilemma of contributing to the mass production in the fashion industry by doing what we love, or create ways of using our work to protest against it?