24/7 

Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition defines labour as a repetitive action necessary to sustain biological life, cyclical with an unclear beginning and end. When the body focuses on repetitive endurance, its connection to solar time becomes disoriented. This forces a new kind of durability that embodies itself as fatigue. Where labour is automated and processing speeds surpass the body’s capabilities, it raises an important question: what happens when machines never stop but humans need to?

Jonathan Crary in the Book: “24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep”, argues that in contemporary capitalism there is a continuous attempt to eradicate interruptions to maximise productivity. The activity of sleep, an activity essential to the body in order to maintain continuity might become confused as an activity of distraction where duration needs to be interrupted to accommodate it. In periods where the body can’t maintain duration, could we go as far to consider the body as interruption?

The exhibition ‘24/7’ brings forth works looking into the connection humans share with time and labour. Presenting kinetic works that function independently from solar time, these ideas around duration are considered where they actively operate throughout the exhibition regardless of an audience or not. Paired with static works ruminating upon apparatus, altering states and the body, the exhibition seizes to open questions surrounding the shifting relationship of labour with technology.

Adelina Nicoleta Apetrei
Angelos Kotzias
Arthur Boothby

Lucy Ellis
Matilde Converio
Max Adams

Maya King-Dabbs
Zayd Menk
Aurora Ulian