Taylor Ourselves Towards

There is a promise of social belonging and upward mobility in exchange for the performance of labour. This promise of a good life that will come from the ordinary life of basic employment. The promise that the good life is attainable if we just work hard enough. Capitalist culture lures us into this form of reciprocity between good life and work, feeding a cruel optimism and persuading us in the repetition of social gestures, even if these are hindering our own flourishing.

As a materialised reflection, Taylor Ourselves Towards translates into an installation our invisible attachment to the fantasy of all these promises, kept alive in the essential scene of the office. Centring a “skin suit”, Jenny Konrad traces the performative aspects of our ordinary lives as permanent employees. As we tailor our daily existence around a capitalistic assurance, we execute the gestures of being a good worker, in the hope that it will get us somewhere. The installation reveals our exposure to the office environment that gets under our skin, moulding us, and how we endure and stay attached to it in spite of how it harms us.