Patent Pending: Labor |Force, 8' x 8' wall installation composed of 4" x 4" appropriated and digitally manipulated patent images nailed to the wall, black paint, Ipad for QR code scanning, 2015. Small QR codes can be found inside the larger 8'x8' QR code and link to related text, image, sound and video files. *See a statement for this work below.
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Women understand what it means to be deprived of freedom based on biological differences. We know that Western culture has situated women on the boundary of what is fully human, thus women have a very good reason to examine what our culture does to other animals, while being suspicious of its control of women. -Carol Adams, Neither Man Nor Beast
Patent Pending: Labor |Force is an ongoing investigation of the female body (both human and non-human animal) as an object and target of power. How are biological processes specific to female animals—in particular, their ability to become pregnant, produce eggs, lactate and bear young—utilized as an invisible labor that is both productive and profitable? In The Salience of Species Difference for Feminist Theory, Maneesha Deckha notes that, “The fates of marginalized groups, including farmed animals and the most disempowered women, are intertwined.”[1] This can be seen in selective breeding programs, originally developed for domesticated animals, which have been used as a model for racist eugenic breeding programs and forced sterilizations that continue to this day.
In Patent Pending: Labor |Force, patent inventions of various devices of restraint, methods of confinement and surveillance from the turn of the century through the present day are appropriated and digitally manipulated in order to critique diverse and interconnected modes of reproductive subjugation. The unreal/theory of the pending patent invention is made real (realized) through the practice of consumerism. QR (quick response) codes are information dense codes that facilitate consumerism, but they also have the ability to make processes of production and consumption more transparent. Viewers are encouraged to scan the QR codes contained throughout this installation to explore both the physical space of the gallery and the virtual space of the codes. Viewers are able to scan the overall 8’ x 8’ code to access a statement and resources for the work, while the smaller codes scattered throughout the piece link to informational videos, sound clips and coupons related to the patented “products” featured.
The invention of this new political anatomy must not be seen as a sudden discovery. It is rather a multiplicity of often minor processes, of different origin and scattered location, which overlap, repeat, or imitate one another, support one another, distinguish themselves from one another according to their domain of application, converge and gradually produce the blueprint of a general method.--Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
[1] http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=marya_torrez
Patent Pending: Labor |Force is an ongoing investigation of the female body (both human and non-human animal) as an object and target of power. How are biological processes specific to female animals—in particular, their ability to become pregnant, produce eggs, lactate and bear young—utilized as an invisible labor that is both productive and profitable? In The Salience of Species Difference for Feminist Theory, Maneesha Deckha notes that, “The fates of marginalized groups, including farmed animals and the most disempowered women, are intertwined.”[1] This can be seen in selective breeding programs, originally developed for domesticated animals, which have been used as a model for racist eugenic breeding programs and forced sterilizations that continue to this day.
In Patent Pending: Labor |Force, patent inventions of various devices of restraint, methods of confinement and surveillance from the turn of the century through the present day are appropriated and digitally manipulated in order to critique diverse and interconnected modes of reproductive subjugation. The unreal/theory of the pending patent invention is made real (realized) through the practice of consumerism. QR (quick response) codes are information dense codes that facilitate consumerism, but they also have the ability to make processes of production and consumption more transparent. Viewers are encouraged to scan the QR codes contained throughout this installation to explore both the physical space of the gallery and the virtual space of the codes. Viewers are able to scan the overall 8’ x 8’ code to access a statement and resources for the work, while the smaller codes scattered throughout the piece link to informational videos, sound clips and coupons related to the patented “products” featured.
The invention of this new political anatomy must not be seen as a sudden discovery. It is rather a multiplicity of often minor processes, of different origin and scattered location, which overlap, repeat, or imitate one another, support one another, distinguish themselves from one another according to their domain of application, converge and gradually produce the blueprint of a general method.--Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
[1] http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=marya_torrez