New Treatment

As with some of my other work, in the case of New Treatment (see above), there’s a non-binary simultaneity of object and body, 2D thing and 3D thing, live thing and inanimate thing, however in this case the machine-eye of the camera-viewer-operator within this work and the clothing that this eye is examining don’t stand apart as subject and object but become intra-actively entangled, with these subject-object positions being more explicitly related to how a ‘worker’ might be perceived in certain situations.

The work involves specific modes of looking and behaving that take cues from automated, AI, and machinic processes. Intertwining mechanical precision and tactile intimacy, the automated movement of the camera scans pieces of used medical workwear, slowly following joins, stiches and edges along pre-programmed paths. The camera lens, and therefore also the viewer, feel very close to the objects that are being observed. If the lens was an eye, it would almost skim the surface of the material, and so if the clothing had a body in it (which it has done, and normally does), this would be quite an intimate sort of contact – you’d sense body heat, breath, and scent, and slight movements.

In part echoing the both the sophisticated medical machinery that belongs to this context, and the surgeon’s daily activity, it’s a meticulous and systematic type of viewing that’s seamless and microscopic – something that a human eye can’t quite manage, and yet in this work human subject and technological apparatus aren’t clearly distinct from one-another. The camera’s way of seeing might be detached, automated, at the same time as being generative and performative, therefore both active and reactive rather than simply one or the other. The close-up scrutiny of the body-clothing is something like an examination, but also like a caress. Can a machine look at, or examine a body, or an object, in a tender, empathetic or compassionate way?

The originality of the work lies in its concern with a mode of looking, examining, performing, and working that incorporates the dispassionate gaze and systematic movement of artificial intelligence alongside a form of tenderness and sensitivity that we would hope is more readily associated with human or humane characteristics.

This work continues an interest in work/labour as a aspect of human activity that simultaneously defines, deforms, valorises, and produces subjects or selves as much as it generates objects, commodities and services.

• https://ligatura.yourwebsitespace.com/