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75 Watt
Revital Cohen + Tuur Van Balen
PYLON is pleased to present the online screening of "75 Watt" by Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen, starting on Friday, July 7, 2023.
Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen (UK/BE, b.1981, based in London) work across objects, installation and film to explore processes of production as cultural, personal and political practices. Their work was recently exhibited at Ghost 2565, Bangkok; The Serpentine Galleries, London; The 13th Shanghai Biennale at the Power Station of Art; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Para Site, Hong Kong; HKW in Berlin and Congo International Film Festival, Goma. It is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and M+ Museum, Hong Kong.
The online screening is part of the curatorial program NEWS FROM NOWHERE by PYLON, including a series of on- and offline screenings and exhibitions. The screening is kindly supported by Landeshaupstadt Dresden - Amt für Kultur und Denkmalschutz and by Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen. Gefördert durch die Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen. Diese Maßnahme wird mitfinanziert durch Steuermittel auf der Grundlage des vom Sächsischen Landtag beschlossenen Haushaltes.
HD video with sound, 10:00 min
“A labourer over the course of an 8-hour day can sustain an average output of about 75 watts”
(Marks’ Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers)
In 75 Watt a group of factory workers on an assembly line constructs identical objects in a series of elaborate movements. Designed in collaboration with a choreographer, the objects’ only function is to dictate the labourers’ movements, putting into question the nature of mass-manufacturing from the geopolitical context of hyper-fragmented labour to the biopolitical condition of the human body on the assembly line.
By shifting the labourer’s actions from the efficient production of objects to the performance of choreographed acts, mechanical movement was reinterpreted into dance. What is the value of an artefact that only exists to support the performance of its own creation? And if the product dictates the movement, does it become the subject, rendering the worker the object?
The assembly/dance took place at the White Horse Electric Factory in Zhongshan, China between 10-19 March 2013 and resulted in 40 objects and a film documenting the choreography of their assembly.
Choreography by Alexander Whitley. Supported by Arts Council England, Flemish Authorities, Ask4Me Group, Zhongshan City White Horse Electric Company, FACT, V2_Institute for the Unstable Media, workspacebrussels.