Vacuum Visuals

Mobile
video installation

Vacuum visuals
Vacuum visuals

The mobile video installation consists of vacuum cleaner robots carrying mini projectors, a speaker and a party light through a darkened room. They project videos of the karaoke version of Britney Spears song „Work Bitch“.

Vacuum visuals
Vacuum visuals

Depending on the position and angle the projected lyrics are deformed, the robots produce aleatory image compositions. The lyrics are stretched, blurred and changed in size indentured by their movements. At times one can only see words flickering; occurring and disappearing quickly after another and other times they are visible and readably for one to join in singing the song.
The instrumental version of "Work Bitch" hums as a distorted buzzing out of the loudspeaker, accompanied by the loud noise of the cleaning apparatuses.

The exhibition space is covered by curtains, there wavy arrangement of folds is echoed by the transparent installation elements arranged in the space. Additional elements out of plastic, that are usually used in construction, are adding projections surfaces. But rather than making the projected texts visibly and readable they also distort the projected image.

The 2013 released song is ambivalent in its message. It is thought of on the one hand as a hymn of praise to the late, Western capitalism and on the other hand, in a rather sarcastic interpretation as a hymn of Popmarxismus .
It includes lyrics like "You want a hot body? You want a Bugatti? You want a Maserati? You better work bitch" or "Don't stop now, just be the champion Work it hard, like it's your profession".
„Work“ in the West describes much more than just having a job. It stands for a moral condition within neoliberal ideology, the perpetuation of the Americas dream is central to "works" image. It is a marker of ones existential validity. With more and more jobs being lost to digitalization and automatization not only our understanding of "work" but also the structural conditions, in which we live in, will be shaken up.
While the vacuum cleaner robots continuously measure and process the room in a series of endless activity, an audiovisual mashup of the song is created.
The notion of the term work and what it means for us now and in the future is questioned.

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