Canteen Gallery 2
13 April – 9 May
Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 5pm
On-Site Screenings open to the public
Based on an online image archive documenting the construction and history of an early computing company, the fictional story of “Co-Operative Explanatory Capabilities in Organizational Design and Personnel Management” follows the development of an experimental approach to worker productivity into a religious cult. The project investigates the place of creativity in efficiency management and the operation of bureaucratic systems in a post-industrial work environment.
Pil and Galia Kollectiv have engaged with the concerns of TestBed 1 through developing this work off-site as a contribution to the project.
In addition to the commissioned piece Co-Operative Explanatory Capabilities in Organizational Design and Personnel Management, a selection of Pil and Galia Kollectiv’s previous works are available to screen on request. Pil and Galia Kollectiv’s work addresses the legacy of modernism and explores avant-garde discourses of the twentieth century and the way they operate in the context of a changing landscape of creative work and instrumentalised leisure. The work explores the relationship between art and politics and the role irony plays in its current articulation. Choreographed movement and ritual is often used as both an aesthetic and a thematic dimension in juxtaposition with consumer rites and religious ceremonies.
TestBed 1 is produced as part of Beaconsfield’s curatorial mentoring scheme for emerging artist-curators. Mentees: Dafna Talmor and Joseph Walsh. Beaconsfield is the central London site dedicated to providing a critical space for creative enquiry.
Beaconsfield Commissions 2010
Image: Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Still from Co-Operative Explanatory Capabilities in Organizational Design and Personnel Management, 2010, TestBed 1 Commission
Image courtesy of Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/