All Surface Expectations Disappear with Depth
HD Multi-channel video
Dual Projection on perpendicular sheet zinc, with HD monitor mounted in Gypsum Plasterboard.
Combined Duration: 10 mins approx.
The multi-channel video installation All Surface Expectations Disappear with Depth, documents the activity within the realms of production at the present-day site of an Irish mine. The metaphor of the mine itself has long been a reference point for the championing of labour. Using a section of text by American sociologist Alvin Ward Gouldner, the video unfolds as more than simply a study of a labour environment, and much more about the relationships between the people embedded in these spheres. The sociological text in question is extracted from a field report by Gouldner, based on his first hand observations of an American Gypsum plant in the early 1950s.Entitled Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy: A case study of modern factory administration, this text explores a wider sociological subject than its title suggests.
“There are, of course, many standpoints in terms of which the raw data of factory life can be ordered and made meaningful; a theory of bureaucracy is only one of them.” (A.W. Gouldner 1954)[1]
[1] Alvin W.Gouldner, Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy: A case study of modern factory administration, The Free Press, USA, 1954