Kevin Dooley

Art Workers Inquiry

Kevin DOOLEY’s work analyzed the origin and viability of the “social factory” hypothesis, which Tiziana Terranova defined as the shift from a society where production takes place predominantly in the closed site of the factory to one in which the whole of society is turned into a factory, a productive site. In this context, he proposed a theoretical and artistic basis for better comprehending the issues and conflicts surrounding the feminist-Marxist Lotta Femminista (Feminist Struggle) and Wages For Housework movements that emerged during the 1970s, (mostly) in Italy, the UK and in the US. The goal was to apply that theory to the concept of a new kind of trade union, one that exists not within the walls of the factory or institution but more diffusely, in the waged and unwaged work relations of “students”.

Continuing his investigation at Büchsenhausen, Dooley’s study Art Workers Inquiry, Part II: Spectres aimed at analyzing the figure of the “emerging artist” and “emerging economy” as forms of invisible or spectral labor. Where does the artist/economy emerge from? What does it mean to be in a perma-nent state of emergence, without ever reaching the level of “maturity”? And in which ways are the figures of the student or artist tied to those of the working class, more specifically to figures of the “emerging” and disappearing worker and economies?

Kevin Dooley was the 2012 recipient of the City of Innsbruck Fellowship for Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen.

Kevin DOOLEY (*1983 in Hastings/UK) lives and tries to work in Vienna. His work history includes six years in a supermarket, butchery, teaching, city tours and translating. He has an ever-increasing student debt of £12,500 (as of July 2013). Dooley spends a lot of time in the unemployment office. His work on the project Art Workers Inquiry, Part II: Spectres, part of his first-ever artist-in-residence program, felt like a holiday from unemployment with reduced wages. After visiting a political therapist and a relationship counselor, Dooley decided to be more polygamous and to focus on unionizing as a form of therapeutic empowerment.