Other Side of History
Action, 68 custom aprons.
Columbia University (2018)
Aprons in the collection of the Columbia University Library.
Action staged at the Columbia University Graduate Student Protests exactly 50 years after May 1968. Campbell Carolan produced a line of custom aprons for the demonstrators. The aprons served as protest signs and, as a wearable good, represented the indivisible relationship between production and reproduction across the student body.
The protests were sponsored by the United Auto Workers Union and made the demand that student work be recognized as formal labor. Within this conflict, we recognized a relationship to the political histories surrounding Wages for Housework.
The formal decisions for this project were based on a few things:
Action, 68 custom aprons.
Columbia University (2018)
Aprons in the collection of the Columbia University Library.
Action staged at the Columbia University Graduate Student Protests exactly 50 years after May 1968. Campbell Carolan produced a line of custom aprons for the demonstrators. The aprons served as protest signs and, as a wearable good, represented the indivisible relationship between production and reproduction across the student body.
The protests were sponsored by the United Auto Workers Union and made the demand that student work be recognized as formal labor. Within this conflict, we recognized a relationship to the political histories surrounding Wages for Housework.
The formal decisions for this project were based on a few things:
- that the form of the struggle for workers rights in any domain reflects the suppression and realization of the transformation of labor itself (aprons were donated by Rebecca’s Bar, thanks Rebecca!)
- our speculations on who subject of negotiations in the ivy league labor struggle actually is and the daddy issues behind it all
- the aestheticization of the picket line on the part of the union (ours was necessarily a punk approach)
- the cultural environment of the ivy league & its impact on the body and on life decisions
- the legacy of student protest (years on the aprons represent turning points in the alliance between the working class and student movements, from 1956 in Budapest to 2018)