Sean Cubitt and the body as a commodity

Women throughout the ages. working hard or hardly working.

17th century- hardly working- sitting around looking good because that was all that was legally required or allowed.

18th century, slimmer, still pretty bored and dissatisfied but at least working somewhere for something.

post industrial revolution, the human body working as a well oiled machine.

The post-modern working woman whose life is seemingly better, less physical output, more rewards, contentment? questionable.

In the Ancient world aristocrats did as little physical work as possible. that was for servants. appealing yet horribly politically incorrect. Work was ignoble. With time the definition of work has evolved and means more than physical exhertion. Now people can't get enough of it. as soon as our labour became our only way of making any money people HAVE to work all the time.

What has been lost in history is work being a way of keeping fit, for the most of us. Labouring is less popular and office jobs are booming, causing us all to use our minds more, our bodies less, and carry tyres around the middle while doing so.

There is no set amount of work to do that is governed by the seasons. The weekend will cease to exist. There is no down time. There is no break. We are capable and pushed to work longer and harder than ever before but not in a physical sense most of the time.

During the 16th and 17th the British, Dutch and French colonised the shit out of the rest of the world. They did something far worse than Hitler ever did, killing more and over a longer period. They took away land rights, took away religion and made labour the only commodity. The human body was turned into a commodity which you sell by the hour. Industries were sexualised; women were cheaper, efficient, often died by 42, sacked by 36 when their eyesight gave way and before that subject to compulsory prostiutionary.
This is nothing different to what we see today in off shored  multinational trade houses built in obscure east asian countries within free trade zones (and therefore outside of local juristiction).
Women work at 16, are fired as soon as they're pregnant, are forced to undergo pregnancy tests routinely, have 28 day long contracts with their employer, contraceptive pills are handed out at work; it is literally either choose between motherhood or money for your own survival. Nothing seems to have changed at all across centuries. (taken from  Klein, Naomi. "The disgarded factory: Degraded Production in the Age of the Superbrand" No Logo. New York: Picador, 2000. 195-230)


When wages rely on low education level and repititive easy tasks, education is witheld, labour becomes dirt cheap and inequality increases.
Here are some interesting view points of the modern day body, how it works and how it is treated.

Spencer, O.- Bodies run by a clock and not by the sun. They live and work in houses and and offices with no natural light, they are becomming machines that don't fluctuate between productivity and idleness along with the seasons.

Helmholz- the master of thermodynamics. Humans are essentially a form of machine that you put fuel into and extract heat energy from. Energy is transferred and never lost.

Marx- Machinery is the invention of a vampire that will continue to haunt Europe, commanding humans to obey it and adhere to its rules; alienating the worker from their production and taking  all the credit.

INFORMATION ECONOMY
we are now living in the information economy where information can be sent and received faster than human speed. 
Historical bodies still exist, there are still labourers, aristocrats etc and they all co-exist at the same time.
In the future we can all expect to be relied upon to process and make sense of a multitude of information at a super human rate, much like a computer; we can only dream.
We are disembodied aristocrats that find it a lot easier to kill eachother by being far removed from situations





Buzz Berkely Clip- humans as art at work.