Tale II: Lightbox

Performance between Supervisors

Supervisors have long been used to oversee the work of workers in order to improve their efficiency. Whether it was the early plantations in North America or the practices of factory owners during the Industrial Revolution, supervisors have long been part of the production process. In recent times, a new form of the supervisory model has emerged in certain places. People have placed orders for products and watched their products being made out by workers on live streaming platforms (and these people are often also additional wage earners who create other values in their day-today lives). This act of bringing the cloud of supervised labour is no longer just a spectacle of consumption. The model of combining consumption with supervision creates an organ of manufacturing: watching the production of workers' labour as if it were some kind of performance. What matters is not whether that mass of cloth, cotton and rubber, labelled as a cultural product is cute or not, and whether it is worth it, but that everyone is being alienated. What has consumer society turned us into?

keyword: capitalist alienation/supervisors