WORD PROCESSOR: HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE COLLECTION
January 16, 2019
Women at Work: A Photographic Documentary
Nike Desis
Table of Contents and Bibliography
1. Introduction
2. And We Are Used To Living, How?
From Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster by Svetlana Alexievich (first published in Russian 1997, translated to English in 2006).
From both the essay 'Wages Against Housework' by Silvia Federici (first published in 1975) and the intro of The Problem With Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwar Imaginaries by Kathi Weeks (2011).
4. A Nominal Raise is a Pay Cut
Author's response & Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street by by Herman Melville (2011).
Dixon, Marlene. From "On Women's Liberation," Radical America (Vol. IV, Issue #2, February 1970).
6. Corner Stone
I found this quote as an epigraph in Land of Crystal by Mai-Thu Perret (2008). It is from Franz Kafka's The Zurau Aphorisms (1931).
Author's response
8. A Note on Being a Woman Maintenance Artist, ca. 1970
From Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art, by Patricia C. Phillips (2016).
Women at Work by Betty Medsger (1974).
10. Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!
From Mierle Laderman Ukeles: Maintenance Art by Patricia C. Phillips (2016).
11. We're Looking for a Few Good Men
Women at Work by Betty Medsger (1974).
12. Money & Labor
From Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak (first published in German in 2004, translated to English in 2014).
13. Crystal Frontier
From Land of Crystal by Mai-Thu Perret (2008).
14. Silence
From the essay "Negative feminism, anti-social queer theory and the politics of hope" by Jackie Wang via loneberry.tumblr.com (2010).
15. Femme
Women at Work by Betty Medsger (1974).
From Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking by Karen Brodine (1990).
17. Service
From Service, A Trilogy on Colonization by Martha Rosler (1978).
18. Service
From Service, A Trilogy on Colonization by Martha Rosler (1978).
Author's response
20. Joy
From the essay "Feminist Killjoys (And Other Willful Subjects)" by Sarah Ahmed via The Scholar and Feminist Online (2010).
21. Love Transcends
Women at Work by Betty Medsger (1974).
22. Abolish Work
From the comic WORK COMMUNITY POLITICS WAR (2005), via the pamphlet Abolish Work (2014) produced by prole.info.
23. A Radical Economy of Babies
Author's response
24. Tools
From The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. (first published in French in 1958, translated to English 1964).
25. The Usual
Women at Work by Betty Medsger (1974).
26. Unshared
From Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power by Audre Lorde. First appeared as speech and pamphlet (1978), then included in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (1984).
27. Literal Proof
Women at Work by Betty Medsger (1974).
Author's response
29. Utopian Demands
From The Problem With Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwar Imaginaries by Kathi Weeks (2011).
30. Woman is a Word
Lyrics by Empress of from the song "Woman is a Word" (2016).
Nike Desis is an artist and writer. She is the author and illustrator of the book Color Me Fierce. Originally printed on newsprint and simply called Activity Book, about a dozen copies were made. Now, over 4,300 copies have been sold. Newsprint is a great metaphor for her artwork, generally. Inspired by the xerox work of Pati Hill, she just finished a zine depicting copy-bed iterations of her transparent items of clothing.
Her dedication to alternative organizations is also a large part of her practice. Such labor is motivated by sharing resources, respect for group process, encouraging explorations, and maintaining spaces concerned with accessibility. She is a co-founder of FLUXspace (Philadelphia, PA), was a working member of the New Orleans Community Printshop (New Orleans, LA), and currently an active working member at Spark Makerspace (New London, CT). Among other cares at Spark, she co-produces Community Print Nite and hosts Reading Radicality, a reading and discussion group.
View Women at Work: A Photographic Documentary in the catalog here.