Flexdisk: DVD

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DVD “Precarity”

*”MayDay! MayDay! We are the precariat. We are hireable on demand, available on call, exploitable at will and fireable at whim. We have become skilful jugglers of jobs and contortionists of flexibility. But beware, we are agitating with a common strategy to share our flexfights.”

The multilingual DVD “Precarity” is part of an ongoing experiment of collective self-defense. It is a compilation of 17 videos documenting on
the rebellion of precarious flexworkers and gives crosscontinental coverage of conflicts that have been kept invisible for too long: the occupation of the premises by McStrikers in Paris, the struggle for a union of fired Korean Telecom temporary workers, the impossible efforts of Bulgarian and Turkish textile workers to make ‘clean clothes’ for the Olympic dream.

From the occupation of abandoned factories in Argentina, to the interruption of the French prime time news and the devotion to Saint Precarious at the MayDay Parade in Milan, the DVD is advertising a new brand of labour activism, geared to young/female/foreign-born Précaires
that have no prior political experience other than the toil of their bodies and minds in the giant outlets of the chain stores, malls, transportation hubs and call centres of the Brave New Postmodern World.

At the dark side of today’s postindustrialist economy, millions of casualized young temps are stuck in ‘non-standard’ jobs, unable to make plans for the future, blackmailable because of the lack of union rights and excluded from basic social rights such as maternity, sick leave or the luxury of paid holidays. While still peripheral in the public mind, flexworkers are increasingly organising and becoming aware that their condition is far from accidental and temporary. Emerging conflicts of rebelling Précaires are bringing a disruptive, socio-political identity into being. A new form of social elf-representation is agitating across the continents and flexworkers, chainworkers, brainworkers, sexworkers and foreign-born workers start to share their flexfights with a common strategy.

Précaires aren’t peripheral. They are core producers of neoliberal wealth and creators of knowledge, style and culture enclosed and appropriated by monopoly power. The precarious producers of the DVD (videomakers, media-activists, translators, technicians and
fightsharers) did all understand the persuasive power of pop culture and are moving the labour conflict from the level of negotiation into reticular and direct-action based labour organization built around communicative practices.

The DVD “Precarity” is an instrument for the radical organization of the consumerized younger generation left out of the political and social design. It is a toolbox to investigate on new modes of collective action: picketing of chainstores open on Sundays (Milan), reality
hacking of the hot spots of consumerism (Chainworkers – Milan, YoMangoTango – Barcelona, Adbusters – Japan), culture jamming (Saint Precarious – Milan), docu-fictions (Precarity Academy – Milan, Trash Contract – Barcelona), subvertising media stunts (Intermittents – France, Michael Moore – USA) and inquiries of social self representation (Precarias A la Deriva – Madrid, Precarious in rebellion – Barcelona).

The DVD “Precarity” contains 197 minutes of high resolution digital cinema and is the third episode of the DVD-zine “P2Pfightsharing”.
“Precarity” is an experiment in autonomous production and self-employment. It was born through the sharing of resources, material and skills throughout the networks of independent videomakers, media-activists, translators, authoring technicians and fightsharers.
For “Precarity” all videos were translated into English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Dutch and the subtitles can be reached through a language option on the DVD menu.

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(Dit artikel was oorspronkelijk op GlobalInfo gepubliceerd door onbekend.)