Nightcleaners (Part 1). (UK / Reino Unido) Berwick Street Collective , 1972 A documentary made by members of the Berwick Street Collective (Marc Karlin, Mary Kelly, James Scott and Humphrey Trevelyan), about the campaign to unionize the women who cleaned office blocks at night and who were being victimized and underpaid. Intending at the outset to make a campaign film, the Collective was forced to turn to new forms in order to represent the forces at work between the cleaners, the Cleaner's Action Group and the unions - and the complex nature of the campaign itself. The result was an intensely self-reflexive film, which implicated both the filmmakers and the audience in the processes of precarious, invisible labour. It is increasingly recognised as a key work of the 1970s and as an important precursor, in both subject matter and form, to current political art practice.
THE HACKNEY FLASHERS. (UK / Reino Unido) 1974- 80s The Hackney Flashers were a socialist, feminist, documentary photography collective, working on issues of wages, class and childcare based in London during the 1980’s. As with some other well-documented artists groups, writers and activists working in the UK throughout the 60’s and 70’s, for example The Artist’s Union, The Artist’s Placement group and Four Corners, their production sought a “Social Functionalism.” The Hackney Flashers chose photography as the means of production with which to represent and document their community and to control the representation of work and behaviour, in a process based practice that was repeated with different groups of women throughout the life of the group. Documentation provided material for participants to reflect on their situation, life and identity and that process might support the other actions they were engaged in, or their potential acting power whether it was social, sexual, psychological, economic or thought. These documents might have intentions that were sometimes lived more self-consciously or discussed publicly. The process whilst acknowledging varying individual capacities and narratives emphasised participants as social beings.
Ganarse la vida: El ente transparente (“Earning a living: the transparent entity”) Colectivo C.AS.I.T.A., Madrid. , The earliest iteration of the project, conceived as a prototype for production, exhibition and distribution, took place between April and June 2007 at Intermediae (Matadero Centre, Madrid). The project is a long-term scheme including dialogic encounters, installations, and graphic as well as audiovisual materials produced by the C.AS.I.T.A. Collective. The aim is to stimulate discussion on alternative modes and conditions of production, and on time and space in the new divisions of labour and the production of subjectivity.
