Emotions Go to Work
Zoe Beloff
Artist book investigating how technology is used to transform feelings into capital
Emotions Go to Work is an investigation into how technology is used to turn our feelings into valuable assets. One might call it the transformation of emotion into capital. It asks what is at stake in our relationship with the companions we call smart objects? What does the future hold in store for a world where people are treated more and more like things, while the billions of gadgets that make up the Internet of Things are increasingly anthropomorphized, granted agency?
Spanning an arc of time from the 18th century to 21st century and beyond, Emotions Go To Work traces the codification and instrumentalization emotional data in ways both playful and serious. It considers the role emojis play our mental life and their potential to evolve and grow monstrous. It suggests that anthropomorphized technological creatures from early cartoons might inspire a utopian society. Proposing that the first step to re-wiring our world is to picture possibilities in games and in play, in dreams and in far-fetched fictions, so that we can begin new conversations between people and things.
Bio: Zoe Beloff is an artist and filmmaker. Her work aims to connect the present to past so that it might illuminate the future in new ways. Themes include proposals for new forms of community; The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and its Circle 1926 – 1972 or The Days of the Commune staged as series of street performances to new ways about thinking about labor in The Infernal Dream of Mutt and Jeff and Emotions Go To Work. Zoe presents her work internationally in museums, alternative spaces and film festivals. She is a Professor in Media and Art at Queens College CUNY.
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Ordering Information
This title is currently out of print. Some copies may still be available through our distributors.
You can download it here: Emotions Go To Work
64 pages, hand printed 5 color Risograph artist book with two pullout pages in limited edition of 200 copies
165 x 235 mm trim size
UK: £20 /US:$ 25
ISBN 978-1-57027-230-1
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