Labor as Method
I understand the productive force of difference in constituting experimental work and life by developing labor as method. Rather than assume that labor is contained in a particular time or place—an already constituted “research object” ready to be studied, I follow critical labor theorists to examine how it is formed. Allied with commitments to “Asia as method” and “border as method” labor as method keeps alive the indeterminacy of contemporary forms of labor and recognizes labor as a practice that exceeds the workspace to create the conditions for a livable life. Thus, labor is not only a research object but an epistemic approach that allows me to understand the blurring of categorical distinctions and their proliferation (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013:x). We need this new methodological approach as startup capitalism generates value from productive and reproductive labor, from immaterial and embodied labor, and technical and affective labor, thus muddying the distinctions between the formal realm of work and everyday forms of labor.
-- From Experimental Times (2024: 11-12).
Video Essays
These video essays develop the idea of "labor as method" by centering labor and tracking it, moving with workers to work and then to their homes, villages, travels, and pasts. As a mobile approach, labor as method requires us to think beyond linear and consistent forms of storytelling to favor instead narratives that are patched together with workers. In these video essays, footage from cell phone cameras, recordings of Zoom calls, documentary film-making and interview techniques, and collages of photographs and past video come together to offer insights into workers' lives and aspirations. Some are more traditional video essays, such as "Bangalore/Bengaluru" but others were made through collaborations between workers and students at Middlebury College, and with the help of Shreya K., a documentary film-maker.
Bangalore/Bengaluru
The city of Bengaluru has experienced rapid spatial and labor changes since the influx of Information Technology work. How do middle class forms of technology work reshape the city and its spatial forms? Filmed and edited by Shreya K.
Technology in the South
What does it mean to think about technologies in/from the South? This video juxtaposes clips from Bengaluru's high technology workspaces of innovation to consider how they work with, and through, forms of difference including gender, class, and caste. Against the branding of Bengaluru as a city conducive to a startup ecosphere, it offers everyday footage of traffic logjams that are quite literally the "frictions" through which startup capitalism develops here.
A Professional Life
Life in India's entrepreneurial economy offers not only a new form of experimental labor but equally a possible entry into middle class self-making. This video tracks the regional and transnational mobilities that follow when a young woman moves from her village to the city to pursue her dreams of a professional life.
One Life in Bangalore
Made by students in a J-term class at Middlebury College with Ashwini, a professional employed in the entrepreneurial sector in Bengaluru, this video collages different forms and modes of representation (Instagram grabs, Zoom interviews, Ashwini's cell phone footage, and TV footage) to explore social reproduction unfolding outside the heterosexual family. Class is reproduced through the invisibilized labor of her home but also through her material and affective attachments and movements through professional work and leisure.