Jeremy Deller - All That Is Solid Melts Into Air

  

 Deller’s show demonstrates the rise and fall of Britain’s manufacturing industries. We are shown images of early ironworks – he focuses on the iron and steel industry, with few mentions of the textile mills – and film footage of a ‘modern’ (1945) steelworks. A juke box plays a selection of industrial noises, interspersed with traditional songs like ‘The miner’s lock – out’. Then the images show post – industrial Manchester, the silent  mills and desolate docks. The emphasis is on the changes to the career paths of the working people, from agricultural and domestic workers, to factory hands, to entertainers.

   Adrian Street ran away from the mines, the derisive laughter of the miners ringing in his ears, to become a professional wrestler. Like Noddy Holder and Bryan Ferry, he used the entertainment industry to escape a life of toil. But, until the eighties, the life of toil was seen as normal, inevitable. Not now. With the industry all but gone, now their careers look more like the norm than the jobs of their fathers.

The Judas Priest album is significant. Heavy metal was born in the Black Country, invented, most say, by Black Sabbath. Toni Iommi, Sabbath’s guitarist, lost the tips of two fingers while working in a sheet metal factory, while the drummer, Bill Ward, lay at night beating out imaginary drum solos to the rhythm of the drop forges as they thumped away, all night long. The forges are long gone, but the music endures.

Good album too. I bought it when it came out in 1979.

  Deller points out that the clock was the workers’ enemy. Employers would alter them to steal time from the workers, and brutally fine them for any deviance from the factory hours. And two pieces showed how this control has developed. The first was an ancient clocking – on machine, and the second was the Motorola Slave Bracelet.

   Clocking – on only monitored your arrival and departure time. You could be skiving in between, or someone else could clock you in or out. I've used one, and with a bit of collusion they're easy to circumvent.

The slave bracelet - this example is used in Amazon's absurdly - named 'fulfilment centre' -  is much more controlling. It logs every movement, every trip to the toilet. The bosses monitor your every move, even, I believe, issuing orders and threats via the machine. Your time really does belong to your employer.