A very modern tale

Characters in pyjamas present fictional monologues

Although the artworks they made as a result of their investigations refer only to “The Company”, it doesn’t take a genius to work out they were inspired by online accounts of employee experiences of working for Dell, not least because one of the objects on show is a mug printed with a photograph of two women hugging and crying beneath the computer firm’s iconic logo.

At the heart of the show is a 26-minute HD video installation that is both tragic and subtly absurd. It features six characters in pyjamas, who talk about their experiences with the Company, and it works because it walks a clever and deliberate line between exposé and metaphor, social history and fiction. Kennedy Browne (the collaborative name under which the two artists work) first showed How Capital Moves in Lodz last year. Now, in a neat nod to the kind of interconnectivity on which their art hinges, they have brought it to Limerick.

While How Capital Moves was initially inspired by the closure of the Limerick plant, Kennedy Browne’s research into other job cuts by Dell led them to an incident with more dramatic potential: the sudden layoff of 220 employees at an American call centre in Roseburg, Oregon on Pyjama Day in August 2007. This incident, which employees reportedly dubbed the Roseburg Shuffle and Shaft, left newly redundant workers outside their former workplace in slippers and T-shirts — an event captured in the image on the mug.

This was the key inspiration behind the video installation, which features six characters, all wearing pyjamas, presenting fictional monologues straight to camera. The Polish actor Tomaz Mandes plays all six, both male and female, seamlessly donning each new personality with a change of costume and attitude. Four are current employees, the two others have been let go. They all speak in Polish, with English subtitles on a separate screen.

“Hatchet man is coming soon,” warns InTheKnow. “It’s all f****** corporate inbreeding,” rants BitterEnema. “I’ve been searching for nasty links between the Company and cults,” says CallCentreGuy.

FamilyGuy wears blue chequered pyjamas and a faded yellow Arizona Eagles T-shirt. He has just survived another round of redundancies and is worried and confused. “I can’t make any sense of who is gone and who is left,” he says. A barefoot Bluesky, who was fired 18 months ago, is full of sage advice. “You will be far better off without them,” she says, exhaling a long, calming breath.

On the verge of tears, believed_in_company bemoans her “nine-plus years at the Company down the drain”. She was fired without warning on Pyjama Day, along with 200 others. She’s the one wearing a bunny suit.

The use of the generic term the Company is more than an avoidance strategy on the part of the artists. In some ways, the link to a real-life company is little more than a handy hook to entice the audience in, but it would be naive to think it didn’t add to the show’s impact.

There is another mug on display, printed with a photograph of the empty Roseburg call centre on the day the redundancies took place. It is a reference to a specific real-life event, but the object itself has more universal resonances. The photograph could be of any call centre, anywhere. Its presence in this context is a reminder that cubicle spaces are temporary. They can be dismantled in a day to leave a big empty room, and reassembled in a different country where the wages are lower.

If the cubicles are as impermanent and replaceable as the employees that occupy them, the implication is that rounds of redundancy and relocation are in-built as part of the business model in workplaces that use them.

How Capital Moves feels subversive, but seems determined to prove it is not. There is a piece in the show entitled Disclaimer, a billboard-style presentation of words in white on an “internet blue” background. It says: “This work is based on true stories. All characters appearing in the work are anonymous personae. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.” In other words, this is true, but it is not real.

By using character names that mimic chatroom pseudonyms, the artists point to the potential falsity of the narratives. By presenting the work in Polish (translated from US internet-speak), subtitled in English, they point to ways in which gaps between languages can contribute to misunderstanding. By taking joint responsibility for the work, as Kennedy Browne, they challenge our certainty about who is responsible. Their fictional characters run a gamut of emotions from anger to confusion, bitterness to acceptance. They make reference to real events and rumours and laugh bitterly at the realities behind company maxims such as “Winning with Integrity” and “Dealing with Ambiguity”.

Kennedy Browne make it clear that the work contains both fictional and non-fictional elements and that the monologues are based on personal opinions and speculations, but they also insist “all significant events that are referenced in this work did actually take place”.

The Roseburg mugs depicting staff being made redundant

The show includes two used Ryanair boarding passes, in the names of Gareth Kennedy and Sarah Browne, for the last flight between Shannon and Lodz on March 25, 2010, along with billboard-style photographs of the plane during boarding and departure. These apparently mundane images are loaded with implied narrative: personal stories, emotions, history. And they bring us back to the fact that this work is all about interconnectivity.

The blue background on the Disclaimer billboard is the colour of “the blue screen of death” office workers sometimes refer to when their computer dies unexpectedly. The two mugs are a reminder of Bluesky’s advice not to bring personal possessions to your cubicle because sudden redundancy may mean you won’t be allowed back in to pack them. In the Limerick gallery, they perch on an aero-board plinth supplied by the company that once provided the packing material to Dell’s Limerick operation.

Overall the work has much in common with a piece of theatre. The acting is great, the characters vivid, the narrative compelling. Like a good play, the video installation takes a local, human story and lends it universal significance. Kennedy Browne have even published “a script” to accompany the work. Complete with character descriptions and the text of each monologue in Polish and English, it includes a glossary of key terms and the address of the website they used, which appears to have since been shut down. The fact that the site is no longer accessible adds another layer of intrigue to the work, all of which adds to the effect.

Part of what made the movie Up in the Air compelling viewing is our horrified fascination with tales of big corporate heartlessness; part of it is our inability to turn away from the car-crash drama of the shock, anger and disbelief of those selected for the chop. Some of the footage in that film was shot with real people who had just been made redundant and initially believed they were participating in a documentary about the effects of the recession: real life posing as art.

Here, Kennedy Browne present art as real life with information that is “true” but not “real”, and footage that is honest but deliberately fake. The truth is it could happen to anyone. How Capital Moves makes for brilliant but sobering viewing, because it’s a David and Goliath story, and this time Goliath wins.

How Capital Moves, Istabraq Hall, Merchants Quay, Limerick, until May 6; gallery.limerick.ie