Walking to the Laundromat is a darkly (mis)guided walking meditation for participants doing their collective laundry exploring affective labour and the penetration of the female body by capital

Life can sometimes feel like a long laundry list that you struggle to get through. *Sigh. If this is you, doing the laundry can be a great opportunity to refocus on your core strengths and build resilience into your day.

Walking to the Laundromat is an audio walk that combines mindfulness practice with doing the laundry in an attempt to explain the interconnections between service economy, emotional capital, and affective labour from the perspective of the artist’s exceptional labouring body.

This event was first performed on May Day 2016 at Washingdone Laundromat, Enmore.

Walking to the Laundromat was commissioned by the Walking Lab, a research-creation project of the University of Toronto; Performing Lines: Innovations in walking and sensory research methodologies, an International research project with a goal to create a collaborative network and partnership between artists, arts organizations, activists, scholars and educators interested in walking, movement, and sensory knowledge.

Concept and narrative by Rebecca Conroy

Sound design by Dan McHugh

Image credits:  Clare Britton

http://walkinglab.org/

Marrickville School of Economics is an artist led pedagogy for doing economy differently.

The Marrickville School of Economics is a creative accounting experiment and artist-led curriculum for studying and developing new ways to do economy.
The School is free to attend at Frontyard Project space (Marrickville) and open to all. Its syllabus will evolve in a manner that responds to the practical needs of the community. Plans are in the making for online delivery of the courses.
MSE functions as a stink-tank for the forensic investigation of the systemic inadequacies of the current neoliberal economic model.
Drawing on radical research and experimentation in other parts of the world, and empirical research from our own backyard, it seeks to enrich those with the desire to unfuck the economy, with the knowledge and skills to speak confidently about ideas to implement a new one.

Concept and Direction: Rebecca Conroy
Support curriculum design: Liz Bradshaw and Maddie Collie
Venue support: Frontyard Projects Marrickville

Presentations at Petersham Bowling Club; Folkstone Trienniel, UK.

Collaborators : Rebecca Conroy (Director); Sandy Saxon (Philanthropy) Julieanne Campbell (Strategic Direction) Sarah Chisholm (Business Development)
http://moneylaunderingladiez.tumblr.com/

As the furious pace of neoliberalism continues to transform every space, body and desire into an airbnb equivalent—what are the options for those of us who still believe in ‘free love’? Can radical acts of creation and intervention avoid being recuperated by the death machine? What does it mean to be a freelance artist under finance capitalism? Can we reengineer the economy and speculate on our futures and derivatives in ways that don’t involving fucking the planet?

Using a bunch of ideas drawn from Jean Francois Lyotard’s text “Libidinal Economy”, Rebecca salaciously bent these thoughts into a seductive dinner conversation with six amazing economists, extracting the surplus value of their ideas to enhance her understanding of the artist in the age of enterprise culture.

These dinner dates formed the basis to an audio work commissioned by Radio National’s Radio Tonic Program in 2016.

To hear a radio interview about the project check out: https://soundcloud.com/rebecca-conroy-1/interview-on-fbi-radio
To hear the final audio work go here: https://soundcloud.com/rebecca-conroy-1/dating-an-economist

Presented across various locations from June through September 2015
Supported by Nava; This project recieved funding through the Australia Council.

http://datinganeconomist.tumblr.com/

The History of Dicks on the Landscape is a reading of landscape through the lens of the primordial phallus.

This project was conceived in residency with the fellows of Mildred’s Lane residency during the summer of 2015 (New York, USA)
And manifest as a Performance and Fire Installation. It was accompanied by the following performed text.

The History of Dicks on the Landscape [words by by Rebecca Conroy]

The history of landscape is the blunt end of the axe penetrating our deepest thoughts.

It is the sweeping of the shaft through grasslands,
the silent suffering of the atmosphere
the rampant march of dicks across desert storms
towards an expanding desiring machine.

Frontier sheaths rip through delicate forest canopy,
exposed,
they lie to cover up their excess as it seeps through the landfill,
an excrement that refuses to return to the earth.

Refuses to give up its mantle.

Refuses to scream.

For such a long time there have been these dicks on the landscape.

Our horizon has been bounded by them, our homes have been built within them, and we have paraded them like a monarchy of everything they survey.

They have been there —framing our landscapes, policing our horizons, and cluttering up our skies.

So many dicks.

Protruding like so many long piercing cries in the woods—their gaze fixing us into their shape.

There are cabins of self made men but there are also lighthouses and rooms of one’s own.

Tomorrow we will go to the lighthouse if the weather is fine.

Collaboration with the 2015 Summer residency artists at Mildred’s Lane, NY, USA
http://www.mildredslane.com/about/