An image of The Grandmothers’ Collective Pop-up store exhibit
The Grandmothers’ Collective
A homage to the ragpickers of India, the metal-can collectors of Mexico, Luciano’s grandmother, the workers in the Republic of Congo who harvest the metals that are used in the production of nearly every consumer electronic product and many more that remain unrecognised for their contributions to human “necessity”.
Team: Cristina Tarriba, Luciano Annes Nunes, Adithya Ravi
Mentor: Dr. Laura Forlano
This project uses design fiction to present a critical view of the capitalist perception of a “workforce”, who is considered to be a part of that workforce and the nature of invisible labour.
Invisible labour can be thought of as being any form of unrecognised labour. Recognition is the aspect that makes this term more volatile as the manner of recognition is very broad. It could be a verbal acknowledgment of your wife’s efforts toward caring for your family to actually paying people for the household chores that they engage with. Labour, sociologically, is defined as any physical, mental or emotional effort that is exerted towards the development of an economy that necessitates a wage to the “labourer” so that they may obtain the goods that they do not produce themselves.
The founder of The Grandmothers’ Collective - Grandma Iris
Using Fiction
While the research for this project delved deep into the pathology of an expectation to engage with labour without any form of remuneration or recognition, the presentation of it had to have its roots in a story and an experience into which we could immerse our audience.
Constructing a narrative around a group of grandmothers from a fictional town called Aley, Michigan who decided that they had had enough of performing thankless tasks for their children and grandchildren such as mending clothes and housekeeping helped us
Cushion some of our blatant criticism on the injustices and misconceptions of labour in society
Present an alternate situation that shows a resistance to the ideas that we are critiquing
Present our research and critique in an actionable and experiential manner
A magazine cover recreated to exhibit the proliferation of The Grandmothers’ Collective across the world
The Grandmothers’ Collective Pop-up Store exhibit at the IIT Institute of Design
The Exhibit
The exhibit was created as a continuation of the narrative. It was presented as a pop-up store that was being organised, across the globe, as a commemoration of the inception of The Grandmothers’ Collective; a celebration of 30 years of demanding recognition for their work. It shows the integration of septuagenarian women within the prominent “labour force”. This exhibit and the representation of the collective herein also brings to light a possible question of how far the collective has drifted from its original motive and if, by integrating within the larger labour force, the grandmothers have lost their anarcho-syndicalist model of non-institutional and yet organised labour with social, economic and personal recognition.
Inspired by the work of Silvia Federici (Wages for Housework), The Post-human Catalogue (Parsons & Charlesworth), Ursula Münster (Research on invisible labour in Black American communities and Adivasi communities).