Production of Value

steel, bronze, graphite
4’ x 5’ x 5’
1990

An image of disembodied work, of labour without labourers, sets this piece's condition for reflection on the processes of value creation, configured here in allegorical form. The pour of precious liquid achieves commodified shape as solid ingots, produced in the apparent absence of human agency.

In the hierarchy of economic inequalities, manual physical labour at the base of world resource economies and international heavy industries is generally lower-paid, expendable and often invisible, particularly in its new offshore globalized iteration. But the generation of massive corporate and shareholder profits depends on massive legions of workers at the low end of the income scale.

This work is a representation of the critical transformative moment in an industrial foundry, when molten metal is poured from a suspended crucible into ingot-molds below. The pyramid stack of molds rests on a low galvanized walkway-grating, which forms an open base for the piece. Here the solidified pour of bronze becomes the support for a graphite crucible held in its shank; the bronze cascade from trough to trough diminishes from the upper mold to the lower, in a paradigmatic representation of trickle-down economics.

Originally intended for a bank, this piece brings the physical factory floor from the outskirts to the city centre, while directing attention toward the often-obscure metaphysics of profit-generation within financial markets, multinational industries and service corporations.