Capitalism: Child Labor

2006, 14 min, color, sound

WARNING: This work contains throbbing light. Should not be viewed by individuals with epilepsy or seizure disorders.

In Capitalism: Child Labor Jacobs digitally animates a Victorian stereoscopic photograph of a 19th-century factory floor, crowded with machinery and child workers. Jacobs isolates the faces of individuals and details of the image, as if searching out the human and the particular within this mechanized field of mass production. Space appears to fold in on itself as Jacobs activates the stereograph; the agitated image flickers and stutters, but the motion never, in fact, progresses.

Writes Jacobs: "A stereograph celebrating factory production of thread. Many bobbins of thread coil in a great sky-lit factory space, the many machines manned by a handful of people. Manned? Some are children. I activate the double-photograph, composer Rick Reed suggests the machine din. Your heart bleeding for the kids? The children will surely be rescued and by their bosses! 'Boys,' they will say, 'Have we got a war for you.'"

Music: Rick Reed. Assisted by Erik Nelson.

 
 

WARNING: This work contains throbbing light. Should not be viewed by individuals with epilepsy or seizure disorders.