Play-Factory: Tactical Manoeuvres Between

“The conditions are not favourable, doing the same thing over and over again, that weighs on you, body, mind, the soul is, sometimes you think, why am I doing this? You think about whether you have the stamina and will to do this type of job.” - The American Factory (2019)

This work seeks to theorise leisure as a form of resistance against extractive labour practices. It argues that there are leisure practices embedded in people’s everyday work lives that form ephemeral wormholes of escape. ‘Workers do not only have a life in the workplace, they have a social life, family life, political life; they have experiences outside the domain of labour.’ (Butler, 2012:25). This work argues that this system of leisure, in the social life that Lefebvre identifies, forms an unconscious form of resistance against the invisible perpetual loops of enslavement in which the upper-middle and lower classes are trapped in.

The factory typology is critically investigated and radically reinterpreted to explore subversive insertions of leisure within hyper-productive states – through a form of passive resistance. It will explore the architectural capacity, tactics and languages that are necessary to materialise these power relationships. This will be explored through a series of cut-out drawings and analytical collage techniques, mappings, catalogues, and theatre to draw out these languages.