08/28/2026
We wanted to share the exhibition statement for Scut Work by Jordan Vinyard, our newest Exhibition opening September 4th at 6pm!
"Technology dislocates. It pops the pleasant seams and streamlines fixtures of our lives and demands recalibration. As we evolve alongside our machines, we continue to redefine the governance of our bodies, actions, and experiences. This exhibition interrogates the developing boundaries of labor stratification in an era increasingly mediated by intelligent machines. Drawing on the term “scut work”—used to describe the most trivial, tedious, and unrewarding tasks—this exhibition asks, “who will be assigned these tasks in the future? And more critically, what does it mean if machines begin to decide?”
As automation and artificial intelligence rapidly redefine the labor landscape, hierarchies are emerging--ones shaped not by merit or need, but by access to technology and the architectures of power and control. An immersive future-present installation, Scut work asks, “who carries out the “dirty work” and who is the benefactor?”
Through installation, video, kinetic sculpture, and performance, Scut Work stages an absurd choreography of labor, burden, and worth. A fictitious mechanic’s shop—outfitted with autonomous car parts and embedded video—is staged as both workplace and theatre. Machines identify one another from across gaps and move in search of kinship. Performers enact “scuts”—ritualized, mundane gestures of maintenance, order, and futility—transforming how we qualify repetition, while others passively hum the famed tune, “Whistle While you Work.”
As roles transmogrify, these pieces challenge the long-standing conception of human-machine relationships as simply “hand and tool,” “body and support.” With machines now capable of intellectual discernment, these divides become a fractured anthropology.”
