use value

Use Value

Stockings & Sabotage

in collaboration with Shanzhai Lyric and Sheerly Touch-Ya

July 28, 2024, Glendale, Queens

on the occasion of Means of Production, organized by Lunch Hour

Models

Ming Lin

Alex Tatarsky

RH Lossin

Serena Chang

Margaux Valengin

Constanza Valenzuela

Mila T Samdub

Dawa Bhuti

Anh Vo

Madjeen Isaac

Riga Shakya

Tianyi Sun

Photographer

Lane Lang

The experience of embodiment by turns

Frustrating and invigorating.

I felt like a channel, a

Medium, a spirit.

My possession by this flotsam

Of globalized production

expressed through my comportment. A

slow, seeking gait for the moments

following my unboxing. An insistent

metronomic bell-ringing for the

rhythms of the factory floor and

mechanized production.The bell

mediating between the factory and

The temple, a sonic instrument

that’s both commanding and possessing

A frustrated pacing for the

meditation of my estrangement

from the labor that created me.

Marx gives us a way to think the

workers‘ alienation from what

they make but what of the

alienation of the goods themselves?

How to make sense of a

mass-produced pantyhoses alienation from

the hands that made it? Finally,

my own insignificance downs on me –

I am but one pantyhose among thousands, all packed away obediently

Awaiting their fates. Pacing up

And down between towering columns

Of pantyhose boxes – how to

Enact one’s insignificance? Any

Attempt to do so must

Invariably do so via signification. But

How to arrange something – boxes, limbs –

Such that it expresses nothing? The

Paradox of embodiment itself.

And in my final moments as a deadstock pantyhose this

Is the all encompassing question: how

To exit circulation by

Being nothing

— Mila T Samdub