UK artist Sam Worthington, also known as Wasp Elder was recently in the US invited to take part of Beyond Walls project in Lynn, Massachusetts.
As explained by the artist, the mural, entitled ‘Automation and the proletariat’, depicts a reimagined story of Lynn’s industrial revolution in the shoe industry. On the left an inventor, Jan Earnest Matzielger, and on the right the female work force who made up large numbers in the factories and who were pivotal during rallies and strikes.
The invention of automation in factories was a way of controlling workers who often used their skilled labour to control their bosses and gain raises in wages through striking.
If anyone has ever read any Paul Mason he talks about automation being the next industrial revolution and to benefit from it we need a universal basic income as well as a redefinition of ourselves without work.
”A low work society is only a dystopia if the social system is geared to distributing rewards via work” – PaulMason
About the artist
Author: Fran
Founder and editor of Urbanite. Street Art lover who after the finishing her MA thesis on the Mexican and Norwegian muralist movement in the 1920-50s, developed a fascination for street art and graffiti that eventually led to collaborations with different art blogs, including the creation of this one.
