May 12, 2007

Wig Magazine publication party: Kit Robinson, Tim Shaner, Kristen Gallagher, & Chris Alexander

Saturday, May 12
7:30 pm

New American Art Union
922 SE Ankeny

Free admission


Editors Tim Shaner and Kristen Gallagher, and contributors Kit Robinson and Chris Alexander, fly in to Portland from both coasts (and Eugene) to read and to celebrate the publication of the premiere issue of Wig magazine, copies of which will be available for purchase.


From the editors:

Wig is a low-budget magazine devoted to writing and art composed on the job. Not necessarily "about" work, the wig-artist employs labor for poetic ends that implicitly critique — through the action of poaching company time &/or materials — the productivist logic of what Hannah Arendt calls the "laboring society." The title of the magazine alludes to Michel de Certau's discussion of "la perruque" in The Practice of Everyday Life (1974):

La perruque is the worker's own work disguised as work for his employers. It differs from pilfering in that nothing of material value is stolen. It differs from absenteeism in that the worker is officially on the job. La perruque may be as simple a matter as a secretary's writing a love letter on 'company time' or as complex as a cabinet maker's 'borrowing' a lathe to make a piece of furniture for his living room. Under different names in different countries this phenomenon is becoming more and more general, even if managers penalize it or 'turn a blind eye' on it in order not to know about it. Accused of stealing or turning material to his own ends and using the machines for his own profit, the worker who indulges in la perruque actually diverts time (not goods, since he uses only scraps) from the factory for work that is free, creative, and precisely not directed toward profit.