One Pound

'One Pound' is a six channel video installation, with each channel depicting one person working. Each video lasts as long as it takes the person depicted to earn one pound.

The films vary in length from well over an hour for low paid agricultural workers; to their slightly higher paid counterparts in industry; via those on middle income wages; down to one minute, and with one film little over a second long.

The films do not offer a narrative, but rather quite detached observations of people at work. It is not intended as a didactic essay on wage inequality. Clearly, it may offer reflection on these staggering inequalities, and this political position is ultimately not left ambiguous. However, the relationship between labour and money is transformed into a more subjective medium – time. Periods of time are not as easily compared with one another as pieces of graphical information, for instance. With video, the timescale is embedded into the medium (unlike photography, or even text). Ultimately the people on the screens are simply taking part in their everyday lives, and we see six bodies on six screens, side by side.

Another way it should offer complexity is by inviting some 'cross' comparisons of inequality – between farm workers and factory workers both in the global south for example, or between well paid managers and astronomically wealthy bankers both in the global north.

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Installation image
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1:17 hours
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35 minutes
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12 minutes
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4 minutes
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1 minute
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1 second