Exhibitions / 09
What makes a journey possible
Bags, wheels, work and the terms of access.
Before the handle is lifted
Noken returns the portable object to fibre preparation and making. The rickshaw returns an image to a vehicle and its workers. Start with the work that allows a journey and its practical costs. These type records do not supply the personal histories still missing from the archive.
The workplace crosses the doorway
SEWA places organisation outside a conventional factory. Home, street and market can all be workplaces. This makes a bicycle or a bag more than a consumer purchase, while still leaving open the precise uses of any particular specimen. Ask what a catalogue’s division between domestic and industrial makes harder to see.
Access has terms
End at two institutions: a bank lending money and a cooperative shop owned by members. Access to credit and shared ownership are different relations. Read both through obligations, risk and the possibility of contesting a decision. We compare mechanisms without using a prize or an institutional label as proof that every participant benefits equally.
Things in this room
Noken, a knotted carrying bag ↗
The labour inside the net
Painted rickshaws of Dhaka ↗
A moving surface, a working body
Flying Pigeon bicycle ↗
A machine for a slower morning
SEWA and the organisation of informal work ↗
A workplace without a factory gate
Grameen and access to small loans ↗
Credit is a promise with an obligation
The Toad Lane cooperative shop ↗
Buying together, owning together