UNDER CONSTRUCTION
The Future of Labour

Exhibition by MA Global Media Management Students WSA

Labour, writes Karl Marx in the Grundrisse (1939), is a capacity and a possibility. It is the collective political subjectivity exploited by and resistant to the power of capital. What would a future shaped by these potentialities of labour look like?

Under Construction: The Future of Labour embodies the multiplicity and open possibilities in thinking about the future and how we imagine life and work in this temporal context. The future of capital is built on the exploitation of vitality, creativity and connection. Capital subsumes the complexity of our lives and environments into datapoints and reduces the future to models where recursivity erases both the potentiality of difference and the imaginative capacity of doubt. Labour inhabits temporalities of becoming, of a present that is constantly being made and a future crafted and chiselled together. It keeps the horizon of possibility wide open – both as a promise and as a warning that every time a definition and a boundary close, they draw a line of violence and exclusion.

The media practice projects of the MA Global Media Management (WSA) students approach these questions by engaging with different aspects of how media technologies act today. The students from Media Arts, Emerging Technologies and Artificial Intelligence invite us to reflect on how AI, live streaming and data collection are reshaping how we relate to power, work and the possibilities of connection, through interactive installations. Digital Journalism and Social Media showcases projects that explore the relationship between digital storytelling techniques and social media platforms, showcasing developments in the UK Chinese art industry, wildlife conservation, student lifestyle and the sports industry. In Games and Media, students use the worldbuilding capacity of games, magical realism and science fiction to interrogate what it means to be alive and human. Students in Media and Ecology approach the urban fabric as a medium where human and more-than-human experiences intersect. In their short film projects, students from Screen Practices take us on a journey that warps time and space and asks how we relate to each other and to the products of our creativity.

EVENT DETAILS

Friday 30th - Thursday 5th June
GALLERY OPEN:
Friday 30th May 10am-4pm
Saturday 31st May 10am-4pm
Sunday 1st June 10am-4pm
Monday 2nd June 12-6pm
Tuesday 3rd June 10am-4pm
Wednesday 4th June 12-6pm
Thursday 5th June 10am-4pm.

FREE ENTRY

Poppy’s Garden Adventure: Part 1
(An Everyday Tale of Good Versus Evil)

An exhibition of screen prints by Mr. Mark B.

Poppy is no ordinary poppy. This is her story, a tale that begins not in the soil of Earth but aboard the Hymenoptera, a sprawling hive-like space station where bees craft the seeds of life. The workers create, the pollinator’s journey between worlds, and the warriors stand guard. Together, they protect life’s delicate balance.

But danger looms from the start. Watching, waiting, is the Evil Eye - a shadowy spaceship harbouring the malevolent forces of the dark side.

When Poppy and her seven seed siblings are packaged and delivered to Earth, they’re entrusted to the care of worm midwives (Poppy’s midwife is Wendy) who ensure they’re planted deep in the soil of 13 Malum Place, Woking. Nourished by moon water from the Sea of Tranquillity, Poppy begins to grow, reaching for the light. The garden flourishes, vibrant and full of promise.

Yet evil stirs. From the underworld emerges a terrifying threat: the Spina warriors and their Secasaurus machines, sworn to destroy all life and colour in the garden. The seeds are under siege. One by one, they fall. Poppy is the last survivor, surrounded by ruin.

But just when all hope seems lost, Big T - a fearless space ranger with a spacecraft shaped like a dog bowl—lands in the garden, offering Poppy a chance at survival. The battle for the garden is far from over. This is only the beginning of Poppy’s adventure.

EVENT DETAILS

Saturday 10th - Friday 16th May
Gallery open 10am-4pm (Wednesday 12-4pm)

FREE ENTRY