Easy Riders is a major new performance work by artist Eugenia Lim and APHIDS, in collaboration with members of your friendly local network of gig workers. Easy Riders will premiere in late 2020, but you can get a sneak peek at the creative process this December when the Easy Riders team is in-residence at MPavilion, hosting a series of public events designed to get you thinking and moving on the subject of work in the digital age.
Combining dance, synchronised bike-riding and performance, Easy Riders is a collaborative choreography that explores the nature of work and human connection in the digital age. Developed and co-created with workers of the gig economy (independent artists and ‘independent contractors’ for companies such as Uber, Deliveroo and Airtasker), Easy Riders asks: how much of our daily lives should be lived by others? What are the moral and social implications of outsourcing? And who do we become once we’re fully outsourced and at our most ‘efficient’ – Übermenschen or über-assholes? Easy Riders is inspired by the pioneering work of artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles and her ‘work ballets’. But, unlike Ukeles’ unionised workers, Easy Riders seeks to understand what dignity and collective action looks like for individuals without a social safety net, within our present (and future) tense of atomised existence.
All events for Easy Riders: The Prologue are supported by Australia Council for the Arts, City of Melbourne, Creative Victoria, RACV and APHIDS.
EASY RIDERS: THE PROLOGUE PROGRAM
MMEETS—Easy Riders Creative Development, Monday 2 – Friday 6 December, 10am–4pm
Eugenia Lim and the Easy Riders team will be onsite reading, talking and dancing through their ideas about the relationships between art, the gig economy and our bodies. Curious? You can get involved in two free movement workshops facilitated by choreographer Natalie Cursio on Wednesday 4 and Friday 6 December, 12–1pm. Free, bookings required.
MMUSIC—Easy Riders Gig Night, Friday 6 December, 6–9pm
In the gig economy, strangers enter into the intimate space of each other’s homes, cars, kitchens (and beyond) in an uneven relationship of digital-initiated supply and demand. In Ubers, drivers select different music types to set subtle (or obvious) social cues: to encourage talking, a party atmosphere, or silence. Join musician Sui Zhen and Easy Riders gig worker collaborators as they set the mood with an eclectic mix of music inspired by our digital age.
MTALKS—On Work and Mobility, Tuesday 10 December, 6.15–7.30pm
Join artist Eugenia Lim and leading thinkers and advocates from across the fields of labour and industrial relations, gig workers’ rights and the arts in a panel that explores working in the digital age, and the impact of the gig economy on our relationships, rights, creativity and bodies. Speakers include Sarah Kaine, Associate Professor, School of Business, UTS; artist and performance maker Roshelle Fong; student, gig worker and advocate Abdul Wasay and former Foodora worker Josh Klooger.
