Sharayu Wadekar

HR4003

Project Tango, analysing the bodied labour

A labour body embodies order to produce work through various means of discipline (work type, technology and material, hierarchy, skills, age, and gender). This embodiment also produces an identity that is dominantly performative and represented in society, benefitting the production of capital and a system of values. 
The project Tango aims to inquire into the sites of production (work and the body) and embodiment of the experiencing self (slits). This embodiment is suggestive of the desires and pleasure that reproduce identities that align and transgress the boundaries of the discipline. The key themes that emerged are discipline, desires, pleasure, identity, and performance. 
The outcome is explored in the form of a research film Tango and a website of the bodied labour (scroll the screen for material view). 

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Report Content

Cover image; distorted image of the labour body

Prologue and introduction to the inquiry; How do we look at labour? What do we look at?

Secondary readings and responses inform the various ways of analysing a body

Annotating archival visuals and identifying the pattern of reading labour bodies

Ethnographic fieldwork (observations, visual documentation, oral histories)

Annotating and analysing site visuals based on the identified themes and readings and identifying the continuities and discontinuities

Analysis of frames from the research film, 'Tango' based on the key themes that emerged from the fieldwork

An introduction and analysis of the website 'of bodied labour,' (second outcome). Design of the website; homepage

Design of the website; glossary, archives, bibliography, other films, and about

Epilogue and conclusion; the gaze that looks at labour and a gaze that looks back at us

Project Video