Loading Animated Version
8‘24‘‘, 2000
by Angie Waller
I imagine that not being paid for endless project revisions is an international affliction. I‘ve discovered that the demand for streaming video an animation on Western web-sites has established new sweatshops of production workers. But because these media goods are shipped via the Internet, this commercial exchange is invisible and subject to abuse.
In Loading Animated Version I documented the email correspondence between the American office and studios from Hungary. To illustrate the contrast of management and labour, screen captures of American Flash animations are juxtaposed with found footage scenes of Eastern Europe typically presented on American television. The tension of the Hungarian e-mails is heightened by placing their text as subtitles to a love ballad entitled The Rose. This satirical dramatization of the exchange across the ether reveals the vast inequality between bottom-line managers and their dispensable labor force. My work demonstrates that dot com's could potentially be no different from infamous manufacturing companies and their unethical disregard of good labor practice.
