‘GAG ECONOMY’
Panel discussion on the current exhibition by Dank Lloyd Wright with:

• Dank Lloyd Wright
  (https://www.instagram.com/dank.lloyd.wright)

• Jan Kristek
  (Ass. Prof. at the Faculty of Architecture Brno)

• Dynamicky Blok
  (https://www.instagram.com/dynamickyblok)

• Eliška Pomyjová
  (Co-curator of the Czech Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2023)

• Fachschaft Architektur
  (Student Representatives at the Faculty of Architecture and Planning TU Wien)

Sunday 09.07.2023, 18:00
MAGAZIN – Ausstellungsraum für zeitgenössische Architektur
Rembrandtstrasse 14/1A, 1020 Wien

Over the duration of 6 weeks, MAGAZIN in Vienna is transformed into a concept “dollar” store of random merchandise that is as disposable as flashing memes on a screen. Gag Economy recognizes the struggles of the euro in daunting times, as superfluous items engage with forms of deep Kulturkritik. The exhibition is a pendulum that swings between humorous memes and political propaganda, creating a space for both laughter as a form of criticism and consumption (of images, products, and content) as a reflection of our relationship to social media in a short-attention economy.
Gag Economy is a play on the term “gig economy,” which describes a form of precarious labor that exempts the employer from providing workers with basic rights like access to healthcare, holidays, or even the tools and infrastructures to perform a task or provide a service. In this change of labor relations, the security of a regular salary is replaced with the continuous demand of risk and labor from the worker. Manifested in how multinational, tax-avoiding corporations like Uber and Doordash operate, this practice of capitalist extraction has been appropriated by architects to describe in deceivingly fashionable ways exploitative and cruel forms of labor. Firm owners, already pushing architectural workers to work unpaid overtime, now force this precarity to gain more capital from workers and further widen the income gap.

The event is part of an international symposium You Must Relax!, which is held in cooperation with three organizations, which focus on current issues of the contemporary city and our existence in it – VI PER, Prague (https://www.vipergallery.org/) – 4AM/Fórum pro architekturu a média, Brno (https://forum4am.cz) – MAGAZIN, Wien (https://architektur-im-magazin.at).
Three days, three cities and one topic experienced and discussed from three different points of view. Work, recreation, regeneration, relaxation – a complex system with a complex history intertwined with consumption, extraction and more. In the garden, in the gallery, on the train, by the water, in the city – the event is conceived as a journey through three cities – beginning in Prague (7 July 2023), continuing in Brno (8 July 2023) and ending in Vienna (9 July 2023). You can look forward to lectures, performance, discussions, listening session, fire, exhibition visits, collective sleepover and much more.