“We can work wherever we want, whenever we want,” claims freelance graphic designer Zahid Iqbal. He’s both free and productive. Yet the specter of another worker on the other side of the globe who responds faster for cheaper haunts his every point and click. Even when astride a friend’s motorbike zooming through the Pakistani countryside, Iqbal never keeps a client waiting. They “messaged me [with] an urgent revision,” he recounts, so he let go of his friend’s waist, ungirded his laptop, and slid his fingertips across the trackpad, all helmet-less at 65 kph. Iqbal embodies the central contradiction of freelancing: he both works around the clock for a potentially infinite number of bosses, and feels independent. He’s a slave and his own master.
Liz Magic Laser’s latest video piece, “In Real Life,” interrogates these two sides of freelancing, how online work has simultaneously empowered and dehumanized the world’s labor force through a series of slick word and number games. Originally commissioned by the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool and currently on view at Various Small Fires in Los Angeles through January 25, “IRL” casts five freelancers from sites like Fiverr, Upwork, and PeoplePerHour, as reality game show contestants. One graphic designer (Iqbal), one scriptwriter, one voiceover artist, one whiteboard animator, and one social media specialist, each from a different country, embark on a “30 Day BioHack Challenge,” a quest for one’s inner Version 2.0.
Laser subtly spoofs Big Tech’s obsession with “quantifiable health.” Each freelancer assigns their satisfaction a number on a ten point scale on “The Wheel of Life.” For example, Iqbal scores a 5/10 in Friends & Family and a 4/10 in both Money and Personal Growth. By the end of the challenge, Iqbal’s “ability to juggle multiple projects” moves from a 3/10 to a 9/10, a significant increase, but is 10/10 even achievable? Sustainable? Though she orchestrated this whole process, Laser told me she remains skeptical that “optimizing one’s focus can actually lead to some nirvana-like happiness,” yet “IRL” indulges the illusion. The cast members were also hired as the creative crew, producing the five episodes of the show in collaboration with Laser and journalist Laura Geisswiller. Laser does her best to present their narratives on their terms, indulging tendencies towards corporate speak.
This aligns with some of Laser’s previous work, which often scrambles the delivery method of language. In “The Thought Leader” (2016), a 10-year-old boy delivers portions of Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground as a TEDTalk. As young Alex Ammerman paces like a seasoned public speaker, Laser places the camera at a low angle, elevating his diminutive frame to authoritative as he delivers...
You have reached your article limit
Sign up for a digital subscription and continue reading all new issues, plus our entire archives, for just $1.50/month.
Already a subscriber? Sign in
