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June 2004: Cashier Escape Route



IRIS/DIGITALIS

'The high magicians of demand management try to prevent the economy from sliding into darkness, but it is already too late for that. Even as the shadows thicken something unimaginable is arriving from the edges of the world' CCRU it@ccru.co.uk

I am not IRIS, anyone can use the name IRIS.

IRIS has worked collaboratively with the artists' group DIGITALIS to produce the work shown in Cashier Escape Route.

IRIS draws on multiple name use, detournement & art politics but is located specifically within the contemporary work ethic & its relationship to post modernist economics and stolen technology.

IRIS is possessed, IRIS does not possess. IRIS makes work that is NOT FOR SALE.

IRIS takes a steady path through illegality, relying on her position of trust with her employers & their customers by obtaining & managing material that, although intensely public in its understood utilisation & subject matter, is ostensibly strictly controlled in its usage.

Through her work, IRIS regains command over the panoptical systems of surveillance footage in her workplace. These systems are used to manipulate the behaviour of both the employees & customers of British supermarkets. IRIS does this with the desire of liberating all who are victims of this system.

DIGITALIS hopes that you enjoy the work of IRIS.

A story: Yesterday, I was at work. I was packing the shopping of Lady XXX. She remarked on the neatness & speed of my packing skills. I replied that these skills were the product of five years worth of specialist arts education. She found this difficult to believe. I responded that not only did I have a first-class honours degree in fine art and a twelve year old daughter to support as a single parent, but that I also combined my work as a supermarket checkout girl with the organisation of an Arts Council Grant that had to pay a large number of artists and supply time & money for a book research project for myself & my co-cultural workers. Lady XXX looked like she was going to cry. I said, Don't be sad, I am really happy with the way my life is. She responded that she found it hard to accept that what I was telling her was true. DIGITALIS 004

'We are subtly schooled to feel that to possess is to capture power; indeed that possessions are the source of power. The greatest danger to consumer capitalism is the possibility that people... will decide that they have more or less everything they need.' Clive Hamilton, Growth Fetish.