wayvy weekly //// [what is work?]
My favourite superhero has always been Spider-Man. Specifically Tobey McGuire's iteration but I digress. I ain’t tryna start a race war in the comments. If y’all WOULD comment but anyway. Uncle Ben’s adage, “with great power, comes great responsibility” profoundly impacted me even then, and I take his words with me to this day. But what does any of this have to do with work, I hear you ask. Just lemme cook for a second.
Today, people are in a purposeless predicament. Much like in last week’s wayvy weekly, where we outlined how capitalism has taken The Church’s tools and stripped them of all meaning, perverting them beyond a simple changing of their innate purpose. Much like changing a screwdriver from a constructive tool to a murder weapon, capitalism has taken work and removed the part that motivates us to keep going, to wake up in the morning. They replace this with a hollow, empty feeling and burnout, sending people down rabbit holes of addiction, debt and death. Many stakeholders and elders mistake our generation’s refusal to be complicit in this system as entitlement or laziness, without ever taking a moment to introspect and identify their role in propagating this corrupt system. That would not only require them to hold themselves accountable, but also critique the system in which they thrive. Calling into question all that they are and all that they have.
Well, that still doesn’t do much to define what work is, just what its not. Okay, fair point. So here it is. Work is the source of life. Everything we do, everything we are, everything we want and everything that is worth doing is informed by work. We are only here on the backs of the collaborative work of billions if not trillions of our ancestors. The work they did was not tedious or redundant, but life-giving. It is the battery in your back, the drive to keep going no matter the external circumstances. They knew that their work mattered. It was crucial for the development of society and the steady increase in standard of living we have collectively experienced. Rest is also an important part of work. We must recover energy and vitality regularly in order to continue to do and give of our best. Work is why we are here.
WAYVY@WORK
So for the wayvywork of the week, we have here “wayvy@work” from the 1st collection of wayvyworks. One of my personal faves, it toes the line between simplicity and complex expertly. The multimedia nature in addition to the layered approach to the application gives it real depth, reflecting the feeling the work depicted gives the subject, as well as the type of work it is. Many of the classics from the Renaissance era were deeply layered works, with modern imaging technology being able to peel them back and peer below the surface to the initial rough sketches. This piece takes these principles and amplifies them, leaving the initial sketches bare, presenting them alongside the final piece in an attempt to reflect a more authentic practice; revealing as opposed to obscuring. Finally, despite all of the chaos depicted, the red x and dotted line channeling a treasure map, and the SAMO SAMO spray painted towards the top, our subject embraces it all with open arms. This is all complimented by the bold ‘HOW’ written on the right of the piece, as I feel as though most people are broadly aware of what they should be doing, but are unable to figure out how. Largely unaffected by his environment depicted as a stark white form, yet inextricably tied to it as there are holes in his figure where the chaos peeks through. We are not only our environment, but what we do and what we leave behind. What would you like to leave behind?
