Networking 2007
TRA ART porto franco,Tuscany Region
supported by Municipality of Pontedera, Department of Culture
Andreas Faoro, Francesca Rizzetto, Tiziana Villani
The factory workers have disappeared from the common imaginary.
The current social reference models are more similar to a football player's carrier or to a pop singer's one than to factory life of workers. Nevertheless, not many decades ago, the working class was considered by many a social vanguard to be taken as a model. What has changed since then ? Is the collapse of Soviet Union sufficient to explain this systemic change? Or maybe it is necessary to adopt an analysis method more complex which considers the changes in the forms of belonging and of consumption occurred in Western societies? Who are the factory workers today, what do they think about their being factory workers and which are the forms of conflict and of communion which are developed in the factory at present ? These are some of the questions which gave start to the project Postfordist reality carried out in the city of Pontedera.
The history of the city of Pontedera itself is linked to the one of the biggest factory of the centre of Italy. Even if the number of employees of the factory has been reduced a lot during the 80s and the 90s , shifting from 12.000 to the 3.300 at present, the link with the city is still very strong and felt by all the citizens. At the same time this internal change to the factory has been accompanied by an important change in life styles, in the forms of consumption and of social relationships occurred in the European cities. These changes, described by many with the name of Postfordism, are related in the city of Pontedera to a still strongly Fordist experience like the Piaggio's factory one, in an interesting link and mutual exchange which allows to reconsider many aspects of the passage from Fordism to Postfordism.
Entering Piaggio in the seventies meant entering a world which had an important social role, a way of being which would mould one's own life and which would probably never change. Who enters the factory in recent years instead with a short-term contract knows that very probably it won't be his or her work in the long run and necessarily prepares himself/herself to change. This different perspective can only influence the link which is created in the factory, the chance of organizing fights to claim new rights, the chance of feeling as a social class.
"The multitude is to the metropolis as the working class is to the factory". (A.Negri)
The multitude is the contemporary form of living-labour.
more info@unlab.net