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Marianne Flotron

Work

Vidéo | hdv | couleur | 53:21 | Suisse, Pays-Bas | 2011

WORK is based on the idea of bringing the Theatre of Oppressed to the employees of a multinational insurance company based in the Netherlands. The Theatre of Oppressed is originally invented in Brazil to unmask totalitarian political strategies and to develop ways of resistance. It functions as a democratizing tool using the means of participatory theatre. Through different techniques participants start to detect and understand strategies of oppression and learn through acting the first steps of resistance or change. The Columbian Theater of Oppressed director Hector Aristizabal was invited by Marianne Flotron to work for one week in the insurance company in the Netherlands. He set up a forum theater play (a form of the Theatre of Oppressed) at the company?s premises helped by several actors and employees of the company. In the contemporary labor society where most of the subjects identify themselves over work, the project tried to bring up the idea of a possible democratization of work. WORK is emphasizing the way the capitalistic economy is forming behavior and influencing mentality by employing knowledge of social science.

Marianne Flotron (born in Meiringen, Switzerland,1970) currently lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. After two years of studies in history in Zurich, she continued courses at the School of Fine Arts of Geneva (Switzerland), where she earned her degree in 2001. From 2007 till 2008 she was in residence at the Rijksakademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. She won the Swiss Art Awards in 2003, 2007 and 2009. In 2008, she received the Aeschlimann Corti award from the canton of Berne. In her work she is mainly interested in the interrelationship between political and economical systems and human behavior. How the subject creates the society and how, in return, the society is creating its subjects, forms a basis for her work. She had her first institutional solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Bern in 2011. Other recent exhibitions include Monumentalisme, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2010), ?Motores utopicos, sensores reais? Galeria Quarta Parede, Sao Paulo (2011), Schon wieder und noch mal, Kunstverein Medienturm, Graz (2011). Her work got support from the Kunsthalle Bern, the Rijksakademie voor Beldende Kunsten, the Fonds voor Beeldende Kunsten, Vormgeving en Bouwkunst and the Mondrian Foundation.