By noontime the dock
Is a-swarmin' with men
Comin' out of the ghostly freighter
They're moving in the shadows
Where no one can see
And they're chainin' up people
And they're bringin' em to me
Askin' me,
"Kill them now, or later?"
A digitally animated 'karaoke' video for the song 'Pirate Jenny' from the Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht.
The Threepenny Opera is a 'play with music', first performed in Berlin in 1928. It offers a socialist critique of a capitalist world. In the song 'Pirate Jenny', Jenny is a maid at a "crummy old hotel", imagining avenging herself for the contempt she endures from the townspeople.
This piece will draw upon anthropologist David Graeber's work on 'bullshit jobs'. It will employ Brecht's 'distancing effect' to prevent the viewer from losing themselves in a narrative, instead making them participants. Karaoke is a participatory medium, incomplete without the contribution of the singer. Participants are invited to lend their voice to the piece and put themselves in the role of Jenny, other workers today like Jenny, and to recall their own 'shit' and 'bullshit jobs' that may have once given them thoughts of vengeance.
Is a-swarmin' with men
Comin' out of the ghostly freighter
They're moving in the shadows
Where no one can see
And they're chainin' up people
And they're bringin' em to me
Askin' me,
"Kill them now, or later?"
A digitally animated 'karaoke' video for the song 'Pirate Jenny' from the Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht.
The Threepenny Opera is a 'play with music', first performed in Berlin in 1928. It offers a socialist critique of a capitalist world. In the song 'Pirate Jenny', Jenny is a maid at a "crummy old hotel", imagining avenging herself for the contempt she endures from the townspeople.
This piece will draw upon anthropologist David Graeber's work on 'bullshit jobs'. It will employ Brecht's 'distancing effect' to prevent the viewer from losing themselves in a narrative, instead making them participants. Karaoke is a participatory medium, incomplete without the contribution of the singer. Participants are invited to lend their voice to the piece and put themselves in the role of Jenny, other workers today like Jenny, and to recall their own 'shit' and 'bullshit jobs' that may have once given them thoughts of vengeance.
