Installation shot of Zoe Beloff: Emotions Go to Work, Ulrich Museum of Art, Spring 2020.
Zoe Beloff's interactive multi-media installation Emotions Go to Work investigated how technology is used to turn our feelings into valuable assets. One might call it the transformation of emotion into capital. The project, accompanied by a limited-edition book, was an exploration of the "dream life of technology" and of our imaginative and imagined relationships with machines—how we create them in our image, shape them to serve our desires, and how they, in turn, reshape us.
Beloff is an artist and filmmaker who lives in and works in New York City. Her projects often involve a range of media including films, drawings, and archival documents organized around a theme. Over the course of a thirty-year career, her interests have included psychoanalysis, mediums, and mental health institutions; new forms of community; anti-fascist art and activism; and, recently, the history of relationships between labor, technology, and our emotional lives. In all she does, her work attests to a belief that critique and protest should be vibrant, humorous, and colorful—a carnival of resistance to light the way in dark times.
Emotions Go to Work was accompanied by a film series co-curated by the artist and Rebecca Cleman of Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and co-presented by the Ulrich with mama.film. Read the film series brochure.
Watch the video of the artist's talk.
The exhibition was generously supported by Lee and Ron Starkel and a grant from the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission (KCAIC).
