The Community EditionREVIEW: A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE STUNTMAN ECONOMY
A Brief Overview of the Stuntman Economy that Governed Society Between 2247-2651 AD Followed by a Relic is the full title of a collaborative project by local artists Lauren Prousky and Jacob Irish.
The collaboration is a 24-page coil-bound booklet, printed in black and white, with text provided by Prousky and accompanying visual elements contributed by Irish. The first production run was limited to 50 copies which were distributed by Prousky and Irish.
“[Stuntman Economy] is a quietly tragic satire about how the systemic outsourcing of human experiences distorts and destabilizes the self,” Prousky said in an overview provided by Irish.
The project is split into two parts: a “Brief Overview of the Stuntman Economy” and a “relic”, with the relic being a series of journal entries providing insight into the life of a Stuntman. Stuntman Economy presents us with a vision for the front half of our current millennium—2247-2651 precisely.
Prousky drags the gig economy to its logical conclusion: stunt work. “Stunts” meaning breakups, funerals, arguments; all the things that nobody is stoked to deal with, outsourced to a lower class.
In the future that Prousky & Irish envision for us, we’ve progressed—in a very linear fashion—far away from trouncing Uber Eats drivers into navigating abominable conditions, towards a world where even the most banal discomforts are contracted out.
Prousky describes the period preceding the “Stuntman Economy” as one of rapid technological innovation (RTI), where advancements in technology aim to ease the lives of those with the means to leverage them.
Starting to sound familiar?
When the demands of the wealthy start to outpace technological growth—“that…wasn’t rapid enough”—the wealthy outsource their dirty laundry to the lower class.
Throughout the publication, the visual elements provided by Irish encourage disparate elements to coalesce, tying the academic feeling “overview” to the informal “relic” in a holistic way. The images are beautiful and haunting. Pixelated renderings inevitably evoke the retro-futuristic optimism associated with the internet before the dot com bubble exploded.
They also work fantastically with the medium, and really blossom towards the end of the publication where a rendering of a poster is reproduced across a full page and mirrored onto the opposite side of the spread:
“REMEMBER YOU’RE AT WORK”
Stuntman Economy is equal parts ambition and restraint. The scope is defined by the format of the publication, but this limitation works mostly in favour of the work.
At its best, the project is highly evocative, casually hinting at a robust and well thought out universe.
At its most basic, Stuntman Economy reads like a proof of concept that could translate neatly into a variety of different mediums.
Ultimately, it is the collaborative efforts of both Irish and Prousky that allow Stuntman Economy to coalesce into something much greater than the sum of its parts.
While the potential is there for this project to be fleshed out into something like an alternate reality game (ARG) for example, or even just an intriguing work of speculative fiction, it also stands firmly on its own as a unique project undertaken by two noteworthy local creatives.
More work from Prousky and Irish can be found through their respective Instagram pages: @laurenprousky and @bulgarsalad.
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