Josh Kline at the Whitney Museum

 Josh Kline’s Project for a New American Century at the Whitney Museum is a multiple floor exhibition highlighting the dehumanization of work and the uncertainty of future labor with technological advancements. The work is largely composed of large scale sculpture work, film and video all which haunt viewers with the threat of the ending of their careers. 

The exhibition is set up as a maze where each room is depicting another future crisis scenario. Repeating motifs of dismembered body parts fatally frozen in fear or highlighted as another resource equivalent in importance to what one would fill a grocery cart is haunting, but not unimaginable. With the recent advancements in ai technology the disregard of human labor and livelihood depicted in these sculpture works are a warning of what is to come, not just some distant dystopia. 

The installation titled Contagious Unemployment created in 2016 consists of office boxes full of ones work tools encompassed by glass blown virus bubbles dangling from the ceiling. The work was imagined during creation in the 2030s or 2040s where automation would eventually take over white-collar worker positions. This work now takes on a new meaning post Covid-19, essentially highlighting  how the virus told workers to pack up their desks and leave. Many jobs that are realizing or are unable to bring back laid off workers as they no longer have the finances or have found a cheaper way to replicate their work through new technology programs. This work has already successfully predicted future courses of action, and doesn’t seem to be stopping there.  

Josh Kline is giving viewers a warning, but it might already be too late to change anything.