One Family of Objects / Jedna Skupina Predmetu

In this book Jiri Skala observes the social and economic transformations taking place in the Czech Republic in the past 20 years through the metamorphosing relationship of a worker and his/her machine. In 2005, in the southwestern part of the Czech Republic, a factory where the author had worked at the beginning of the 1990s and where his parents were employed for several decades, went bankrupt. Most of the machines were sold to new owners but the parents of Jiri Skala also bought one of the machines. This unexpected decision gave the author an idea: to search for similar cases and have their new owners photograph the machines; to allow them to capture their relationship to their own manufacturing tool, and to find out why they bought one of those steel giants. This artist's book provides a poetic take on serious topics such as new labour conditions, economics in the new Europe and globalisation.