A (Contextual) Review of Prema Murthy's _Mythic Hybrid_

_ Mr. Gates seemed as interested in the quality of the young peoples' lives as in the architecture of their software. He asked Mr. Murthy about how employees got to the campus (by bus and by car, with more cars all the time), where they lived and where they ate. Usually one of the cafeterias, for about 40 cents a meal, he was told.
Subsidized?, he asked.
No, no subsidies.
Oh really?, a surprised Mr. Gates said, quickly calculating that employees could eat for about a dollar a day._ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/international/asia/14INDI.html

Despite the establishment and acceptance of the critique of e-utopianism (superhighways and such), the outcome of this acceptance is maybe not what the critics were looking for. It's starting to sound a lot like Madeleine Albright's acceptance of the gruesome death toll from US enforced sanctions on Iraqi civilians. And it's important to note that critiques of techno-utopianism are pretty much kept in close quarters and don't filter out to mainstream life much anyway. Even acknowledgment of the _digital divide_ rarely goes beyond marketing Microsoft to inner city schools.

Just take the above quoted conversation, from a NY Times article, between Bill Gates and Mr. Murphy, the chairman of Infosys Technologies, an Indian software company. Spoken, printed, and read with no cynicism, one can see what's going on without a special decoder ring. This conversation occurred during a (supposedly) dual purpose trip by Gates to: one, present India with 100 million from the Gates Foundation to fight the spread of Aids; two, invest 400 million dollars - on behalf of Microsoft - to fight the spread of Linux. Most (mainstream press) articles on Gates's visit represented it as _mixing philanthropy and business_, not as acting in one-and-the-same interests.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/13/technology/13SOFT.html
http://hrw.org/press/2002/11/india111302.htm http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021114/ap_wo_en_
po/india_microsoft_s_largess_1
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1114/p07s02-wosc.html )
One must look at the Gates's own words for that: _The humanitarian imperative for action is undeniable. But there are other reasons for the West to be concerned in India's future. With one of the largest scientific and technical work forces in the world, it is also an increasingly important business partner..._
(http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/09/opinion/09GATE.html )

This turn of events caused me to consider the significance of the recent work of Prema Murthy (partly due to the coinciding name of the Infosys chairman), especially _Mythic Hybrid_. As an artist that has been involved in many activities influential for the networked niche of the art world, like Fakeshop, she has also begun a line of work that challenges the current, ongoing status of networked art from a position in desperate need of more attention. In previous works like _rDNA_, _Mimic_ and especially _BindiGirl_, Murthy generates reevaluations of the utopic/dystopic concept of the cyborg from a gendered, embodied perspective. She states this intention clearly in an interview with Josephine Bosma _When I first started on the internet I was really excited about ideas of democracy and how identity did not matter, gender was not an issue...but the more I saw the same kind of disfunctionalities in society being played out in this virgin territory..._

_Mythic Hybrid_, supported by the Creative Capital and Greenwall Foundations and hosted by Turbulence.org, represents Murthy's personal investigations into the effects of the computer industry on the women who work in microelectronics manufacturing. Here, we are given access to Murthy's recombinant thoughts - combining Haraway's _Cyborg Manifesto_ with the material realities at the other end of high tech labor. Just as _BindiGirl_ ( http://www.thing.net/~bindigrl/ ) conflates the oppressive tendencies of both religion and high tech, fetishized porn, _Mythic Hybrid_ problematizes the liberating potential of the network and universalistic notions of emancipatory hybridity. Murthy represents the problem as one, not just of unequal labor/access between North and South, but as one of oppression based on a gendered and hierarchal concept of a North/South divide. _ The boss tells me not to bring our women's problems with us to work if we want to be treated equal. What does he mean by that? I am working here because of my women's problems - because I am a woman. Working here creates my women's problems._

In _Mythic Hybrid_, we are presented with two small video clips of women at work sandwiching statements made by such women about their work environment. The women’s' statements indicate a high level of awareness and consciousness regarding their positions as exploited labor, as well as how this situation is exacerbated by management because of their gender. Taken during Murthy's 2001 trip to India (I'm guessing), these statements confounded even her expectations, based on reports gathered before hand. As she states: _What I found along the way was contrary to expectations – a group of sane, rational women with identities constructed by a set of complex social and psychological factors._

An audio accompaniment combines what sounds like promotional tracks for Indian high tech products with the sounds of factory activity. These representations are accessed via a search results page that also gives us links to outside sites with information on women workers, globalization, and other relevant topics.

Most of us know that _third world_ economies are greatly subjugated by Western ones, but how often do we think of the relationship between oppressed labor and the products of their labor? What about when that labor is performed by women? What do individual Indian women think about the products they make; what's their relationship to networked technology? Murthy gives us the chance to ask such questions, and hopefully take them even further.

While these art works are not exactly what has come to be called _tactical media_, they have a great deal to add to such practices, beyond just being sympathetic. Not long ago, I attempted to interview a member of a tactical media collective about a particular production that combined theoretical and pragmatic skills in order to release repressed sexual desire. My first question was how particular feminist ideas had been incorporated to deal with the (likely) possibility that unleashed sexual desire in the current environment would be equally as, or more, harmful to women (and sexual minorities) as our current repressive state. Critical Art Ensemble has noted that the _return of the repressed_ could just as equally be authoritarian as liberating, but that the oppressed have little to lose. To that I would add that they'd have even less to lose if they're involved in the struggle, an idea Murthy's work seems to give some access to. The very technology we use/criticize, whether information or biological technologies, must also be considered within the notion of the _repressed_. It certainly seems like Bill Gates is aware of the stakes, but it appears the workers imagined in _Mythic Hybrid_ are as well:

_Well the bosses think they're pretty clever with their doubletalk, and that we're just a bunch of dumb aliens. But it takes two to use a see-saw. What we're gradually figuring out here is how to use their own logic against them._

-ryan griffis <grifray@yahoo.com>

November 18, 2002

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