EVERY MORNING, LEONARDO SPEDICATO GETS ONTO A CLAAS GT8000
Monologue, 20'; 2010
The text investigates the emotional and social implications of the machinic intertwining of work, body and combine harvester, in an ever closer future where a farmer, Leonardo Spedicato, loses his arm in a field accident.
Monologue, 20'; 2010
The text investigates the emotional and social implications of the machinic intertwining of work, body and combine harvester, in an ever closer future where a farmer, Leonardo Spedicato, loses his arm in a field accident.
An extract from the text follows:
Zelarino Town, Elena’s Bar - 5:00 p.m.
My name is Spedicato Leonardo, my mother was a housewife, and my father a farmer. He would give tractors names like people used to do with animals.
I’m married to Sandra Lenzi, a primary school teacher in Mogliano Veneto, and we have two daughters, Giada and Maria.
I was a farmhand in the province of Venice; I was one of those brought back in after the change to the ‘Leggero’, or rather law no. 171/52, the one that got us all kicked off the fields. On 11th July 2053, five years ago to be precise, I almost died.
(audio of agricultural machines working, 20'')
Prior to my reinstatement, I was well enough. I had started to read and to go out on long walks, which inevitably ended up near my house with an afternoon coffee.
Giada and Maria were pleased, and I would help them with their homework. Only my father wasn’t happy: he said that I had to find myself another job.
For 20 years until 2052 I got up every morning at 5 o’clock, being in charge of the storage and monitoring of semi-automatic agricultural machinery: it wasn’t a very tiring job because lately the machines did almost everything on their own, and my only real task was to open and close the hangars where the machines were kept, turn on the satellite systems, and at the end of the day I would pull the plugs on all the machinery.
But my colleagues and I knew well enough that sooner or later we would become superfluous.
Fully-Automatic Agricultural Machinery
Around the end of the ‘40s, a new generation of machines was put on the market, the FULLY AUTOMATICS. “A dream pursued for over 2000 years” they said, the ones who produced the machines.
Many landowners began investing in these machines, and they started sacking us all to pay the instalments on their purchases. I went to see them in action. It was a fairly indescribable sight, and it certainly left me speechless. They were a bit frightening because they were so proudly independent; it was fascinating how they could work without stopping, under the scorching sun or in pitch darkness, tilling the land until the morning light.
(audio of confused statements by protesters, 30'')
The first redundancy letters were sent out, sparking off protests and demonstrations: the trade unions fought to get us our jobs back, demanding that the new machines should be withdrawn from the market, because nobody really wanted to suddenly find themselves with an extra two million unemployed on their hands, least of all central government.
The protests came to an end with an agreement between the government and the trade unions: an agricultural compensation fund was established, with 80% of our wages guaranteed from 2050 until 2052, and a clause that by the end of these two years we were supposed to find ourselves new jobs.
At the begin, a lot of farmhands set out looking for work, even accepting tiring and underpaid jobs, because they were scared of ending up penniless once the two years were up.
But as time went by, a different idea came to the fore: the idea that unemployment was in actual fact an opportunity, our chance never to work again. And this, it must be said, was a private theory, a desire that insinuated itself, growing silently under our skin, just as we silently made the beds at home, cooked for our wives and helped our children grow up. We even started changing channel: the Wednesday evening football match began to be replaced by documentaries and discussion programmes.
We had been told since the 19th century that machines would free us of the fatigue of labour, but they had only ended up freeing the bosses of their workers. If anything we had waited too long, and so the time was ripe to call in those promises.
Zelarino Town, Elena’s Bar - 5:00 p.m.
My name is Spedicato Leonardo, my mother was a housewife, and my father a farmer. He would give tractors names like people used to do with animals.
I’m married to Sandra Lenzi, a primary school teacher in Mogliano Veneto, and we have two daughters, Giada and Maria.
I was a farmhand in the province of Venice; I was one of those brought back in after the change to the ‘Leggero’, or rather law no. 171/52, the one that got us all kicked off the fields. On 11th July 2053, five years ago to be precise, I almost died.
(audio of agricultural machines working, 20'')
Prior to my reinstatement, I was well enough. I had started to read and to go out on long walks, which inevitably ended up near my house with an afternoon coffee.
Giada and Maria were pleased, and I would help them with their homework. Only my father wasn’t happy: he said that I had to find myself another job.
For 20 years until 2052 I got up every morning at 5 o’clock, being in charge of the storage and monitoring of semi-automatic agricultural machinery: it wasn’t a very tiring job because lately the machines did almost everything on their own, and my only real task was to open and close the hangars where the machines were kept, turn on the satellite systems, and at the end of the day I would pull the plugs on all the machinery.
But my colleagues and I knew well enough that sooner or later we would become superfluous.
Fully-Automatic Agricultural Machinery
Around the end of the ‘40s, a new generation of machines was put on the market, the FULLY AUTOMATICS. “A dream pursued for over 2000 years” they said, the ones who produced the machines.
Many landowners began investing in these machines, and they started sacking us all to pay the instalments on their purchases. I went to see them in action. It was a fairly indescribable sight, and it certainly left me speechless. They were a bit frightening because they were so proudly independent; it was fascinating how they could work without stopping, under the scorching sun or in pitch darkness, tilling the land until the morning light.
(audio of confused statements by protesters, 30'')
The first redundancy letters were sent out, sparking off protests and demonstrations: the trade unions fought to get us our jobs back, demanding that the new machines should be withdrawn from the market, because nobody really wanted to suddenly find themselves with an extra two million unemployed on their hands, least of all central government.
The protests came to an end with an agreement between the government and the trade unions: an agricultural compensation fund was established, with 80% of our wages guaranteed from 2050 until 2052, and a clause that by the end of these two years we were supposed to find ourselves new jobs.
At the begin, a lot of farmhands set out looking for work, even accepting tiring and underpaid jobs, because they were scared of ending up penniless once the two years were up.
But as time went by, a different idea came to the fore: the idea that unemployment was in actual fact an opportunity, our chance never to work again. And this, it must be said, was a private theory, a desire that insinuated itself, growing silently under our skin, just as we silently made the beds at home, cooked for our wives and helped our children grow up. We even started changing channel: the Wednesday evening football match began to be replaced by documentaries and discussion programmes.
We had been told since the 19th century that machines would free us of the fatigue of labour, but they had only ended up freeing the bosses of their workers. If anything we had waited too long, and so the time was ripe to call in those promises.