Down Tools Corn Broom

Down Tools Corn Broom

Down Tools! Down, tools. A command, a brand, a demand to stop making, stop doing, stop working. Refuse to carry on. Brandished aloft, a pitchfork, rake, or corn broom might turn into a weapon, an object that helps support a protest or a song. This is not a Disney broom, its not going to jump up and industriously, manically start sweeping all by itself just as the spell-bound mops do in Fantasia. It’s a decommissioned tool, its work-life come to an end, an ethnographic artefact signaling an earlier form of now obsolete labour. But the broom bit of the broom is still there at the bottom of the stick, so despite whatever it says on the handle, you can happily put this thing to good use anywhere and anytime you like, in the home, studio, office, street… Or you can hang it up on the wall and let it quietly get on with some form of work that’s apparently not very productive at all.

Edition of 30