Over the last fifteen years, Josh Kline has worked on science-fiction installations about the political, economic, and technological crises that define the twenty-first century—what is now called the polycrisis. His works in Global Fascisms come from a large 2016 installation titled Unemployment, which speculated on AI, mass-unemployment, and the potential end of the middle class. Unemployed Journalist (Dave) is a 3D-printed sculpture of an US-American journalist who lost his job when his publication’s staff attempted to form a union. The work is part of a series of photorealistic, sculptural portraits of unemployed middle-class professionals in fields that were predicted to be eliminated by AI and automation. Made from a photographic 3D-scan, the jobless journalist appears curled in a fetal position, his body encased in a tidily-knotted recycling bag, ready to be put out on the kerb. Here, Kline questions the transformation of human beings into human capital, and the inevitable disposal of spent resources. Universal Early Retirement (2016) borrows its form directly from political commercials for Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign. Through fictional ads for a universal basic income, Kline asks what radical agitprop might look like today if the left made use of contemporary advertising’s sophisticated toolkit to sell its ideas using a widely understood and accessible media vernacular.

WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION: Wrapping Things Up (Tom Administrator) (2016), 3D-printed plaster, ink-jet ink, and cyanoacrylate; foam; polyethylene bag power source, 60.96 × 81.28 × 109.22 cm. Courtesy of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; Starting Over (2016), sculpture in polyethylene terephthalate (PET), shopping cart, polyethylene bags, rubber, plexiglas, LEDs, and power source, 127 × 96.52 × 127 cm. Courtesy of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; Contagious Unemployment (Many Thanks) (2016), cardboard box, mixed media, plastic, hardware, cables, LEDs and power source, 116.84 × 73.66 × 101.6 cm. Courtesy of Servais Family Collection, Brussels; Desperation Dilation (2016), cast sculptures in silicone, shopping cart, polyethylene bags, rubber, plexiglas, LEDs, and power source, 116.84 × 73.66 × 101.6 cm. Courtesy of Servais Family Collection, Brussels; Unemployed Journalist (Dave) (2018), 3D-printed sculpture in acrylic-based photopolymer resin, foam; polyethylene bag, 53.3 × 63.5 × 104.1 cm. Courtesy of Peter and Yasmine König; Universal Early Retirement (spots #1 & #2) (2016), 1-channel video, sound, colour, 3’. Courtesy of the artist, Lisson Gallery, and 47 Canal; Dreams with Expiration Dates (2016), generic middle-class clothing, fabric, thread, 7.62 × 236.22 × 351.79 cm. Courtesy of Private Collection, Turin, Italy