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Philip
A novel written collaboratively by
Mark Aerial Waller (UK), Cosmin Costinas (RO),
Rosemary Heather (CA/DE), Francis McKee (IR),
David Reinfurt (USA), Steve Rushton (UK/NL),
Heman Chong (SG) and Leif Magne Tangen (NO)
Curated by Mai Abu ElDahab
Produced by Project Arts Centre, Dublin
(Tessa Giblin, Jonathan Carroll, Niamh O'Donnell)
Purchase Book Online
Or if you're living in New York City,
buy it at :
Dexter Sinister
Just-In-Time Workshop & Occasional Bookstore
38 Ludlow Street (Basement South)
New York, New York 10002
Tel +1 213 235 6296 / +1 917 741 8949
info(at)dextersinister.org
--
The Price of Philip
--
AS WE ALL KNOW, Fruice is the connective tissue of Philipville. It is
the economic imperative of planned obsolescence and a Just-In-Time
economy taken to its logical extreme, where time-sensitive pricing and
on-demand production create a terrifyingly efficient and
all-too-believable fiscal reality.
THEREFORE, THE PRICING OF PHILIP IS IMPORTANT. Given the subject matter
of the story, its production in the workshop and its
not-quite-mass-paperback status, the price should not be arbitrary. In
fact, the novel's price can be a signal, communicating expectations for
its reception, commanding the reader's attention and focusing its
reading. This first edition published by Project Press is somewhere
between a pulp fiction (although in a very limited quantity) and an
artwork (really the product of a sustained performance.) Rather than
producing a typical exhibition as display and representation, the
structure of PHILIP facilitated a science fiction writing workshop,
creating a temporary zone of production. From 2–9 November
2006, Dublin was home to a graphic designer, a filmmaker, two visual
artists, two critics and two curators who came together to collectively
envision a future. Housed in the Project Art Centre bar, typing away at
their laptops and scribbling plots, scenes and characters across the
walls, the amateur novelists collectively wrote PHILIP. Because the
exhibition format privileges production over display, then it makes
sense to price the book based on the immaterial labor costs incurred
during the workshop rather than the material, shipping, travel or
distribution costs.
THE POLITICAL ECONOMIES OF ADAM SMITH AND KARL MARX studied the
conditions under which production was organized in the nation-states of
the new capitalist system in the 18th and 19th centuries
(respectively.) Given the three factors of economic production --
labor, land and capital -- the discipline of Political Economy places a
particular focus on labor, with its implicit political conflict between
the desires of workers and those of employers. Scottish Enlightenment
philosopher Adam Smith wrote the first modern economic text with his
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. In
his magnum opus, Smith outlined the basic tenets of an industrial
capitalist political economy and introduced concepts still resonant in
pop economic theory today including The Invisible Hand of the market
and Both-Benefit transactions. In 19th century Berlin, Paris and
London, Karl Marx developed his well-known ideas on the organization of
labor, building directly on the principles that Adam Smith described.
However, Marx projected the (then) current industrial capitalist system
to its likely conclusion. In Marxian Economics (as opposed to Marxist,
which carries the requisite political-ideological framework and social
restructuring), the goal is to provide insight and guidance for the
cooperative production of human labor. Marxian economists lobby for the
most effective organization of collective workers with as little
management as possible. Management is viewed as a means of capitalizing
on specialized knowledge or qualifications divorced from the actual
value of its labor.
MORE RECENTLY, IMMATERIAL LABOR WAS IDENTIFIED and interrogated by
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their political economic treatise
Empire (2000). The authors built directly from Karl Marx's ideas to
synthesize a possible escape from the gross misdistributions of wealth
and power inherent in contemporary capitalism. In their book,
Immaterial Labor is defined as "labor that produces an immaterial good,
such as a service, a cultural product, knowledge, or
communication.” [p. 290] Further, they describe three kinds
of immaterial labor in the contemporary post-industrial economy: 1. the
informationalization of industrial production; 2. analytical and
symbolic manipulation; and 3. the production of affect and
relationships. Further, since Immaterial Labor is largely produced on
and with a computer rather than requiring the task-specific machines
and tools of the industrial economy, one kind of labor can be freely
exchanged for another. The result is an abstraction of various kinds of
labor into one meta-activity. Hardt and Negri propose that this rise of
Immaterial Labor has replaced the assembly line with the network.
Cooperation among a committed group of workers, each with specific
skills and connected by smooth communications yields a networked
production without the exclusive requirements of capital or land.
Immaterial Labor can be more fluidly organized by a wider group of
producers more quickly and with less money in temporary zones -- a
short-lived network of production, individuals linked together in lines
of communication, deterritorialization and cooperation (perhaps, a
science fiction writing workshop.)
SO THEN, THE PRICE OF PHILIP SHOULD EQUAL THE COSTS OF IMMATERIAL LABOR
DISTRIBUTED OVER THE NUMBER OF COPIES. This is the most direct way to
work out the price, and it ends up at approximately a reasonable amount
for the First Edition (€ 83.30). The Immaterial Labor costs
for PHILIP include participant fees, organizing fees and participant
per diems over the course of the eight day workshop. The material
production costs -- printing, production, shipping and distribution --
are not included. A budget breakdown is included below.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
$ = IMMATERIAL LABOR / NUMBER OF COPIES
---------------------------------------------------------------------
PARTICIPANTS
8 @ € 400 € 2400.00
---------------------------------------------------------------------
ORGANIZATION
2 @ € 1000.00 € 2000.00
1 @ € 1500.00 € 1500.00
---------------------------------------------------------------------
PER DIEMS
89 DAYS @ €30 €2670.00
---------------------------------------------------------------------
SUBTOTAL € 8570.00
NO. COPIES / 100 --
---------------------------------------------------------------------
EACH € 85.70
---------------------------------------------------------------------
IF THE TOTAL NUMBER OF COPIES GOES UP, THEN THE PRICE PER COPY GOES
DOWN. Assuming that the Immaterial Labor costs of the workshop are
fixed at € 8570.00, the first edition of 100 copies yields a
per copy price of € 85.70. If 100 more copies are produced in
a second edition to yield 200 total copies of PHILIP, the price of each
will be € 8570.00 / 200 = € 42.85. Further, if a
mass-market-sized print-run of 1500 additional copies is produced, the
price will be € 8330.00 / 1700 = € 5.07. As the price
of each edition is adjusted to account for the labor divided over the
total number of copies, only the price of that edition is affected.
THE RESULT IS A CURIOUS INVERSION OF THE ECONOMY OF SCALE essential to
supply-side capitalism. In an Economy of Scale, as more copies of an
identical product are made, the manufacturing costs decrease and the
per unit profit goes up. But in the case of PHILIP, as more copies are
produced, the manufacturing costs increase and the per unit profit goes
down. In its place, a demand-side Economy of Scope (also known by
economists as The Network Effect) is produced. The Network Effect
describes the increasing value of an individual product as more and
more are sold -- the most typical example is the telephone, pretty
useless if there is only one but transformative if there are millions
all linked together. As additional copies of PHILIP are produced, the
Immaterial Labor of the workshop then is further dispersed over the
additional copies -- circulating and connecting places and people
remote from its site of production, creating a network of readers and a
sustainable economy in the process.
FINALLY, PHILIP'S SECOND EDITION SHOULD BE PRODUCED ON-DEMAND. A
website and interface may be produced and staged at www.philipville.com
to process orders for the novel. When an order is placed through this
online interface, payment will be collected and a copy of the novel
will be printed, bound and shipped by Lulu.com in an already
established process. However, the price of a copy will always be
re-adjusting -- each time an order is placed, the total number of
copies is increased and the resulting price is reduced.
MAY I TAKE YOUR ORDER?
--
Dexter
Sinister
3 January 2007
