Red Steel investigates discipline, assimilation, and heroism.
My process of hammering nails symbolizes individuals assimilating into a collective through adopting disciplines. The action shows repetition as an ideological tool to persuade the masses. The performance examines the perpetuating protagonist-heroic narrative, that once persuaded the workers to exploit their bodies, by presenting a self-sacrificing hero who eventually collapses due to seemingly futile actions. I aim to critique the narrative of the factory space—abandoned both physically, and within the ideological circuit of collective memory and official records—and the physical and conceptual displacement of immigrant labor within such a space.