Book Description

With a new lens to artist Jessica Vaughn's multidisciplinary practice, Depreciating Assets investigates labor, diversity politics, and the material environment of the American workplace. The project examines how affirmative action and other office equity measures are intersected by corporate infrastructure and, specifically, the physical layout of office space.Across four interwoven sections and related appendices, Vaughn assembles her photographs and critical writings alongside xeroxed images, diversity training video stills, and manipulated open source documents of the US Government. The project considers and distills the symptoms of late 20th and 21st century work culture produced by open office plans and modular architecture's promise of malleability, compliance, and universality - provisions that bid for increased efficiency and productivity at the expense of visibility for Black workers and workers of color. The project also includes an interview between Vaughn and curator Magdalyn Asimakis, in which the two draw connections between the operations of the corporate environment to the structural failings of arts and cultural institutions to practice equitable inclusion of artists of color, or to develop a language and praxis in support of diverse programming that extends beyond compliance, optics, and concerns of the market. In its design, Depreciating Assets replicates the style, materials, and colors outlined by the US Government Publishing Office-standards set to ensure design efficiency and the economical production of their internal documents. The book draws from a familiar copyshop color palette and uses varied paper stocks in accordance with Paper Standard specifications. In doing so the project takes on and examines the homogeneity imposed by so-called 'corporate efficiency measures,' and the fundamental tension between diversity initiatives and one-size-fits-all approaches to office resources.The publication concludes with an afterword by the author contextualizing the project's themes within the contemporary reality of global pandemic, economic precarity, and protests against racist state violence, noting how in the absence of an adequate governmental response to structural problems, workplaces implement ad-hoc solutions (such as plexi-dividers) that still leave workers vulnerable and at risk - most acutely, Black workers who are often underinsured.