Technology dislocates. It pops the seams and streamline fixtures of our lives, demanding constant recalibration. As we evolve alongside our machines, we redefine the governance of our bodies, actions, and experiences. “Scaff(Holding)” interrogates the architectures that sustain labor hierarchies in an era increasingly mediated by intelligent machines.
Scaff, the “scum or refuse” depicts the overworked bodies and devalued processes that remain necessary.
The work asks: who becomes the support system? And more critically, what does it mean when machines begin to decide who—or what—occupies this position?
As automation and artificial intelligence reshape the labor landscape, hierarchies emerge. Formed by access, optimization, and control, these systems do not eliminate “dirty work” They displace and obscure it, redistributing its weight onto those recast as infrastructural—human or otherwise.
Through installation, kinetic sculpture, and performance, “Scaff(Holding)” stages an absurd choreography of support, burden, and neglect. Outfitted with autonomous car parts, stones, and embedded video, the space operates as both workplace and theatre. Machines enact ritualized gestures of maintenance, order, and futility. Repetition becomes a metric of worth; endurance, and search for belonging.
Jordan Vinyard’s kinetic sculptures, installations, and performances satirize the alchemizing effects of technology. Since receiving her MFA from Florida State University, she has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the International Symposium of Electronic Arts in Dubai; the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art Museum in South Korea; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tucson, Arizona; Art Basel in Miami; the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina; Collar Works in New York; and in a solo exhibition at NART Art Space in Narva, Estonia.
She has received numerous awards, including the Thrive Community Projects Grant; the Not Real Art Grant (Los Angeles); the Oklahoma Artist Fellowship Award; the United Arts of Florida Grant; and the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Creative Projects Grant, and been nominated twice for the Joan Mitchell Award. Recently, she was accepted to the Vermont Studio Center residency.
She serves as Director of Creative Engagement and Professor of Art at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, where she leads the university’s expanded media program. Additionally, she is the Director of Art Wrecker, an experimental space focused on socially engaged and dialogical forms of art.
Website: www.jordanvinyard.com
